OM NAMO BHAGAVATE SRI RAMANAYA

BHAGAVAN alone IS. . . Such a deed, abiding and assured awareness fills the heart with relief and rejoicing.

Awakening from the dream of samsara to find Sri Bhagavan as the Being, the Reality, is relief beyond comprehension — it is so complete. Then, knowing this and realizing through his grace that consciousness surrendered to him can never again be engulfed by samsara makes us rejoice beyond expression. For, with no samsara there is only him to abide with forever. What joy is more complete than that?

Self-realization is the only purpose of human birth, its highest experience and its supreme good. Most wonderful of all is that it is one’s natural state. How simple! But then Sri Bhagavan is simplicity itself. And, if we feel it is lost, Sri Bhagavan reminds us to enquire, “To whom is it lost”? And so, to abide in That is to remain as one IS — without concepts.

Remaining free from concepts means annihilation of thoughts. The enquiry, ‘Who am I’? effectively quells the onrush of ‘I am this or I am that’ which engenders ‘we’ and ‘they’ and the manifold problems arising therefrom. Sri Bhagavan’s method of Selfenquiry causes an abiding interest in the ‘I–am’ which leads to the eternally existing ‘I’ beyond all qualifying concepts. As a result, even that ‘I’, like the stick used to stir the fire which is then itself thrown in, disappears, for as Sri Bhagavan has said, “There really is no such thing as ‘I’”.

What inexpressible relief and restoration of joy it is to know that one is neither this nor that, neither God nor man etc. One only IS.

So, in Him who manifested as Sri Bhagavan Ramana, embodiment of purity and wisdom, personification of the eternal dharma, may we be eternally consumed. Let the Master’s words conclude:

Devotee: Why should Self-enquiry alone be considered the direct means to jnana?

Bhagavan: Because every kind of sadhana except that of Atma Vichara presupposes the retention of the mind as the instrument for carrying out the sadhana, and without the mind it cannot be practised. The ego may take different and subtler forms at different stages of one’s practice, but itself is never destroyed. The attempt to destroy the ego or the mind through sadhanas other than Atma vichara, is just like the thief turning policeman to catch the thief, that is, himself. Atma vichara alone can reveal the truth that neither the ego nor the mind really exists, and enables one to realize the pure, undifferentiated Being of the Self or the Absolute. Having realized the Self, nothing remains to be known, because it is perfect Bliss, it is All.


The ignorant man, attached to his body, is controlled by the impressions and tendencies created by his past deeds, and is bound by the law of karma. But the wise man, his desires being quenched, is not affected by deeds. He is beyond the law of karma. Since his mind rests in the Atman he is not affected by the conditions which surround him, though he may continue to live in the body and though his senses may move amongst sense objects. For he has realized the vanity of all objects, and in multiplicity sees one infinite Lord. He is like a man who has awakened from sleep and learned that his dream was a dream.