Freedom & Bondage/Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi

[Guest guest]

Thanks for posting the article here. Wonderful to hear that Sri Ramana

Maharishi resided in your native town. It is indeed a great article and good

food for thought.

Om Shanti, Sy

T Ramesh <tramesh (AT) orchidsoftindia (DOT) com> wrote:

Hi Friends,

 

Here I attached an article that i have received from the other . This

may useful to our ganesh devotees.

 

[ Sri Ramana Maharishi is a famous philosopher who was residing in my native.

Even you may not know abt him, Just read his thoughts, will really clears your

doughts. ]

 

 

Freedom & Bondage

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>From The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi Edited by David Godman

Liberation is our very nature. We are that. The very fact

that we wish for liberation shows that freedom from all bondage is our real

nature. It is not to be freshly acquired. All that is necessary is to get rid

of the false notion that we are bound. When we achieve that, there will be no

desire or thought of any sort. So long as one desires liberation, so long, you

may take it, one is in bondage.It is false to speak of realisation. What is

there to realise? The real is as it is always. We are not creating anything new

or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in

books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or

well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was

filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now.

Similarly we have simply to throw out all the age-long samskaras (innate

tendencies) which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self

will shine alone.Question: As the bodies and the selves animating them are

everywhere actually observed to be innumerable how can it be said that the Self

is only one?Sri Ramana Maharshi: If the idea 'I am the body' is accepted, the

selves are multiple. The state in which this idea vanishes is the Self since in

that state there are no other objects. It is for this reason that the Self is

regarded as one only.Since the body itself does not exist in the natural

outlook of the real Self, but only in the extroverted outlook of the mind which

is deluded by the power of illusion, to call Self, the space of consciousness,

dehi (the possessor of the body) is wrong.The world does not exist without the

body, the body never exists without the mind, the mind never exists without

consciousness and consciousness never exists without the reality.

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