Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-43

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Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-43

 

Those that nourish the hope of winning Deliverance without losing

individuality are doomed to disappointment. We need to realize in

all its implications the fact that the ego itself is the source of

all evil that besets (attack or harass persistently) life. The ego

is simply the ignorance that limits the real Self to a single body

out of a multitude of bodies, all of which are its own creation;

this world which it creates is thus divided by the ego into two

parts, as self and not-self, the former being a small part, and the

latter a very large one. From this arise the twin notion of "I"

and "mine," which are the substance of bondage. It is evident that

but for the ego there can be no bondage

 

The principal misconception (wrong idea or conception) is the idea

that the Self is limited to the body and the mind. As soon as one

ceases to imagine that one is an individual person, inhabiting a

particular body, the whole superstructure of wrong ideas collapses

and is replaced by a conscious and permanent awareness of the real

Self.

 

The only permanent thing is Reality and that is the Self. You

say "I am", "I am going", "I am speaking", "I am working", etc.

hyphenate the "I-am" in all of them. Thus "I-AM". That is the

abiding (enduring, permanent) and fundamental Reality. This truth

was taught by God to Moses. "I-AM that I-AM". "Be still and know

that I-AM God", so "I-AM" is God. Reality is only one and that is

the Self. All other things are mere phenomena (objects of a

person's perception; what the senses or the mind notice) in it, of

it and by it. Seer, sight and seen are all the Self only.

 

Source: Various reliable publications of / on Sri Ramana Maharshi's

teachings.