Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-65

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Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-65

 

The essence of a man is pure Spirit or, which comes to the same,

pure Being or pure universal Consciousness. The mind creates an

ego, a seemingly complete, autonomous individual self, which,

although, illusory, seems to be the reality of one. Masters say

that Self-realization is not something new to be achieved but an

eternally existent state to be discovered or revealed. To do this

constitutes the effort of which teachers and scriptures speak. The

effort involves the will and the emotions as well as understanding

and therefore has to be persistent, determined and skilled. The

campaign must be skillful and intelligently planned. The goal in

all cases is the same: the taming or destruction of the ego or the

discovery that it never really existed. Question the very existence

of the ego by Self-enquiry.

 

Every path requires two things of the seeker: purity of life and

right effort. No one need give up normal life. What is necessary

is to abandon altogether the thought "I am the doer" and get

normally established in Pure Being.

 

The path of Self-enquiry requires no ritual or forms of worship, no

priesthood or congregation, no outer signs or special observances,

but can be practiced in the workshop or kitchen or city office as

well as in the monastery or hermitage. Also, it requires no great

burden of theory.

 

The Direct Path is to forget the ego and discover the Self, not as

one self discovering another, but by awakening Self-awareness of the

Self, by beginning, occasionally and imperfectly at first, but ever

more constantly and powerfully, to be the Self. It is in this sense

that knowing is being.

 

The direct path awakens love through knowledge. It is not knowledge

of one by another or mind-knowledge, but the awakening bliss of the

Self to which the mind is drawn and in which it is absorbed in love.

 

By Self-knowledge is not meant any psychological study but knowing

and being the Self which exists behind the ego or the mind.

 

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

teachings.