Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-75

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Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-75

 

A man has three modes of manifestation: being, thinking and doing.

Being is the most fundamental of the three, because he can't think

or do unless he first is. But it is so covered over by the other

two that it is seldom experienced. It could be compared to the

cinema screen which is the support for the pictures without which

they could not be seen, but which is so covered over with them that

it is not ordinarily noticed. Only very occasionally for a brief

glimpse, does the spiritually untrained person experience the sheer

fact of being; and when he does, he recalls it afterwards as having

been a moment of pure happiness, pure acceptance, pure rightness.

 

That alone is true Self-realization wherein one knows oneself in

relation to Reality, attains peace and realizes one's identity with

it. This is done by Self-enquiry.

 

The truth is, as explicitly declared by the Sage, that Self-

realization is not a process of learning something new, but of

unlearning-of eliminating all the false knowledge that the ego-mind

has gathered in the course of numerous lives.

 

The ego-mind is but an appearance in the Real Self; the appearance

derives vitality and longevity from desires; when by the Quest of

the Self all desires are extinguished in the Experience called Self-

realization, the ego-mind also ceases and the Self alone remains.

 

If the mind, which is the instrument of knowledge and is the basis

of all activity, subsides (ceases from agitation, becomes tranquil),

the perception of the world as an objective reality ceases. Unless

the illusory nature of the perception of the world as an objective

reality ceases, the Vision of the true nature of the Self, on which

the illusion is formed, is not obtained. The mind is a unique power

in the Atman, whereby thoughts occur to one. Thoughts themselves

constitute the mind. There is no such thing as the physical world

apart from and independent of thought. In deep sleep there are no

thoughts, nor is there the world. In the wakeful and dream states

thoughts are present, and there is also the world. Just as the

spider draws out the thread of the cobweb from within itself and

withdraws it again into itself, in the same way the mind projects

the world out of itself and absorbs it back into itself.

 

Mental activity, starting from the illusion of the ego-sense,

spreads forth the phantasm (illusion or phantom) of bewildering

(confusing) multiplicity and fragmentation of the self; if this be

effaced and the mind becomes still, then what is very accurately

described as the Vision of the Real Self will take place.

 

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

teachings.