Maharshi - God - #1

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Question: God is described as manifest and unmanifest. As the former

he is said to include the world as a part of his being. If that is

so, we as part of that world should have easily known him in the

manifest form.

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Know your self before you seek to decide about

the nature of God and the world.

 

Question: Does knowing myself imply knowing God?

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Yes, God is within you.

 

Question: Then, what stands in the way of my knowing myself or God?

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Your wandering mind and perverted ways.

 

Question: Is God personal?

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Yes, he is always the first person, the I, ever

standing before you. Because you give precedence to worldly things,

God appears to have receded to the background. If you give up all

else and seek him alone, he alone will remain as the `I', the Self.

 

Question: Is God apart from the Self?

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi: The Self is God. `I am' is God. This question

arises because you are holding on to the ego self. It will not arise

if you hold on to the true Self. For the real Self will not and

cannot ask anything. If God be apart from the Self he must be a self-

less God, which is absurd. God, who seems to be non-existent, alone

truly exists. Whereas the individual, who seems to be existing, is

ever non-existent. Sages say that the state in which one thus knows

one's own non-existence (sunya) alone is the glorious supreme

knowledge.

 

You now think that you are an individual, that there is the universe

and that God is beyond the cosmos. So there is the idea of

separateness. This idea must go. For God is not separate from you or

the cosmos. The Gita also says:

 

The Self am I, O Lord of sleep,

In every creature's heart enshrined.

The rise and noon of every form,

I am its final doom as well.

-Bhagavad Gita, Ch.10, Verse 20.

 

Thus God is not only in the heart of all, he is the prop of all, he

is the source of all, their abiding place and their end. All proceed

from him, have their stay in him, and finally resolve into him.

Therefore, he is not separate.

 

------- BE AS YOU ARE, DAVID GODMAN