Bhagawan Sri Ramana Maharshi

[Guest guest]

What is Born must Die

 

Q: Is the witness-consciousness permanent of not?

 

M: It is not permanent. The knower rises and sets with the known. That

in which both the knower and the known arise and set, is beyond time.

The words permanent of eternal do not apply.

 

Q: In sleep there is neither the known, nor the knower. What keeps the

body sensitive and receptive?

 

M: Surely you cannot say the knower was absent. The experience of

things and thoughts was not there, that is all. But the absence of

experience too is experience. It is like entering a dark room and

saying: 'I see nothing'. A man blind from birth knows not what

darkness means. Similarly, only the knower knows that he does not

know. Sleep is merely a lapse in memory. Life goes on.

 

Q: And what is death?

 

M: It is the change in the living process of a particular body.

integration ends and disintegration sets in.

 

Q: But what about the knower? With the disappearance of the body,

does the knower disappear?

 

M: Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears

at death.

 

Q: And nothing remains?

 

M: Life remains. Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for

its manifestation. When life produces another body, another knower

comes into being.

 

Q: Is there a causal link between the successive body-knowers, or

body-minds?

 

M: Yes, there is something that may be called the memory body, or

causal body, a record of all that was thought, wanted and done. It is

like a cloud of images held together.

 

Q: What is this sense of a separate existence?

 

M: It is a reflection in a separate body of the one reality. In this

reflection the unlimited and the limited are confused and taken to be

the same. To undo this confusion is the purpose of Yoga.

 

Q: Does not the death undo this confusion?

 

M: In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not,

reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.

 

Q: But does one get reborn?

 

M: What was born must die. Only the unborn is deathless. Find what is

it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale refection is our

sense of 'I'.

 

Q: How am I to go about this finding out?

 

M: How do you go about finding anything? By keeping your mind and

heart on it. Interest there must be and steady remembrance. To

remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success. You

come to it through earnestness.

 

Q: Do you mean to say that mere wanting to find out is enough?

Surely, both qualification and opportunities are needed?

 

M: These will come with earnestness. What is supremely important is to

be free from contradiction; the goal and the way must not be on

different levels; life and light must not quarrel; behavior must not

betray belief. Call it honest, integrity, wholeness; you must not go

back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose

and honesty is pursuit will bring you to your goal.

 

Q: Tenacity and honest are endowments, surely! Not a trace of them I have

 

M: All will come are you go on. Take the first step first. All

blessings come from within. Turn within. 'I am'; you know. Be with it

all the time you can spare, until you revert to it spontaneously.

There is not simpler and easier way.