THE BOOK WRITTEN AT THE BEHEST OF SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI (Part-III)

[Guest guest]

prof laxmi narain (prof_narain)

 

Source and courtesy: Sri Ramana Kendram, Hyderabad

This article was published in Sri Ramana Jyothi,

monthly magazine of the Kendram.

 

THE BOOK WRITTEN AT THE BEHEST OF SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI (Part-III)

 

 

The first part, which appeared in October, mentions how Sri Ramana

prompted Paul Brunton to write the book – The Secret Path. Some more

abstracts from the book are given below:

 

A TECHNIQUE OF SELF-ANALYSIS: Seated comfortably in a chair or

squatted on a rug, breathing quietly and evenly, close your eyes and

let your thoughts run over the question what you really are. One key

to success is to think very slowly. The wheel of the mind is to be

slowed down, unabling it to rush around from one thing to another.

 

First watch your own intellect in its working. Note how thoughts flow

one another in endless sequence. Then try to realize that there is

someone who thinks. Now ask: Who is this thinker? Who is this " I "

that sleeps and wakes up; that thinks and feels; that works and

speaks? What is in us that we call the " I " ? When a man begins to ask

himself what he is, he has taken the first step upon a path which

will end only when he has found the answer.

 

I am happy today. I was miserable yesterday. In all these, the sense

of " I am " always remain. To know oneself is to find that point of

consciousness from which the observations of the changing moods take

place. It is sad to find how man has lost his centrality - his

spiritual center of gravity - and this point usually remains

unnoticed.

 

Our thinking is married to the brain, but it is possible to

disconnect mind from the body. It is brought about for a specific

purpose by means of hypnotism and also through Yoga. Again, in deep

dreamless sleep, actions of the physical body and sense organs are at

a standstill, yet we emerge again with the " I " notion despite the

seeming " near-death " of the body.[The fact that we are not the body,

mind, and intellect alone, but something more becomes so clear when a

person dies. With every part of the physical body fully intact, we

say X or Y " has gone " . What has gone is the higher self that is,

atman, the Real Self ,which needs to discovered by us.]

 

Though man is one with the Higher Power, the fact remains that he

becomes oblivious of this vital truth. Unless he makes the effort, as

in regular meditations, or through frequent self-observation, to

detach himself increasingly from his external existence it is

unlikely that he will discover his divine consciousness, which is

one of the hardest task one can ever undertake.

 

We must dig with the drill of mind beneath the attraction of the

physical world, and try to find the eternal reality which it hides.

Then the secret of life , which has baffled the brilliant intellects

of illustrious men, will be discovered and become our joyful

possession. To be continued…