Bhagawan Sri Ramana Maharshi

[Guest guest]

Who Am I?

 

Q: We are advised to worship reality personified as God, or as the

Perfect Man. We are told not to attempt the worship of the Absolute,

as it is much too difficult for a brain centered consciousness.

M: Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate it? Truth is

loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all. It is

untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble. It always wants,

expects, demands. Being false, it is empty, always in search of

confirmation and reassurance. it is afraid of and avoids enquiry. It

identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary.

Whatever it gets, it loses and asks for more Therefore put no faith in

the conscious. Nothing you can see, feel, or think is so. Even sin and

virtue, merit and demerit are not what they appear. Usually the bad

and the good are matter of convention and custom and are shunned or

welcomed, according to how the words are used.

Q: Are there not good desires and bad, high desires and low?

M: All desires are bad, but some are worse then others. Pursue any

desire, it will always give you trouble.

Q: Even the desire to be free of desire?

M: Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not

set you free. Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See

yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.

Q: It takes time to know oneself.

M: How can time help you? Time is a succession of moments; each moment

appears out of nothing and disappears into nothing, never to reappear.

How can you build on something so fleeting?

Q: What is permanent?

M: Look to yourself for the permanent. Dive deep within and find what

is real in you.

Q: How to look for myself?

M: Whatever happens, it happens in you. What you do, the doer is in

you. Find the subject of all that you are as a person.

Q: What else can I be?

M: Find out. Even if I tell you that you are the witness, the silent

watcher, it will mean nothing to you, unless you find the way to your

own being.

Q: My question is: How to find the way to one's own being?

M: Give up all questions except one: 'Who am I'? After all, the only

fact you are sure of is that you are. The 'I am' is certain. The 'I am

this' is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.

Q: I have been doing nothing else for the last 60 years.

M: What is wrong with striving? Why look for results? Striving itself

is your real nature.

Q: Striving is painful.

M: You make it so by seeking results. Strive without seeking, struggle

without greed.

Q: Why has God made me as I am?

M: Which God are you talking about? What is God? Is he not the very

light by which you ask the question? 'I am' itself is God. The seeking

itself is God. In seeking your discover that you are neither the body

nor the mind and the love of the self in you is for the self in all.

The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me,

apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.

Q: How am I to find that love?

M: What do you love now? The 'I am'. give your heart and mind to it,

think of nothing else. This, when effortless and natural, is the

highest state. In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.

Q: Everybody wants to live, to exist. It is not self-love?

M: All desire has its source in the self. It is all a matter of

choosing the right desire.

Q: What is right and what is wrong varies with habit and custom.

Standards vary with societies.

M: Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites.

Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good.

As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace.

Q: I grant that sin and virtue are social norms.

But there may be also spiritual sins and virtues. I mean by spiritual

the absolute.

Is there such a thing as absolute sin or virtue?

M: Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or virtuous

person what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute there are

no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous not

sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative.

Q: Can I do away with such unnecessary notions?

M: Not as long as you think yourself to be a person.

Q: By what sign shall I know that I am beyond sin and virtue?

M: By being free form all desire and fear, from the very idea of being

a person. To nourish the ideas: I am a sinner'; 'I am not a sinner',

is sin.

To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The

impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. 'I am' is the

impersonal Being. 'I am this' is the person. The person is relative

and the pure Being - the fundamental. Q: Surely pure Being is not

unconscious, nor is it devoid of discrimination. How can it be beyond

sin and virtue?

Just tell us, please, has it intelligence or not?

M: All these questions arise from your believing yourself to be a

person. Go beyond the personal and see.

Q: What exactly do you mean when you ask me to stop being a person?

M: I do not ask you to stop being - that you cannot. I ask you only to

stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die

and so on. Just try, make a beginning - it is not as hard as you think.

Q: To think oneself as the personal is the sin of the impersonal.

M: Again the personal point of view! Why do you insist on polluting

the impersonal with your ideas of sin and virtue? It just does not

apply. The impersonal cannot be described in terms of good and bad. It

is Being - Wisdom - Love - all absolute. Where is the scope for sin

there? And virtue is only the opposite of sin.

Q: We talk of divine virtue.

M: True virtue is divine nature (swarupa) What you are really is your

virtue. But the opposite of sin which you call virtue is only

obedience born out of fear.

Q: Then why all the effort at being good?

M: It keeps you on the move. You go on and on till you find God. Then

God takes you into Himself - and makes you as He is.

Q: The same action is considered nature at one point and sin at

another. What makes it sinful?

M: Whatever you do against your better knowledge is sin.

Q: Knowledge depends on memory.

M: Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. It

all boils down to the mental or psychological link between the spirit

and matter. We may call the link psyche )antahkarana). When the psyche

is raw, undeveloped, quite primitive, it is subject to gross

illusions. As it grows in breadth and sensitivity, it becomes a

perfect link between pure matter and pure spirit and gives meaning to

matter and expression to spirit. There is the material world

(mahadakash) and the spiritual (paramakash) Between lies the universal

mind (chidakash), which is also the universal heart (premakash). It is

wise love that makes the two one.

Q: Some people are stupid, some are intelligent. The difference is in

the their psyche. The ripe ones had more experience behind them. Just

like a child grows by eating and drinking. sleeping and playing, so is

man's psyche shaped by all he thinks and feels and does, until it is

perfect enough to serve as a bridge between the spirit and the body.

As a bridge permits the traffic between the banks, so does the psyche

bring together the source and its expression.

M: Call it love, The bridge is love.

Q: Ultimately all is experience. Whatever we think, feel, do, is

experience. Behind it is the experiencer. So all we know consists of

these two, the experiencer and the experience. But the two are really

one - the experiencer alone is the experience. Still, the experiencer

takes the experience to be outside. In the same way the spirit and the

body are one; they only appear as two.

M: To the Spirit there is no second.

Q: To whom then does the second appear? It seems to me that duality is

an illusion induced by the imperfection of the psyche. When the psyche

is perfect, duality is no longer seen.

M: You have said it.

Q: Still I have to repeat my very simple question: who makes the

distinction between sin and virtue?

M: He who has a body, sins with the body, he who has a mind, sins with

the mind.

Q: Surely, the mere possession of mind and body does not compel to

sin. There must be a third factor at the root of it. I come back again

and again to the question of sin and virtue, because now-a-days young

people keep on saying that there is no such thing as sin, that one

need not be squeamish and should follow the moment's desire readily.

They will accept neither tradition nor authority and can be influenced

only by solid and honest thought. If they refrain from certain

actions, it is through fear of police rather than by conviction.

Undoubtedly there is something in what they say, for we can see how

our values change from place to place and time to time. For instance -

killing is war is a great virtue today and may be considered a

horrible crime in the next century.

M: A man who moves with the earth will necessarily experience day and

night. He who stay with the sun will know not darkness. My world is

not yours. As I see it, you are all on a stage performing. There is no

reality about your comings and goings. And you problems as so unreal!

Q: We may be sleep-walkers or subject to night mares. Is there nothing

you can do?

M: I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you - " Stop

hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up. "

Q: Why then don't we wake up?

M: You will. I shall not be thwarted. It may take some time. When you

begin to question your dream, awakening will not be far away.