Forty Verses on Reality By Sri Ramana Maharshi - Verses 21-30

[Guest guest]

21. What is the Truth of the scriptures which declare that if one sees the

Self one sees God? How can one see one's Self? If, since one is a single

being, one cannot see one's Self, how can one see God? Only by becoming a

prey to Him.

 

22. The Divine gives light to the mind and shines within it. Except by

turning the mind inward and fixing it in the Divine, there is no other way

to know Him through the mind.

 

23. The body does not say 'I'. No one will argue that even in deep sleep the

'I' ceases to exist. Once the 'I' emerges, all else emerges. With a keen

mind enquire whence this 'I' emerges.

 

24. This inert body does not say 'I'. Reality-Consciousness does not emerge.

Between the two, and limited to the measure of the body, something emerges

as 'I'. It is this that is known as Chit-jada-granthi (the knot between the

Conscious and the inert), and also as bondage, soul, subtle-body, ego,

samsara, mind, and so forth.

 

25. It. comes into being equipped with a form, and as long as it retains a

form it endures. Having a form, it feeds and grows big. But if you

investigate it this evil spirit, which has no form of its own, relinquishes

its grip on form and takes to flight.

 

26. If the ego is, everything else also is. If the ego is not, nothing else

is. Indeed, the ego is all. Therefore the enquiry as to what this ego is, is

the only way of giving up everything.

 

27. The State of non-emergence of 'I' is the state of being THAT. Without

questing for that State of the non-emergence of 'I' and attaining It, how

can one accomplish one's own extinction, from which the 'I' does not revive?

Without that attainment how is it possible to abide in one's true State,

where one is THAT?

 

28. Just as a man would dive in order to get something that had fallen into

the water, so one should dive into oneself, with a keen one-pointed mind,

controlling speech and breath, and find the place whence the 'I' originates.

 

29. The only enquiry leading to Self-realization is seeking the Source of

the 'I' with in-turned mind and without uttering the word 'I'. Meditation on

'I am not this; I am That' may be an aid to the enquiry but it cannot be the

enquiry.

 

30. If one enquires 'Who am I?' within the mind, the individual 'I' falls

down abashed as soon as one reaches the Heart and immediately Reality

manifests itself spontaneously as 'I-I'. Although it reveals itself as 'I',

it is not the ego but the Perfect Being, the Absolute Self.

 

*Source:*

http://www.realization.org/page/namedoc0/40_verses/40_verses_3.htm

 

.... To Be Continued

 

--

Om namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

Prasanth Jalasutram