Ramana's Forty Verses on Reality

[Guest guest]

Most of what comes to us from Sri Ramana is in the form of recorded

dialogues. His answers to questions people put to him. Ramana Maharshi found

no new school of thought and yet enlivened the central and direct approach

to Self-Awareness. Unassuming and relaxed, he remained accessible to

everyone throughout his whole life. He usually referred to the classical

Hindu Vedic literature when appropriate but never implied that

Self-Realization was limited to a particular religion or a philosophy or a

school of learning. How could it be? When lines from poetry of various

English poets indicating mystical experience were read to him, he always

showed approval. What Sri Ramana said at the age of 20 differs little from

what he was saying at the age of 70. It was always the same. Various

Shankracharyas and some of the greatest Yogis of India sat at the feet of

Ramana Maharshi in the 53 or so years (from the age of 17 to 70) that the

Sage taught through silence and words. Here are verses 10-14 of a short poem

Sri Ramana wrote on the nature of Reality. The poem sparkles with stunning

clarity and beauty. I have been posting these verses on and

thought I should share.

 

 

 

10. Ordinary knowledge is always accompanied by ignorance, and ignorance by

knowledge; the only true Knowledge is that by which one knows the Self

through enquiring whose is the knowledge and ignorance.

 

 

11. Is it not, rather, ignorance to know all else without knowing oneself,

the knower? As soon as one knows the Self, which is the substratum of

knowledge and ignorance, knowledge and ignorance perish.

 

 

12. That alone is true Knowledge which is neither knowledge nor ignorance.

What is known is not true Knowledge. Since the Self shines with nothing else

to know or to make known, It alone is Knowledge. It is not a void.

 

 

13. The Self, which is Knowledge, is the only Reality. Knowledge of

multiplicity is false knowledge. This false knowledge, which is really

ignorance, cannot exist apart from the Self, which is Knowledge-Reality. The

variety of gold ornaments is unreal, since none of them can exist without

the gold of which they are all made.

 

 

14. If the first person, I, exists, then the second and third persons, you

and he, will also exist. By enquiring into the nature of the I, the I

perishes. With it 'you' and 'he' also perish. The resultant state, which

shines as Absolute Being, is one's own natural state, the Self.

 

 

 

The rest of the verses will be posted on a only as many people

are getting duplicate or triplicate copies.

 

Harsha