Book of Ramana Maharshi: Spiritual Teachings
Is God personal?
Yes, He is always the first person, the I, ever standing before you. Because you give precedence to worldly things, God appears to have receded to the background.
If you give up all else and seek Him alone, He alone will remain as the I, the Self.
(Maharshi’s Gospel, 55).
Book: Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words
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.
(Ramana Maharshi, FVR, verse 30.)
… Thoughts alone constitute the mind; and for all thoughts the base or source is the “I” thought. “I” is the mind. If we go inward questing for the source of the “I,” the “I” topples down. This is the jnana enquiry.
Where the “i” disappears the “I-I” shines, spontaneously. This is Infinite, the All (Purnam).
(Ramana Maharshi, GFB, chapter 4.)
The ‘I’ casts off the illusion of ‘I’ and yet remains as ‘I’. Such is the paradox of Self-Realisation..
Book of Ramana Maharshi: Spiritual Teachings
“Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. ‘I am that I am’ sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that ‘I am so and so’. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?”.
Book: Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words
Surrender once for all and be done with the desire. So long as the sense of doership is retained there is the desire. That is also personality. If this goes the Self is found to shine forth pure. The sense of doership is the bondage and not the actions themselves.
‘Be still and know that I am God’.
Here stillness is total surrender without a vestige of individuality..
Stillness will prevail and there will be no agitation of mind.
Agitation of mind is the cause of desire, the sense of doership and personality. If that is stopped there is quiet. There ‘knowing’ means ‘being’…
