Ramana Maharshi Quotes - Truth Revealed
 

"The Supreme Being, the one ultimate Cause of the universe, manifests Himself as many, which do not exist apart from Him."

TRUTH REVEALED is an original exposition of the Highest Truth by Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi. It is very short and available on Amazon.com.

https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Reveale.../dp/8188018732

For those of you unfamiliar with Ramana Maharshi, here is a link to his biography.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi

The above quote is the very first statement in this exposition with absolutely no preceding statements. For those familiar with non-duality, this is a very basic statement. For those unfamiliar with non-duality, it might seem like a curious place to begin this exposition. Without this basic statement, however, it would be difficult to understand some of the other quotes which I plan to include in this thread.

(I just started to re-read this book, and decided to post here as there are some very intriguing statements made here ... even for those who are well-informed in non-duality.)

"Any dispute regarding the nature of manifestation can arise only so long as there is the ego. To destroy the ego and BE as the Self, is the supreme method of attainment."

While some may quibble over the meaning of specific words (such as "ego", "attainment",etc.) used in this English version of Ramana Maharshi's exposition, I am taking it directly from the text published by Ramanasramam.

In other published dialogues between Ramana and visitors from the Judaic tradition, he has said that the entire Vedas of India can be summarized by two statements from the Jewish Bible.

"Be still and KNOW that I AM God." (Psalms 46:10)

"I am That I AM". (Exodus 3:14)

NOTE: I am aware that some scholars here may translate these passages from the Jewish Bible differently but I will defer to the English translations that are used in various books containing Ramana's talks/dialogues.

If we examine Advaita Vedanta broadly speaking it has two steps. Step 1 is discerning the real from the apparent, the limitless from the limited, formless from form. Step 2 is Realizing the latter does not exist apart from the prior.

Wave is water and nothing other than water through and through. Water is not wave. Remove the water and there's no wave. Remove the wave and there's still water. :wink:

"Since the one aim is to realize the Self by destroying the ego, to engageoneself in verbal wrangling about the nature of the world is but vain."

NOTE: Sufis often prefer the verbiage "resurrection into God (consciousness)" instead of "destroying the ego" and so do I. However, in discussing this, I will stick to the exact wording in the text provided by the Ramana ashram.

"The world is really synonymous with the mind".

:smile:

NOTE: The Nobel Prize winning quantum physicist Arthur Eddington once wrote that the Universe is of the nature of "mind stuff" (for lack of better verbiage). This statement is not as far-fetched as it initially sounds.

QUOTE 3 EXCERPT:


Your point is well taken, of course. :thumbsup:

Note that I intentionally left out the "real" versus "unreal" part of your post, but I would like to get into that at some point.

"Worship under name and form is only a means to realize one's absolute identity with the Nameless and the Formless."

ego
 

Here by ego he means more ego that is discriminatory, self promoting , egoistic, egotist , self aggrandizing and many times de-meaning others experiences . For such an ego word 'destroy' is the right goal.

However in ego has another useful and practical function ie to guide actions by showing borders of self and others . It facilitates the interactions among people. For such an ego 'destroying' is not only impossible and but also is undesirable.

So best is to sublimate an ego which conversion of ego rather than destroying of ego . I feel Raman very well knew yet he used words 'destroy' with explicit knowledge and awareness of ego in these days. And I dont feel his experience may still have accommodated this fact very well.

Part confusion of this arises because many a place word "Nirvan"/emptiness/zeroness etc is used for enlightenment which means to sort of stop existing - to kill ego. These words point to emptiness / zeroness of material world and it points really to fullness/wholeness/everythingness/ brahma nirvan (merging with brahman) of the spiritual world/universe .

So "Brahma Satya Jagat Mithya" points to this permanent ever expanding spiritual world/universe (Brahma satya) and to fleeting / limiting /shrinking nature of material world/universe (Jagat mithya) .

Though choice of words may not have an impact on experiences of stlwarts like ramana , laymen need to visualize this better in order to understand /practice it.

QUOTE 8 EXCERPT:



Your point is very well taken.

As I mentioned above in a previous post, I prefer the Sufi expression "resurrection into God (consciousness)" instead of "destroying the ego" for precisely the reasons that you gave in your post. :thumbsup:

Ramana: "The Self being Knowledge Absolute, it is neither knowing nor is it not knowing. It can never be nescience."