Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

ADDITION 1

Thanks Eric The Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi are very nice at times. I will keep adding to this post rather than make numerous posts on it. I also have 2 more of his books to follow this one.

On Life being illusion and killing animals...

"To whom is illusion? Find that out! In fact everyone is a “killer of the Self” (atmahan) every moment of his life."


That is so brilliant!, the concept being that all the time you operate as "I" you have the true self chained up in a dungeon beneath your house. Acting as "I" you smother the true self.

"For a realised being the Self alone is the Reality, and actions are only phenomenal, not affecting the Self. Even when he acts he has no sense of being an agent. His actions are only involuntary and he remains a witness to them without any attachment."

Powerful and brilliant stuff!

I'll add to this post in drabs..




ADDITION 2

Inferred not directly quoted: (meaning I'm reading a whole load of his words and creating a paragraph)

The I can only be that beyond sleep and wake, life and death, beginning and end. The I must be before consciousness or unconsciousness, before universe, before all that can be consigned and before consignee, before before, after after, beyond so far as to be eternally present, etc etc.. you get the point.



ADDITION 3

Inferred not directly quoted:

The world seems like this when you are awake, it seems another way when you are asleep, both are correct in that level of awareness, this world where we are awake is no more real than the world seen when asleep. The same information through different levels of awareness is rendered differently.

So too the drug states. None are more or less. None are reality. Reality transcends them all.



ADDITION 4

Paraphrasing a lot to save posting huge chunks of text:

The world and all manifestations are changing so have no reality. Illusion if you will. Moving beyond what you deem to be I, what you deem to be world, what you deem to be infinite, you reach truth, the ever present, unchanging -- Then seeing all that you had previously discounted (as unreal) you see it now as part of this one true self, and so real.

Then nowhere you look can be not Tao.

Also told by the Mountains, not mountains, mountains story of Buddhism.



ADDITION 5

Paraphrasing again:

Truth must be ever present so can not be obtained. That which can be obtained is of no use as it can also be lost.