#michael james

This now is the time ! Now give The gift of life, pure bliss, my God, Ramana immaculate -

~ Sri Ramana Sannidhi Murai - Muruganar

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🔆 Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) taught us that infinite and eternal happiness is our own real nature, and that the reason we are not aware of ourself as such is that we now mistake ourself to be a finite person consisting of body, life, mind, intellect and will, which is not what we actually are. Therefore in order to know and to be the perfect happiness that we always actually are, it is necessary for us to be aware of ourself as we actually are, and the means for this is for us to investigate ourself and thereby surrender the false ‘self’ (namely ego) that we now seem to be.

His teachings therefore represent the simple but extremely deep essence and practical implication of all of vēdānta, the philosophical conclusion of the Vēdas, particularly the non-dualistic interpretation of it called advaita (‘non-twoness’, meaning that what actually exists is ✨️‘ēkam ēva advitīyam’✨️, ✨️‘one only without a second’✨️. However, though his teachings are in perfect accord with the heart of advaita and vēdānta more generally, they are nevertheless a very fresh and original presentation of them, because he diagnosed very precisely the root cause of all our problems, namely ego; he clearly explained its nature like never before, and in doing so he clarified and emphasised the practical implication of the basic principles of vēdānta, namely that to achieve the removal of all suffering (duḥkha nivṛtti) and the attainment of happiness (sukha prāpti) we need to eradicate ego, and since ego is a false awareness of ourself (an awareness of ourself as something other than what we actually are), it can be eradicated only by our investigating who am I and thereby knowing ourself as we actually are.

When such is the case, is there any reason why we should not believe that the same will happen if we attend sufficiently carefully to our thoughts or anything else other than ourself? Yes, there is a reason, and it is that whereas the illusion of a snake is a primary illusion, in the sense that there is no other illusion that stands between it and the rope that it actually is, the illusion that anything other than ourself exists is not a primary illusion but only a secondary one.

The primary illusion in this case is only our illusion that we are this ego, because it is only when we experience ourself as this ego that we experience the illusion that other things (including all kinds of mental and physical phenomena, such as thoughts, feelings and external objects and events) exist.