Ramana Maharshi: Trending quotes

“All that is required to realise the Self is to “Be Still.”

“If you go on working with the light available, you will meet your Master, as he himself will be seeking you.”

“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.”

“Your own Self-realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”

“"Knowledge itself is 'I.'”

“Ishta-devata and Guru are aids - very powerful aids on this path. But an aid to be effective requires your effort also. Your effort is a sine qua non.”

“Reality is simply the loss of ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself.”

“If one watches whence the notion ‘I’ arises, the mind gets absorbed there; that is tapas. When a mantra is repeated, if one watches whence that mantra sound arises, the mind gets absorbed there; that is tapas.”

“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 summarized in Be Still.”

“By happy fraternity amongst themselves, the embodied beings get the supreme peace. Then all this earth shines like one house. When the men, the embodied beings treat each other with equal respect and have good brotherly feelings amongst themselves, great peace and harmony abound. Then all this earth shines like one house. The whole world shines like the one dwelling house of the entire human family.”

“What message is needed when heart speaks to heart?”

“That which rises in this body as 'I' is the mind. If one enquires 'In which place in the body does the thought 'I' rise first?', it will be known to be in the heart [spiritual heart is 'two digits to the right from the centre of the chest']. Even if one incessantly thinks 'I', 'I', it will lead to that place (Self)'.”

“16. Without seeing the origin of light, the true form of one's Self, the ordinary man sees by the mind different things and is deluded.”

“15. As in the night when the sun is not present, one sees the light in the moon, the man who is not present in the heart, sees merely the mind.”

“12. The world is none other than the mind. The mind is none other than the heart. Therefore the entire story finishes in the heart.”

“It is false to speak of realization. What is there to realize? The real is as it is always. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now. Similarly we have simply to throw out all the age-long sanskaras which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self will shine alone.”

“Let knowledge be guessed by the sign of equality to all beings.”

“The place where even the slightest trace of the 'I' does not exist, alone is Self.”

“The Self is only one. Do you feel hurt if you blame yourself or scorn yourself for your errors? If you hold the Self there is no second person to scorn you. When you see the world you have lost hold of the Self. On the contrary, hold the Self and the world will not appear.”