Ramana Maharshi

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

God, soul and world are the one Reality, which is the Self

An impersonal AbsoluteStated explicitly

Ramana Maharshi answers from Advaita. In the Forty Verses on Reality (Ulladu Narpadu) he notes that all doctrines start from three realities — world, soul and God — and states that it is the one Reality that appears as the three; to dispute whether they are three or one while the ego lasts is futile. That Reality is the Self, pure formless consciousness. Ramana does not deny God: in his conversations he admits Ishvara as long as there is a sense of individuality, and recommends surrender to God as a path as valid as enquiry. But a separate God exists only for one who believes himself separate; when the ego dissolves, God, the Self and the Absolute are the same. His practical teaching is not to debate God's existence but to ask who it is that asks.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

Asking «Who am I?» dissolves the ego and reveals the Self

The Self is the AbsoluteStated explicitly

The question «Who am I?» is the core of Ramana Maharshi's teaching and gives its title to his best-known text, Nan Yar?, compiled from answers he gave in the 1900s. There he rules out, one by one, the body, the senses, the breath and the mind: none of these is the self. The ego is the «I»-thought, the first of all thoughts, which arises with the body and on which the others depend; if its source is sought, it vanishes. What remains is not nothingness but the Self (atman), pure consciousness identical with the Absolute, whose nature is happiness. Ramana teaches holding attention on that sense of «I» until it dissolves into its source. According to his biographers, he himself awoke to this understanding at sixteen, after an experience of his own death.

Why do we suffer?

Happiness is the Self's nature; we suffer by taking ourselves for the body

Ignorance of what we areStated explicitly

Ramana Maharshi answers in Nan Yar? that happiness is the very nature of the Self, and that when a desired object is obtained and one feels happy, what happens is that the mind turns for a moment towards its source and tastes that happiness, which was never in the object. Suffering appears when the mind goes out towards the world and identifies with the body: the thought «I am this body» is the root of all others and of all sorrows. In his conversations he insists that problems exist for the ego, and that asking who suffers undoes the one who suffers. He does not deny physical pain, which he himself endured with cancer in his last years, but distinguishes between the body's pain and identification with it. The remedy is to know what one is.

What happens after death?

The body dies; the Self that knew it was never born and never dies

What I am is never born and never diesStated explicitly

Ramana Maharshi linked his awakening to an experience of death. According to the account he himself gave, at sixteen, in Madurai, he was seized by a sudden fear of dying; he lay down like a corpse, held his breath and asked what it was that died: the body would be inert, but the «I» that knew this remained present and was untouched by death. All his later teaching develops that insight. In the conversations recorded in Talks he distinguishes the body, which is born and dies, from the Self, which is pure consciousness without beginning or end. To those who asked about rebirth he replied that they should first find out who is born: as long as identification with the body persists there are births and deaths; for one who knows the Self, the question disappears. When his disciples lamented his final illness, he told them he was not going anywhere.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

The enquiry «Who am I?» dissolves the false self; surrender is the other way

Through direct knowledgeStated explicitly

For Ramana Maharshi liberation is not something acquired, because the Self is already what one is: the only thing to remove is the ignorance that veils it, the identification with the thought «I» that takes itself to be the body. The principal means, set out in Who Am I? (Nan Yar), is enquiry: for each thought, ask to whom it arises and trace the sense of «I» back to its source until it dissolves in the Self. Ramana admitted a second, equally valid path, total surrender to God or the guru, because both lead to the disappearance of the ego. He regarded action, ritual devotion or breath control as preparatory aids, not causes of liberation.

Is a teacher necessary?

God, guru and Self are not different: the true teacher is within

The teacher is withinStated explicitly

Ramana Maharshi attained realisation at sixteen without a human teacher, and never gave formal initiation or presented himself as the guru of an organisation. His teaching, recorded in Who Am I? and in Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, holds that God, the guru and the Self are essentially the same: the true teacher is the Self dwelling in the heart. The outer guru fulfils a function, pushing the mind inward while the inner Self draws it, but his grace does not act without the disciple's effort. Ramana did not deny the usefulness of a human teacher for most people; he denied that it is something other than the Self to which it points.

Is the world real?

The world is unreal as a separate object and real as the Self

Appearance over the one realityStated explicitly

Ramana Maharshi takes up the Advaita thesis that only the Self is real, but formulates it from experience rather than speculation. In Who Am I? he explains that the world appears when the thought «I» arises and disappears in deep sleep, like the snake imagined in a rope: it cannot be attributed a reality independent of the perceiver. That is why he advised not getting lost in debates about whether the world is real, but finding out who sees it. In Forty Verses on Reality and in the conversations recorded by his disciples he qualifies that, for one who knows the Self, the world is not unreal: it is the Self itself, perceived without the division between subject and object.

What is love?

The Self is love; full devotion and knowledge are the same

What appears when the self ceasesInferred from their doctrine

Ramana Maharshi does not separate love from knowledge of the Self. To those who asked him about devotion (bhakti) he replied that supreme devotion and knowledge (jñāna) are one and the same: to love God fully is to surrender the ego to him, and what remains when the ego is surrendered is the Self. What everyone loves in everything, he said, is their own happiness, and happiness is the nature of the Self; so love of others, understood deeply, is love of the Self present in all. This love is not produced by emotional effort: it appears when the question «who am I?» dissolves identification with body and mind. Ramana nevertheless cultivated and encouraged devotion: his hymns to Arunachala, such as the Akshara Mana Malai, are poems of love and surrender to the hill he revered as Shiva.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

What is destined will happen; the only freedom is not being the doer

There is no doerStated explicitly

Ramana holds that what the body is to live through was fixed by *prarabdha karma*, the karma that has already begun to bear fruit. In the note he wrote to his mother in 1898, when she came to fetch him at Tiruvannamalai, he states that what is destined to happen will happen however one tries to prevent it, and that the best course is to remain silent. In *Upadesa Saram* (vv. 1–2) he recalls that karma bears fruit by the Lord's ordinance and that action by itself is insentient. Where, then, is freedom? According to the conversations recorded in *Talks*, there are only two ways out: to enquire who it is that believes he has free will —and discover that it does not exist as a separate entity— or to surrender completely to God. Both dissolve the idea of a doer.

Why meditate or pray?

Asking «who am I?» until the «I»-thought dissolves in its source

Returning to the source of the IStated explicitly

Ramana is the reference for this key. In *Who Am I?* (*Nan Yar*), his written answers of around 1901-1902 to Sivaprakasam Pillai, he explains that of all thoughts the first is the «I»-thought, and all the others depend on it. The practice is to ask, each time a thought arises, to whom it occurs; the answer is «to me», and then one enquires who that I is. Thus the mind turns towards its source and eventually dissolves in the Self, which is not an object but what has always been present. Ramana also accepts complete surrender to God as an equivalent path, but holds that mantra repetition or breath control only quiet the mind temporarily.

Can reason know the ultimate?

The mind does not know the Self: it dissolves into it

The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

For Ramana the mind is not an instrument able to know the Self, because the mind itself arises from the Self as the «I»-thought and veils it. In *Who Am I?* he explains that the mind is nothing but a bundle of thoughts and that, when its origin is sought, it vanishes; what remains is the Self, which is not an object of knowledge but knowledge itself. In *Ulladu Narpadu* (*Forty Verses on Reality*) he adds that all arguments over whether the world is real or illusory, one or many, belong to the ego. He did not scorn scripture, which he could quote precisely, but considered it useful only to turn one towards enquiry: endless reading, he said, is useless unless one seeks who reads.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

True renunciation is of the ego, not of home or work

Contemplation in actionStated explicitly

Ramana Maharshi's life looks like an example of withdrawal: he came to Arunachala at sixteen, spent years in temples and caves on the hill and never again left Tiruvannamalai. His teaching, however, does not require anyone to do the same. In the conversations recorded in Talks, to those who wished to abandon family and work to devote themselves to the search he replied that true renunciation does not consist in leaving external things but in giving up the sense of being the doer; the ego that goes to the forest takes the problem along with it. One can work and live in the world with attention on the Self, and then actions happen without attachment. Asked how to help the world, he held that one who knows himself helps the world more than through any activity, and that the world is not outside the Self.

Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu · India

Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai

Sri Ramanasramam

Sri Ramanasramam is the ashram that grew around Ramana Maharshi at the foot of Arunachala, the sacred hill of Tiruvannamalai, where he lived until his death in 1950. Today it preserves his samadhi shrine, the old hall where he received visitors and his mother's shrine, and keeps the daily chanting and routine. It does not run courses or guided retreats: the ashram makes itself available as a simple home for anyone who wishes to sit in silence and practise the enquiry Who am I. It provides rooms and South Indian meals to visitors from all over the world.

Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu · India

Giri pradakshina: walking around Arunachala

Sri Ramanasramam (información) · Arulmigu Arunachaleswarar Temple

Giri pradakshina is the walking circuit of about fourteen kilometres around Arunachala, the hill Ramana Maharshi regarded as the visible form of the Self. It is walked clockwise, keeping the mountain on one's right, past the temples, tanks and lingams that mark the route. Ramana recommended it to everyone: go round the hill once and you will see that it attracts you, he told one devotee, and to the elderly or unwell he simply said they could go slowly. Sri Ramanasramam explains the meaning of the practice on its website, along with the places on the path connected to the teacher.

Jamaica (Queens), Nueva York · Bridgetown, Nueva Escocia · Estados Unidos / Canadá

Arunachala Ashrama (New York and Nova Scotia)

Arunachala Ashrama – Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi Center

Arunachala Ashrama is the oldest centre devoted to Ramana Maharshi in North America, with a house in the New York borough of Queens and another in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. It holds satsangs, chanting and readings from the teacher's works, and marks occasions such as his Jayanthi or birth anniversary, some of them livestreamed. It also distributes books and materials connected with Sri Ramanasramam. It does not present itself as a centre for guided retreats, but as a simple space of devotion and study for anyone who wants to approach the teaching of self-enquiry without travelling to India.