Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi Complete ... - BrahminVoice.org

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
5th January, 1936
Talk 128.
There were some French ladies and gentlemen and American as visitors
to the Asramam. They asked Sri Bhagavan several questions. Among
them, one was: “What is the message of the East to the West?”
M.: All go to the same goal.
To another question Sri Bhagavan said: “How do you say ‘I am’?
Do you take a light to find yourself? Or did you come to know it
on reading books? How?”
The questioner said: “By experience.”
M.: Yes. Experience is the word. Knowledge implies subject and
object. But experience is non-terminal, eternal.
6th January, 1936
Talk 129.
An elderly gentleman, formerly a co-worker with B. V. Narasimha Swami
and author of some Visishtadvaita work, visited the place for the first
time. He asked about rebirths, if it is possible for the linga sarira (subtle
body) to get dissolved and be reborn in two years after death.
M.: Yes. Surely. Not only can one be reborn, one may be twenty or forty
or even seventy years old in the new body though only two years after
death. Sri Bhagavan cited Lila’s story from Yoga Vasishta.
Sreyo hi jnanam abhyasat jnanat dhyanam,
dhyanat karmaphala tyagah.
Here jnana stands for knowledge without practice; abhyasa stands
for practice without knowledge; dhyana stands for practice with
knowledge.
“Knowledge without practice accompanying it is superior to
practice without knowledge. Practice with knowledge is superior
to knowledge without practice accompanying it. Karmaphala
tyagah Nishkama karma as of a Jnani - action without desire - is
superior to knowledge with practice.”
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