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

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
Free-will and Destiny last as long as the body lasts. But wisdom (jnana)
transcends both. The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. Should
anything happen, it happens as the result of one’s past actions, of divine
will and of other factors.
Talk 194.
Mr. Subba Rao, a visitor from Amalapuram, asked: How to control
the mind?
M.: Get hold of the mind.
D.: How?
M.: Mind is intangible. In fact, it does not exist. The surest way of
control is to seek it. Then its activities cease.
6th June, 1936
Talk 195.
Mr. Jharka, a gentleman from the University of Benares, holding the
M.A. and the M.Sc. degrees, said that he was stricken with grief due
to bereavement of wife and children. He sought peace of mind and
asked how to get it.
M.: It is in the mind that birth and death, pleasure and pain, in short the
world and ego exist. If the mind is destroyed all these are destroyed
too. Note that it should be annihilated, not just made latent. For
the mind is dormant in sleep. It does not know anything. Still, on
waking up, you are as you were before. There is no end of grief.
But if the mind be destroyed the grief will have no background
and will disappear along with the mind.
D.: How to destroy the mind?
M.: Seek the mind. On being sought, it will disappear.
D.: I do not understand.
M.: The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts arise because
there is the thinker. The thinker is the ego. The ego, if sought, will
vanish automatically. The ego and the mind are the same. The ego
is the root-thought from which all other thoughts arise.
D.: How to seek the mind?
165