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

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
are for ‘I-thought’ only. Hold it; it will disappear as a phantom.
What remains over is the real ‘I’. That is the Self. ‘I am Brahman’
is an aid to concentration. It keeps off other thoughts. That one
thought alone persists. See whose is that thought. It will be found
to be from ‘I’. Wherefrom is the ‘I’ thought? Probe into it. The ‘Ithought’
will vanish. The Supreme Self will shine forth of itself.
No further effort is needed.
When the one Real ‘I’ remains alone, it will not be saying; “I am
Brahman”. Does a man go on repeating “I am a man”? Unless
he is challenged, why should he declare himself a man? Does
anyone mistake oneself for a brute, that he should say “No. I am
not a brute; I am a man”? Similarly, Brahman or ‘I’ being alone,
there is no one there to challenge it and so there is no need to be
repeating “I am Brahman”.
17th June, 1936
Talk 203.
Mr. Varma, Financial Secretary of the Posts and Telegraphs
Department, Delhi: He has read Paul Brunton’s Search in Secret India
and The Secret Path. He lost his wife with whom he had led a happy
life for eleven or twelve years. In his grief he seeks solace. He does
not find solace in reading books: wants to tear them up. He does not
intend to ask questions. He simply wants to sit here and derive what
solace he can in the presence of Maharshi.
Maharshi, as if in a train of thoughts, spoke now and then to the
following effect:
It is said, “The wife is one-half of the body”. So her death is very painful.
This pain is however due to one’s outlook being physical; it disappears
if the outlook is that of the Self. The Brahadaranyaka Upanishad says,
“The wife is dear because of the love of the Self”. If the wife and others
are identified with the Self, how then will pain arise? Nevertheless
such disasters shake the mind of philosophers also.
We are happy in deep sleep. We remain then as the pure Self. The same
we are just now too. In such sleep there was neither the wife nor others
nor even ‘I’. Now they become apparent and give rise to pleasure
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