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

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
so! The intensity of his earnestness is revealed by his illuminating
experiences here within four days of his arrival, people say.
With regard to the question concerning departed souls: so long as a man
identifies himself with his gross body the thought materialised as gross
manifestations must be real to him. Because his body is imagined to have
originated from another physical being, the other exists as truly as his
own body. Having existed here once it certainly survives death, because
the offspring is still here and feels he has been born of the other. Under
these circumstances the other world is true; and the departed souls are
benefited by prayers offered for them. On the other hand, considered in
a different way, the One Reality is the Self from whom has sprung the
ego which contains within itself the seeds of predispositions acquired in
previous births. The Self illumines the ego, the predispositions and also
the gross senses, whereupon the predispositions appear to the senses to
have materialised as the universe, and become perceptible to the ego, the
reflection of the Self. The ego identifies itself with the body, and so loses
sight of the Self and the result of this inadvertence is dark ignorance and
the misery of the present life. The fact of the ego rising from the Self and
forgetting it, is birth. So, it may be said that the birth of the individual has
killed the mother. The present desire to regain one’s mother is in reality
the desire to regain the Self, which is the same as realising one-self, or
the death of the ego; this is surrender unto the mother, so she may live
eternally.
Maharshi then read out from the Tamil version of Yoga Vasishta the
story of Deerga Tapasi who had two sons, Punya and Papa. After the
death of the parents the younger one mourned the loss and the elder
brother consoled him as follows: “Why do you mourn the loss of our
parents? I shall tell you where they are; they are only within ourselves
and are ourselves. For the life-current has passed through innumerable
incarnations, births and deaths, pleasures and pains, etc., just as the
water current in a river flows over rocks, pits, sands, elevations and
depressions on its way, but still the current is unaffected. Again the
pleasures and pains, births and deaths, are like undulations on the
surface of seeming water in the mirage of the ego. The only reality is
the Self from where the ego appears, and runs through thoughts which
manifest themselves as the universe and in which the mothers and
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