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

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
Talk 341.
Mrs Jennings: Sri Bhagavan says that the state of Realisation is
freedom from the tyranny of thoughts. Have not the thoughts got
a place in the scheme of things - maybe on a lower plane?
M.: The thoughts arise from the ‘I-thought’ which in its turn arises
from the Self. Therefore the Self manifests as ‘I’ and other thoughts.
What does it matter if there are thoughts or no thoughts?
D.: Are good thoughts helpful for Realisation? Are they not authentic
via media, a lower rung of the ladder, to Realisation?
M.: Yes - this way. They keep off bad thoughts. They must themselves
disappear before the state of Realisation.
D.: But are not creative thoughts an aspect of Realisation and therefore
helpful?
M.: Helpful only in the way said before. They must all disappear in
the Self. Thoughts, good or bad, take you farther and not nearer,
because the Self is more intimate than thoughts. You are Self,
whereas the thoughts are alien to the Self.
D.: So the Self finally absorbs its own creation which had helped its
Realisation. Whereas civilisation wrongly worships and so separates
and ‘short-circuits’ its own creations which had helped its advance.
M.: Are you not distinct from thoughts? Do you not exist without
them? But can the thoughts exist without you?
D.: Is civilisation generally, slowly but surely, advancing in the right
direction towards this Self-Realisation?
M.: Civilisation is in the order of things. It will finally resolve itself
- as all others - in the Realisation of the Self.
D.: Is a fine type of primitive man nearer to Realisation than a civilised
man governed by intellect and thought?
M.: A realised man may look a savage, but a savage is not a realised
man.
D.: Is it right to think that all that happens to us are God’s ordainment,
and therefore only good?
M.: Of course it is. Yet all others and God are not apart from the Self.
How can thoughts of them arise when you remain as the Self?
321