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

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
3rd May, 1938
The same lady continued: If the world is only a dream, how should
it be harmonised with the Eternal Reality?
M.: The harmony consists in the realisation of its inseparateness
from the Self.
D.: But a dream is fleeting and unreal. It is also contradicted by the
waking state.
M.: The waking experiences are similar.
D.: One lives fifty years and finds a continuity in the waking
experience which is absent in dreams.
M.: You go to sleep and dream a dream in which the experiences of
fifty years are condensed within the short duration of the dream, say
five minutes. There is also a continuity in the dream. Which is real
now? Is the period covering fifty years of your waking state real or
the short duration of five minutes of your dream? The standards of
time differ in the two states. That is all. There is no other difference
between the experiences.
D.: The spirit remains unaffected by the passing phenomena and by
the successive bodies of repeated births. How does each body get
the life to set it acting?
M.: The spirit is differentiated from matter and is full of life. The
body is animated by it.
D.: The realised being is then the spirit and unaware of the world.
M.: He sees the world but not as separate from the Self.
D.: If the world is full of pain why should he continue the
world-idea?
M.: Does the realised being tell you that the world is full of pain? It is the
other one who feels the pain and seeks the help of the wise saying that
the world is painful. Then the wise one explains from his experience that
if one withdraws within the Self there is an end of pain. The pain is felt
so long as the object is different from oneself. But when the Self is found
to be an undivided whole who and what is there to feel? The realised
mind is the Holy Spirit and the other mind is the home of the devil. For
the realised being this is the Kingdom of Heaven. “The Kingdom of
Heaven is within you.” That Kingdom is here and now.
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