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

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
Mr. Ward Jackson: The lady’s difficulty is real and I sympathise
with her. She asks, “If we could see the Self within ourselves,
why should we have come all the way to see Him? We had been
thinking of Him so long and it is only right that we came here. Is
it then unnecessary to do so?”
M.: You have done well in having come. “Isvaro gururatmeti” (The
Self is the God and Guru). A person seeks happiness and learns
that God alone can make one happy. He prays to God and worships
Him. God hears his prayers, and responds by appearing in human
shape as a Master in order to speak the language of the devotee and
make him understand the Reality. The Master is thus God manifest
as human being. He gives out His experience so that the seeker
might also gain it. His experience is to abide as the Self. The Self
is within. God, Master and the Self are therefore seeming stages
in the Realisation of the Truth. You have doubts on reading books.
You have come here to have them cleared. That is only right.
Mrs. H. R.: I understand the Self to be the Master and must be sought
within. So I can do it where I live.
M.: The understanding has been theoretical. When it is put into
practice difficulties and doubts arise. If you can feel the presence
of the Master where you are, your doubts are readily overcome, for
the Master’s part consists in removing the doubts of the seeker.
The purpose of your visit is fulfilled if the doubts do not arise hereafter,
and you apply yourself steadily in the search for the Self.
D.: I understand it all along.
M.: Good. The objection is not to your conclusion but it is to your
doubts.
Mr. W. J.: When we read about it we read it intellectually. But it is all too
remote. When we see you in body we are brought nearer to Reality and
it gives us courage to bring our knowledge into our everyday life.
If one realised the Self and acted up to it in the West, one would
be locked up in a lunatic asylum. (Laughter.)
M.: You will be locking yourself in. Because the world is mad,
considers you mad. Where is the lunatic asylum if it is not within.
You will not be in it, but it will be in you. (Laughter).
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