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

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
The village had a sacred tank in front of the temple, which was the
spot of the eddy created by the spear of Siva. Even now the waters in
the tank rise at the rate of about a foot every day for ten consecutive
days preceding the full moon in the Tamil month Masi (Maghasuddha
Pournami) and then gradually fall during the succeeding ten days.
This phenomenon can be observed every year. It is noted with wonder
by the young ones of the village. Pilgrims gather to bathe in those
waters on that occasion. That water is sulphurous for the silver jewels
of the bathers become dark after bathing in it. Sri Bhagavan said he
had noted it when He was a boy.
The village has the river on one side and a huge lake on the other
side. The bund of the lake is clayey and runs about three miles in all.
The lake is strangely enough twenty feet over the level of the village.
Even when it is over-full, the waters escape in other directions leaving
the village unaffected.
1st April, 1939
Talk 653.
Some teachers who attended the Teachers’ Guild meeting in the town
came on a visit to the hall. One of them asked Sri Bhagavan: “I seem
to be wandering in a forest because I do not find the way.”
M.: This idea of being in a forest must go. It is such ideas which are
at the root of the trouble.
D.: But I do not find the way.
M.: Where is the forest and where is the way unless they are in you?
You are as you are and yet you speak of a forest and ways.
D.: But I am obliged to move in society.
M.: Society is also an idea similar to that of the forest.
D.: I leave my home and go and mix in society.
M.: Who does it?
D.: The body moves and does all.
M.: Quite so. Now that you identify yourself with the body you feel
the trouble. The trouble is in your mind. You think that you are the
body or that you are the mind. But there are occasions when you
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