Ramana Maharshi: In His Words

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.

Ramana Maharshi

Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.

Ramana Maharshi

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. ‘I am that I am’ sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that ‘I am so and so’. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?

Ramana Maharshi

Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.

Ramana Maharshi

Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.

Ramana Maharshi

Have faith in God and in yourself; that will cure all. Hope for the best, expect the best, toil for the best and everything will come right for you in the end.

Ramana Maharshi
There is neither creation nor destruction,
neither destiny nor free will, neither
path nor achievement.

This is the final truth.

Ramana Maharshi, Sayings of Sri Ramana Maharshi

There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present.

Ramana Maharshi

Aim high, aim at the highest, and all lower aims are thereby achieved. It is looking below on the stormy sea of differences that makes you sink. Look up, beyond these and see the One Glorious Real, and you are saved.

Ramana Maharshi

If the mind falls asleep, awaken it. Then if it starts wandering, make it quiet. If you reach the state where there is neither sleep nor movement of mind, stay still in that, the natural (real) state.

Ramana Maharshi, The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi

Realisation is not acquisition of anything new nor is it a new faculty. It is only removal of all camouflage

Ramana Maharshi

If you go on working with the light available, you will meet your Master, as he himself will be seeking you.

Ramana Maharshi

What is illusion?

M.: To whom is the illusion? Find it out. Then illusion will vanish.
Generally people want to know about illusion and do not examine
to whom it is. It is foolish. Illusion is outside and unknown. But
the seeker is considered to be known and is inside. Find out what
is immediate, intimate, instead of trying to find out what is distant
and unknown.

Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Ramana Maharshi: On Realizing Abiding Peace and Happiness

Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality Whatever you
think it is, it looks like that. If you call it time, it is time. If you
call it existence, it is existence, and so on. After calling it time, you
divide it into days and nights, months, years, hours, minutes, etc.

Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge. But some of these
rules and discipline are good for beginners.

Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Ramana Maharshi: On Realizing Abiding Peace and Happiness

The pure mind is itself Brahman; it therefore follows that Brahman is not other than the mind of the sage.

Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Ramana Maharshi: On Realizing Abiding Peace and Happiness

Know that the eradication of the identification with the body is charity, spiritual austerity and ritual sacrifice; it is virtue, divine union and devotion; it is heaven, wealth, peace and truth; it is grace; it is the state of divine silence; it is the deathless death; it is jnana, renunciation, final liberation and bliss.

Ramana Maharshi

All that is required to realise the Self is to “Be Still.

Ramana Maharshi

It will come all right in the end.

Ramana Maharshi

Remain still, with the conviction that the Self shines as everything yet nothing, within, without, and everywhere.

Ramana Maharshi

All are gurus to us, the wicked by their evil deeds say ‘do not come near me’. the good are always good, therefore all are like gurus to us.

Ramana Maharshi

No one succeeds without effort… Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance.

Ramana Maharshi

The explorers seek happiness in finding curiosities, discovering new lands and undergoing risks in adventures. They are thrilling. But where is pleasure found? Only within. Pleasure is not to be sought in the external world.

Ramana Maharshi

There is nothing like ‘within’ or ‘without.’ Both mean either the same thing or nothing.

Ramana Maharshi

If you hold this feeling of ‘I’ long enough and strongly enough, the false ‘I’ will vanish leaving only the unbroken awareness of
the real, immanent ‘I’, consciousness itself

Ramana Maharshi

Eventually, all that one has learnt will have to be forgotten.

Ramana Maharshi

You must achieve liberation during your life time.

Even if you fail to do it during your lifetime, you must think of god at least at the time of death, since one becomes what he thinks of  at the time of death. But unless all your life you have been thinking of God, unless you have accustomed yourself to dhyana of ‘God always during life, it would not at all be possible for you think of God at the time of death.

Ramana Maharshi

Mind your business. Take care of what you came here for. Find the ‘I’ first and you may afterwards speak of other matters.

Ramana Maharshi

Your concentration must come as easily as the breath. Fix yourself on one thing and try to hold onto it. All will come right. Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts. The dissipated mind is a sign of its weakness. By constant meditation it gains strength.

Ramana Maharshi, The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words

The only useful purpose of the present birth is to turn within and realize the Self.

Ramana Maharshi

One of two things must be done. Either surrender because you admit your inability and require a higher power to help you, or investigate the cause of misery by going to the source and merging into the Self. Either way you will be free from misery. God never forsakes one who has surrendered.

Ramana Maharshi

Come to our Workshop at the Unitarian Universalist Church 8/22–8/23/15–based on the teachings of Ramana Maharshi