Hindu Gurus

"The Ultimate Truth is called God. This one can realize in the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. A circle can have only one centre but it can have numerous radii. The centre can be compared to God and the radii to religions. So, no one sect, no one religion or book can make an absolute claim of It. He who works for It gets It."

"Every discord is a harmony not understood. Happiness is a disease, and pain, a medicine."

"Truth alone ultimately triumphs and survives. Untruth and swindling prosper like fire in loose grass but this prosperity is only short-lived. Truth prevails slowly but steadily like fire in a huge log of wood and it is not easily extinguished. Human life is very precious but it is very precarious, too. Death is inevitable."

"The one Reality takes manifold names and forms as a result of human ignorance. It is one and the same Thing that a Bhakta calls God, a Jnani calls Brahman, a Shakta calls Shakti, an Atheist calls Nature, a Scientist calls Force or Energy, a Christian calls Father in Heaven, a Mussulman calls Allah, some others call Infinity or Truth and a Vedantin calls Atman or Self. Whatever different names there may be, the fact remains that the Thing is one and the same. The difference is only in names. The Absolute Thing, which is beyond name and form, is birthless, growthless, decayless, deathless, sexless, All-pervading, All-knowing, All-blissful, without beginning, without end, changeless, beyond time, space and causation. The One Thing or the Ocean of Consciousness by Itself is ever the same — One only without a second."

"Love is not lust. The two (love and lust) are poles apart. Love liberates while lust binds."

"Religion is another name for the realization of Truth. It consists in becoming and being one with the Supreme Being. Doctrines and dogmas are only details of a secondary nature."

"There are three kinds of fools in this world, fools proper, educated fools and rich fools. The world persists because of the folly of these fools."

"Thought of tomorrow is the cause of much worry and anxiety. Commentary:—The thought of tomorrow such as "Where shall I go? What shall I eat?" etc., brings about planning. This planning and such thoughts rob a man of his peace of mind and make him restless and uneasy. The best thing to do is to depend fully upon God and to avoid planning, i.e., not to live either in the things of the past or of the future and to be indifferent to the things of the present. Contentment alone can give a man peace of mind and happiness."

"There is an inborn tendency to be Free. Every being is struggling to be Free. No one wants bondage. No one wants misery. The very idea of disease and death is appalling to all. Still, a being thinks that it will be happy by sense-pleasures. Can these sense-pleasures make one happy? No. Any amount of sense-pleasures will not make one really happy. Sense-pleasures will bring momentary satisfaction and then make one unhappy. Then comes the question: Where does this real happiness lie? It lies in knowing the True Nature. To know your True Nature, you have to control your mind. In order to control your mind, you have to live a true life. You must be a man of good character. That is why all the Scriptures ask their followers to be good, kind, gentle, noble, charitable, truthful, etc. In fact, moral and ethical codes of good conduct are the starting points of all Religions. They start with moral and ethical codes and end with God-realization or Self-realization."

"Very often people do not seem to understand the difference between control and suppression of an emotion. Say, one has a strong desire to enjoy a certain thing but there is no possibility to fulfil that desire. Here the desire is suppressed. On the other hand a desire for a certain enjoyment comes. The man can easily fulfil that desire, but he knows that the desire is bad for his growth and he discriminates and decides not to have that low desire. Here, it is called control. Suppression is bad and to discriminate, decide and to control an emotion is very good and there is a great need for it in this so-called scientific age."

"The sex-energy is the greatest power of the mind and the body. This is the supreme strength in the human body, embodying all powers and assuming all forms. The mind and the body receive their strength and life from this sex-energy. Instead of allowing this Shakti or energy to become the gross seminal fluid, it is to be conserved, it is to be converted into a form of subtle energy called “Ojas” and thus made a source of spiritual life instead of the cause of physical death. With the extinction of sexual desires, the mind is released of its most powerful bond. Sex-energy moves towards two main directions, viz., one is downward and the other is upward. It takes the downward course in the form of gross sexual enjoyment; but when one tries to observe Brahmacharya (celibacy) in thought, word and deed, it takes the upward course. When the sex-energy always takes the downward course in a person, such a person becomes weak mentally and physically. From such a man or woman we cannot expect anything great and original. Sexual life dissipates the powers of the mind and the body."

"39. Bondage and Liberation are mere notions in the mind: they cease when he who is bound is inquired into and realized."

"I have a gorgeous photograph of him [Ramana Maharshi] in my house, and every time I walk past it, I look into his eyes and see the humour in them. I hear his lilting laugh that says, "Oh, come off it! I recognise you, Shiva. What funny clothes you're wearing today.""

"Certain teachings at the heart of Hinduism perhaps come closest to seeing this dysfunction as a form of collective mental illness. They call it maya, the veil of delusion. Ramana Maharshi, one of the greatest Indian sages, bluntly states: “The mind is maya.”"

"Sri Ramana is a true son of the Indian earth. He is genuine and, in addition to that, something quite phenomenal. In India he is the whitest spot in a white space. What we find in the life and teachings of Sri Ramana is the purest of India; with its breath of world-liberated and liberating humanity, it is a chant of millenniums..."

"As the years passed he became more and more famous. A community grew up around him, thousands of visitors flocked to see him and for the last twenty years of his life he was widely regarded as India's most popular and revered holy man. Some of these thousands were attracted by the peace they felt in his presence, others by the authoritative way in which he guided spiritual seekers and interpreted religious teachings, and some merely came to tell him their problems. Whatever their reasons for coming almost everyone who came into contact with him was impressed by his simplicity and his humbleness. He made himself available to visitors twenty-four hours a day by living and sleeping in a communal hall which was always accessible to everyone, and his only private possessions were a loin-cloth, a water-pot and a walking-stick. Although he was worshipped by thousands as a living God, he refused to allow anyone to treat him as a special person and he always refused to accept anything which could not be shared equally by everyone in his ashram. He shared in the communal work and for many years he rose at 3 a.m. in order to prepare food for the residents of the ashram. His sense of equality was legendary. When visitors came to see him - it made no difference whether they were VIPs, peasants or animals - they would all be treated with equal respect and consideration. (Introduction)"

"One of his earliest followers, impressed by the evident saintliness and wisdom of the young man, decided to rename him Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi - Bhagavan means Lord or God, Sri is an Indian honorific title, Ramana is a contraction of Venkataraman and Maharshi means `great seer' in Sanskrit. The name found favor with his other followers and it soon became the title by which he became known to the world. At this stage of his life Sri Ramana was speaking very little and so his teachings were transmitted in an unusual fashion. Instead of giving out verbal instructions he constantly emanated a silent force or power which stilled the minds of those who were attuned to it and occasionally even gave them a direct experience of the state that he himself was perpetually immersed in. In later years he became more willing to give out verbal teachings, but even then, the silent teachings were always available to those who were able to make good use of them. Throughout his life Sri Ramana insisted that this silent flow of power represented his teachings in their most direct and concentrated form. The importance he attached to this is indicated by his frequent statements to the effect that his verbal teachings were only given out to those who were unable to understand his silence."

"We shared his understanding that Maharaj-ji is not a person or our dead guru who was that body, but a state of being or presence of infinite awareness and unconditional love. If we have to put a name on it, which we don’t, it comes down to the equivalence made by Ramana Maharshi: that God, Guru, and Self are the same."

"The Self itself is God."

"The place where even the slightest trace of the 'I' does not exist, alone is Self."

"Knowledge itself is 'I'. The nature of (this) knowledge is existence-consciousness-bliss."

"If other thoughts rise, one should, without attempting to complete them, enquire, 'To whom did they arise?', it will be known 'To me'. If one then enquires 'Who am I?', the mind (power of attention) will turn back to its source. By repeatedly practising thus, the power of the mind to abide in its source increases."

"The mind will subside only by means of the enquiry 'Who am I?'. The thought 'Who am I?', destroying all other thoughts, will itself finally be destroyed like the stick used for stirring the funeral pyre."

"That which rises in this body as 'I' is the mind. If one enquires 'In which place in the body does the thought 'I' rise first?', it will be known to be in the heart [spiritual heart is 'two digits to the right from the centre of the chest']. Even if one incessantly thinks 'I', 'I', it will lead to that place (Self)'."

"What is called mind is a wondrous power existing in Self. It projects all thoughts. If we set aside all thoughts and see, there will be no such thing as mind remaining separate; therefore, thought itself is the form of the mind. Other than thoughts, there is no such thing as the mind."

"Of all the thoughts that rise in the mind, the thought 'I' is the first thought."

"The booklet Nan Yar? (Who am I?) elaborates on the "I" and Self-enquiry:"

"40. True Liberation has no form, and destroys the very ego which distinguishes between one kind of it and another."

"The spark of spiritual knowledge (jnana) will consume all creation. Since all the countless worlds are built upon the weak or non-existent foundation of the ego, they all disintegrate when the atom-bomb of knowledge falls on them."

"Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord. True surrender is the love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not even for the sake of salvation. In other words, complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self-enquiry or through bhakti marga."

"There are only two ways to conquer destiny or to be independent of it. One is to enquire whose this destiny is and discover that only the ego is bound by it and not the Self, and that the ego is non-existent. The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, realizing one's helplessness and saying all the time, 'Not I, but Thou, oh Lord', giving up all sense of 'I' and 'mine' and leaving it to the Lord to do what he likes with you."

"What message is needed when heart speaks to heart?"

"Seeing is only being. The state of Self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been. All that is needed is that you give up your realization of the not-true as true. All of us are regarding as real that which is not real. We have only to give up this practice on our part. Then we shall realize the Self as the Self; in other words, `Be the Self'. At one stage you will laugh at yourself for trying to discover the Self"

"The srutis [scriptures] speak of the Self as being the size of one's thumb, the tip of the hair, an electric spark, vast, subtler than the subtlest, etc. They have no foundation in fact. It is only being, but different from the real and the unreal; it is knowledge, but different from knowledge and ignorance. How can it be defined at all? It is simply being."

"Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom? The Self is ever-present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself ? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined."

"There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object."

"Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self."

"You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you."

"The radiance of consciousness-bliss, in the form of one awareness shining equally within and without, is the supreme and blissful primal reality. Its form is silence and it is declared by jnanis to be the final and unobstructable state of true knowledge [jnana]."

"The reality which shines fully, without misery and without a body, not only when the world is known but also when the world is not known, is your real form [nija-swarupa]."

"The reality which is the mere consciousness that remains when ignorance is destroyed along with knowledge of objects, alone is the Self [atma]. In that Brahma-swarupa [real form of Brahman], which is abundant Self-awareness, there is not the least ignorance."

"Reality must be always real. It is not with forms and names. That which underlies these is the reality. It underlies limitations, being itself limitless. It is not bound. It underlies unrealities, itself being real. Reality is that which is. It is as it is. It transcends speech. It is beyond the expressions `existence, non-existence', etc."

"The Self That in which all these worlds seem to exist steadily, that of which all these worlds are a possession, that from which all these worlds rise, that for which all these exist, that by which all these worlds come into existence and that which is indeed all these - that alone is the existing reality. Let us cherish that Self, which is the reality, in the Heart."

"In the Heart's cavity, the sole Brahman as an ever-persisting 'I' shines direct in the form of the Self. Into the Heart enter thyself, with mind in search or in deeper plunge. Or by restraint of life-movement be firmly poised in the Self."

"The Self is only one. Do you feel hurt if you blame yourself or scorn yourself for your errors? If you hold the Self there is no second person to scorn you. When you see the world you have lost hold of the Self. On the contrary, hold the Self and the world will not appear."

"Know Thyself. All else will be known to thee of its own accord. Discriminate between the undying, unchanging, all-pervading, infinite Atma and the ever-changing, phenomenal and perishable universe and body. Enquire, "Who am I?" Make the mind calm. Free yourself from all thoughts other than the simple thought of the Self or Atma. Dive deep into the chambers of your heart. Find out the real, infinite "I". Rest there peacefully for ever and become identical with the Supreme Self."

"The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man's real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man's search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end."

"Non-action is unceasing activity. The sage is characterized by eternal and intense activity. His stillness is like the apparent stillness of a fast rotating gyroscope."

"Seek the seeker."

"Silence is most powerful. Speech is always less powerful than silence."