Ramana Maharshi

The body is like an earthen pot, inert. Because it has no consciousness of I, and because daily in bodiless sleep we touch our real nature, the body is not I. Then who is this I? Where is this I?

In the heart cave of those that question thus, there shineth forth as I, himself, the Lord Shiva of Arunachala.

Who is born? It is only one who asks, Whence am I born? That is truly born in Brahman, the prime source. One indeed is born eternally. They are the law of saints. They are ever new.

Cast off the notion, this vile flesh am I, and seek the ceaseless bliss of self.

To seek the self while cherishing this perishing flesh is like trying to cross a stream by clinging to a crocodile.

the way of charity, penance, sacrifice, dharma, yoga and bhakti, and the goal of heaven, reality, peace, truth, grace, silence, stability, deathless death, knowledge,

renunciation, liberation, bliss. All this is only ceasing to think that the body is the self.

What is action or devotion or union or knowledge? It is to inquire whose is this action or indifference or separateness or ignorance.

Inquiring thus, the ego vanishes. To abide as a self, wherein these eight have never been, this is true existence.

not realizing that they themselves are moved by an energy not their own. Some fools are busy seeking miraculous powers. Their antics are like the boasting of a cripple who says to his friends, If you raise me to my feet, these enemies are nothing before me.

Since the stilling of the mind is true liberation and miraculous powers are unattainable without an act of the mind, how can those whose mind is set on such powers enter the bliss of liberation?

which is the ending of all activity of the mind.

While God sustains the burden of the world, the spurious ego assumes its burden, grimacing like an image on a tower, seeming to support it. If the traveler in a carriage, which can carry any weight, does not lay their luggage down, but carries it painfully on their head,

Whose is the fault?

Between the two paps, below the chest, above the stomach, there are six organs of various colors. Of these, one looking like a lily bud is the heart. At two digits distance to the right of the center,

Its mouth is closed. Within its cavity is seated a heavy darkness, filled with all desires. All the great nerves are centered there,

The home it is of breath, mind and light of knowledge. The Lord

whose home is the interior of the heart lotus, is extolled as lord of the cave. If by force of practice the feeling, I am that, I am the lord of the cave, becomes firmly established, as firmly as your present notion that you are the ego is established in the body,

And thus you stand forth as that lord of the cave. The illusion that you are the perishable body will vanish like darkness before the rising sun.

When Rama asked, Which is the great mirror in which we see these images of things? What is it that is called the heart of all the beings in the world? Vasishtha answered, When we reflect,