Ramana Maharshi

When one has learned to love the company of sages, wherefore all these rules of discipline? When a pleasant cool southern breeze is blowing,

What need is there for a fan? Fever is overcome by the cool light of the moon, want by the good wish-yielding tree, and sin by the holy Ganges.

Those three, fever and want and sin, all flee at the sight of the peerless sage. Holy rivers, which are only water,

and idols which are made of stone and clay are not as mighty as the sages. For while they make one pure in course of countless days, the sages' eyes by a mere glance purify at once.

Who is God? One who knows the mind. Myself, the spirit, knows my mind.

Therefore, you are God. And also the scriptures declares that there is only one God, the Noah. By what light do you see

the sun by day, the lamp by night. By what light do you see these lights? The eye. By what light do you see the eye? The mind. By what light do you know the mind? Myself.

You then are the light of lights. Yes, that I am.

In the center of the heart cave, there shines alone the one Brahman as the I-I, the Atman. Reach the heart by diving deep in quest of the self, or by controlling the mind with the breath.

and stay established in the Atman. In the lotus of the heart is pure and changeless consciousness in the form of the self. When the ego is removed,

This consciousness of self bestows liberation of soul.

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.