Ramana Maharshi

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,

we see that all the beings in the world have two different hearts. One of these is worth acceptance, the other worth rejection. Listen how they differ. The organ called the heart placed somewhere in the chest of the physical body is worth rejection.

The heart which is of the form of pure awareness is worth acceptance. It is both within and without. It has no inside or out. That indeed is the essential heart.

and in it all this world abides. It is the mirror in which all things are seen. It is the source of all wealth.

Hence, awareness may be termed the heart of all beings. The heart is not a part of the perishable body, inert like a stone.

Therefore, by the practice of merging the ego in the pure heart, which is all awareness, the tendencies of the mind, as well as the breath, will be subdued.

By constantly meditating in the heart, that pure unconditioned awareness that is Shiva,

That am I. Remove all attachment of the ego.

having investigated the various states of being and seizing firmly by the mind that state of supreme reality. Play your part, O hero, ever in the world. You have known the truth which is at the heart of all kinds of appearances,

without ever turning away from that reality. Play in the world, oh hero, as if in love with it. Seeming to have enthusiasm and delight,