When and how is the disappearance of the objective world (drisya vilaya) to be effected?

Devotee:  When and how is the disappearance of the objective world (drisya vilaya) to be effected?


Ramana Maharishi:  It is complete when the relative subject, namely the mind, is eliminated. The mind is the creator of the subject and the object and is the cause of the dualistic idea. Therefore, it is the cause of the wrong notion of limited self and the misery consequent on such erroneous idea.


Devotee:  What is this mind?


Ramana Maharishi:  Mind is one form of manifestation of life. A block of wood or a subtle machine is not called mind. The vital force manifests as life activity and also as the conscious phenomena known as the mind.

What is the interrelation between regulation of thought and regulation of breath?

Devotee:  What is the interrelation between regulation of thought and regulation of breath?


Ramana Maharishi:  Thought (intellectual) and respiration, circulation, etc. (vegetative) activities are both different aspects of the same - the individual life.  Both depend upon (or metaphorically ‘reside’ or ‘inhere’ in) life. Personality and other ideas spring from it like the vital activity. If respiration or other vital activity is forcibly repressed, thought  also is repressed. If thought is forcibly slowed down and pinned to a point, the vital activity of respiration is slowed down, made even and confined to the lowest level compatible with life. In both cases the distracting variety of thought is temporarily at an end.  The interaction is noticeable in other ways also. Take the will to live. That is thought-power. That sustains and keeps up life when other vitality is almost exhausted and delays death. In the absence of such will-power death is accelerated. So thought is said to carry life with it in the flesh and from one fleshy body to another.

How does mere life or death here confer mukti? It is difficult to understand.

Devotee:  How does mere life or death here confer mukti? It is difficult to understand.

Ramana Mahariahi:  Darsanad Abhrasadasi jananat Kamalalaye, Kasyantu maranam
muktih smaranad Arunachale.
“To see Chidambaram, to be born in Tiruvarur, to die in Benares, or merely to think of Arunachala, is to be assured of Liberation.” Jananat Kamalalaye means “by being born in Kamalalaya”. What  is it? It is the Heart. Similarly, Abhrasadasi - Seat of Consciousness. Again, Kasi is  the Light of Realisation. Remembering Arunachala completes the verse. It must also be understood in the same sense.

The essential point is that the mind must always remain in its source.

Devotee:   I often desire to live in solitude where I can find all I want with ease, so that I may devote all my time to meditation only. Is such a desire good or bad?

Ramana Maharishi:  Such thoughts will bestow a janma (reincarnation) for their fulfilment. What does it matter where and how you are placed? The essential point is that the mind must always remain in its source. There is nothing external which is not also internal. The mind is all. If the mind is active even solitude becomes like a market place. There is no use closing your eyes. Close the mental eye and all will be right. The world is not external to you. The good persons will not care to make plans previous to their actions. Why so? For God who has sent us into the world has His own plan and that will certainly work itself out

What is the purpose of life?

Devotee:  What is the purpose of life?

Ramana Maharishi:  To seek to know the significance of life is itself the result of good karma in past births. Those who do not seek such knowledge are simply wasting their lives.

What is the best way of living?

Devotee:  What is the best way of living?

Ramana Maharishi:  It differs according as one is a Jnani or ajnani. A Jnani does not find anything different or separate from the Self. All are in the Self. It is wrong to imagine that there is the world, that there is a body in it and that you dwell in the body. If the Truth is known, the universe and what is beyond it will be found to be only in the Self. The outlook differs according to the sight of the person. The sight is from the eye. The eye must be located somewhere. If you are seeing with the gross eyes you find others gross. If with subtle eyes (i.e., the mind) others appear subtle. If the eye becomes the Self, the Self being infinite, the eye is infinite. There is nothing else to see different from the Self. He thanked Maharshi. He was told that the best way of thanking is to remain always as the Self.

Identification with the body & inadvertence of the ego is the cause of misery

Ramana Maharishi:  The ego identifies itself with the body, and so loses sight of the Self and the result of this inadvertence is dark ignorance and the misery of the present life.

What is Life?

Maharishi: Moreover, what is life? Life is existence which is your Self. That is life Eternal. Otherwise can you imagine a time when you are not? That life is now conditioned by the body and you wrongly identify your being with that of the body. You are life unconditioned.

These  bodies attach themselves to you as mental projections and you are now afflicted by ‘I-am-the-body’ idea. If this idea ceases you are your Self. Where or how were you before being born? Were you in sleep? How were you? You exist then too without the body. Then the ego arises, and then the mind which projects the body. ‘I-am the- body’ idea is the result. Because the body exists you say that it was born and that it will die, and transfer the idea to the Self saying that you are born and that you will die. In fact you remain without the body in sleep; but now you remain with the body.

The Self can remain without the body, but the body cannot exist apart from the Self. ‘I-am-the-body’ thought is ignorance; that the body is not apart from the Self is knowledge. That is the difference between knowledge and ignorance. The body is a mental projection, the mind is the ego; and the ego rises from the Self. So the body-thought is distracting and strays away from the Self. For whom is the body or the birth? It is not for the Self, the Spirit. It is for the non-self which imagines itself separate. So long as there is the sense of separation there will be afflicting thoughts. If the original source is regained and the sense of separation is put an end to, there is peace.

Consider what happens when a stone is thrown up. It leaves its source and is projected up, tries to come down and is always in motion until it regains its source, where it is at rest. So also the waters of the ocean evaporate, form clouds which are moved by winds, condense into water, fall as rain and the waters roll down the hill in streams and rivers, until they reach their original source, the ocean, reaching which they are at peace. Thus, you see, wherever there is a sense of separateness from the source there is agitation and movement until the sense of separateness is lost.

So it is with yourself. Now that you identify yourself with the body you think that you are separate from the Spirit - the  true Self. You must regain your source before the false identity ceases and you are happy.  Gold is not an ornament, but the ornament is nothing but gold. Whatever shape the ornament may assume and however different the ornaments are, there is only one reality, namely gold. So also with the bodies and the Self.

The single reality is the Self. To identify oneself with the body and yet to seek happiness is like attempting to cross a river on the back of an alligator. The body identity is due to extroversion and the wandering of the mind. To continue in that state will only keep one in an endless tangle and there will be no peace. Seek your source, merge in the Self and remain all alone. Rebirth means discontent with the present state, and desire to be born where there will be no discontent. Births, being of the body, cannot affect the Self. The Self remains over even after the body perishes. The discontent is due to the wrong identity of the Eternal Self with the perishable body. The body is a necessary adjunct of the ego. If the ego is killed the eternal Self is revealed in all its glory.

The body is the Cross. Jesus, the son of man, is the ego or ‘I am-the-body’ idea. When he is crucified, he is resurrected as the Glorious Self - Jesus, the Son of God! — “Give up this life if thou wouldst live”