there’s no getting wetter

Some speak of the need for long hours of meditation to access Spirit. My limited experience differs.

When I stop and rest in the here and now, practice Self-Inquiry in that moment, and access that thing called Sat-Chit-Ananda or Being, Consciousness, Bliss, it doesn’t matter if I’m there an hour or a minute. When you get wet, there’s no getting wetter. Provided you breathe.

Now I’m not saying that if I were to renunciate and become a monk and meditate for extended periods or say the rest of this life, that I wouldn’t transform, say, to keep the metaphor, into a blissful angelfish, but as a functionary in the dream, time is not of the essence.

Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind on this.

Laughing at Reality

Attention to one's own Self, which is ever shining as 'I', the one undivided and pure reality, is the only raft with which the individual, who is deluded by thinking 'I am the body', can cross the ocean of unending births.'

Reality is simply the loss of ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself. This is the direct method, whereas all other methods are done only by retaining the ego. In those paths there arise so many doubts and the eternal question 'Who am I?' remains to be tackled finally. But in this method the final question is the only one and it is raised from the beginning. No sadhanas are necessary for engaging in this quest.

There is no greater mystery than this — that being the reality we seek to gain reality. We think that there is something hiding our reality and that it must be destroyed before the reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.

~Ramana Maharshi in 'Be As You Are' ed. David Godman

An Unbelievable Blow-Out

The clock is running down, the batteries are dying, the car is running out of gas. I am surrendering to That which is. (No lie, just after writing that sentence, my cell phone sounded its low-battery warning.)

After all, ego is the big lie, and surrender is the only lie detector.

All my life I felt as if there was something better that I should be doing. But despite all my thinking, I couldn’t figure it out. So life happened.

But whenever I began to lose sight of that something better, whenever I was on the verge of going with the status quo, something rebelled within me (and without).

Ultimately, it was OK with delaying something better until the time was right, until certain responsibilities had played themselves through.

The time did come, but something better really didn’t. Instead something completely different did.

Surrender.

It’s unexplainable to those who may not understand, but let me quickly do so anyways. An energetic organization of consciousness; after evolving through processes of sense, memory, and instinct; and thereby becoming sensitive to the various forms and patterns of energy all around it; developed an ability to think; that is create a virtual reality within its mind. And in so doing, it created a separate sense of itself within that virtual reality. And at some point, it began to see that virtual reality as truth (belief), and that virtual self as itself (ego).

In turn, of course, there arose a continuous conflict between the actual reality and the virtual reality, or Consciousness and the Belief/Ego construct. This conflict can be called suffering. Suffering is like friction, in time may wear away the ego, and blow out! This is called an act of grace.

(Or, through the active grace of Self-Inquiry, asking Who Am I?, the same blow-out can occur.)

Then things begin to slow until surrender occurs. Stop.

The virtual reality and all its beliefs, and its sense of self, the ego, are seen through, and disappear. Reality returns. And action happens through intent or influence, desire or synchronicity.

It’s unbelievable.

Robert Adams on the Last Words of Ramana Maharshi

I was awakened about 5 o’clock. It was Ramana again. He came by himself and he brought me food. Can you imagine that? We spoke briefly; I ate and I slept. The next morning I went into the hall. After the morning chanting there was breakfast, and everybody sat around just watching Ramana as he went through his routine. He would go through the mail and read it out loud, talk to some of his devotees. I just observed everything. His composure never changed. Never did I see such compassion, such love.

Then people started to come over to him, asking him questions. His replies were very succinct. They weren’t like you read in a book. Apparently, what you read in a book is his reply to three or four people. They condense it all into one question and answer. But people usually asked a question or made a statement. If he agreed, he would nod or say, ‘Yes. That’s it’. If he didn’t, he would offer an explanation in maybe one or two sentences.

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Six months prior to his leaving his body, I went to Bangalore to see Papa Ramdas. While I was there, I was informed that he [Bhagavan] had left his body. I went back to Tiruvannamalai. The crowds had already started to come, thousands and thousands of people. So, I climbed the hill and went into one of the caves. I stayed there for five days. When I came down, the crowds had dispersed. Ramana had already been interred.


I enquired of the devotee who saw him last, ‘What were the last words he spoke?’


The devotee said, ‘While he was leaving his body a peacock flew on top of the hall and started screeching. Ramana remarked to his devotee, ‘Has anyone fed the peacock yet?’ Those were the last words he spoke.

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What Ramana taught was not new. Ramana simply taught the Upanishads. ‘Who am I?’ has been around since time immemorial. If a teacher always tells you he has something new to teach you, be careful, because there’s nothing new under the sun. Ramana simply revised the ‘Who am I’ philosophy and made it simple for people in the twentieth century. But what did he teach? He simply taught that you are not the body-mind principle. He simply taught that if you have a problem, do not feel sorry for yourself, do not go to psychiatrists, do not condemn yourself. Simply ask yourself, ‘To whom does this problem come?’ And of course the answer will be, ‘The problem comes to me’. Hold onto the ‘me’. Follow the ‘me’ to the source, the substratum of all existence.

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A devotee went to Ramana and said, ‘I’ve been with you for twenty-five years, doing “Who am I?” and nothing has happened yet,’ so Ramana said, ‘Try it another twenty-five and see what happens’.

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Self-enquiry is the ego trying to find itself as the Self, so the effort is brought on through your karma so that you may become Self-realised. It is a privilege to have been able to find in this life the method of self-enquiry. Therefore, it’s been predestined that you should make the effort to find yourself.

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(Thank Me this Thanksgiving [ed. note])


~Robert Adams, from a beautiful blog posting by David Godman on his blog, Arunachala and Sri Ramana Maharshi