A Fresh New Moment-Ramana Maharshi

This Now is the Time:

This now is the time. There is always time to make hay. Obviously it is when the sun is shining. The urgent need is to check the constant movement of thoughts away from the thinker by turning attention back to their source. Here again Ramana points out that it is only the moment (new moment) of the experience that matters. In a vast movement of time, each moment gives place to another and experience is only in that (new moment) moment. The previous moment is only a memory, however fresh and implanted in the mind it may be. Towards what is the other momentum? It is towards crystal gazing, towards the future. If mind is not caught up thus in the past and the future, there is no movement. Every moment (new moment) has a fragrance of that experience.

Ramana Maharshi's job:

Like a sculptor chiseling away at the stone till it is gradually perfect, Ramana Maharshi keeps chiseling at the mind. It could be by using homeopathic doses or it could be through a fast acting medicine. Speaking for himself, Ramana Maharshi says to Arunachala, “You have withheld from me all knowledge of gradual attainment". Those who have read his biography know that his 'Enlightenment" on 17th of July 1897 was 'spontaneous" and instantaneous. In his case, the awareness of truth remained unbroken thereafter.

But for the rest of us it is obvious that the transition to freedom can only be a gradual. For it is essentially a matter of perception, a matter of awareness of what is true always, then, now and hereafter. The value re-orientation of the mind is never instant or immediate. Under Ramana Maharshi's guidance the firm grip of illusion is gradually corroded by the search light of enquiry about the mind"s nature (Freedom or enlightenment)

About the author

A.R.Natarajan
A.R.Natarajan is the founder of 'The Ramana Maharshi Centre For Learning', Bangalore. This article is an excerpt from his 'Darkness at Noon' which talks about the way to eternal freedom the Ramana way.