Direct Path-Part III

Ramana Maharshi

-Staff

By Staff

Monday, November 17, 2008, 12:49

When one is practising self-enquiry many facts would get exposed. First one would readily see that there cannot be much to the notion of taking the 'I' to be the body and limiting it. For the body's changes from boyhood to youth, to middle-age and old age are visibly there. The cells are in a continuous process of change and restructuring.

It is tougher to disassociate oneself from the mind. For attachment to one's ideas, to the belief that success depends only on one's efforts, psychological attachments are firmly rooted. But if one enquires one finds that there is a break in the continuity of mind in deep sleep. In deep sleep both the thinker and his thoughts are naescent.

By implanting doubts about one's assumptions, self-enquiry gives an inward direction to the mind. By looking away from the self by paying excessive or exclusive attention to thoughts one fails to face the 'I' or the centre of the mind.

The term centre of the mind is used because the thinker is common to all his thoughts. They surface and subside depending on the thinker's attention. As a process in self-enquiry one is vigilant to the birth of thought by questioning 'To whom is this thought'. 'To me'. 'Who am 'I'?'.

When this enquiry commences and is continued with firm resolve one is freed gradually from the tyranny of uncontrolled thoughts.Further since the 'I' too is only a thought which rises on waking and disappears in deep sleep when one succeeds in focusing his mind on it, when one is face to face with 'I', then the 'I"-thought too drops automatically. Only the fullness or consciousness remains.During the practice of self-enquiry the mind's outer movement wanes and its inner movement strengthens. The straying of the mind would become less and less.

Then the mind will be silent, alert, total. Its potentiality in this state cannot even be comprehended by the present de-energised mind. Thoughts will surface as and when required and subside when their purpose is over. All seeking, the various activities of the greedy mind wanting 'more' be it wealth, or power, or name and fame, would come to a halt. What can add to one's cup of happiness which is overflowing? Having discovered the elixir of life, inherent happiness, one enjoys life as a sport, living each moment in all its fullness.

This knowledge about the 'knower' which is revealed through self-enquiry bridges the gap between the scientist and the humanist. For the life which pulsates in everyone is the same. When all differences are seen to be mind-made accretions, there is a harmony and peace beyond words.

On this path of self-enquiry Ramana is the guru, or the guide. As a teenager he discovered the essential truth about oneself, and his awareness of this truth never wavered thereafter. This guidance of the enlightened one comes in multifarious ways through interchange of ideas with other practitioners of the path, through his recorded, replies to more than thirty thousand questions and his accessibility to all whose minds are turned inward in eager search for truth.

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