Breaking Free-II

Ramana Maharshi

oi-Staff

By Staff

Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 13:26

In the Ramana Way, this battle with one's own past is fought and won, by vigilant attention. The thinker's vigilance at the very beginning to the past showing its head in the form of thoughts would snuff them out. But it is never too late. Even when one is well and truly entangled in his own thoughts, the only way out is to question 'For whom are these thoughts?' and thereby refocus attention on the thinker. One weapon only all along the way but surely an infallible weapon.

After extricating oneself from the past emerging as thoughts through self-enquiry one would be refocused on the thinker. At this stage attention to the source of the thinker, of this first thought, would result in the thinker too sinking into the source, the spiritual heart. Then alone the past would be dead. Thereafter each moment would be fresh and lovely for one would not be viewing the panorama of life through the looking glass of experience.

Of course this is only the first though very significant sign of victory. Self-bliss would be inviting one back for more of it. The past as the ego, cannot be humbled so easily. It would re-emerge in many forms, many masks, in many guises. Its outward push is combated, each time by the same weapon whose sharpness can never be blunted. Within, inward to the source, back without in the world of objects would be our fate until all shuttling, the back and forth movement, ends in Self-abidance.

Where does Ramana come into all this? He is never out of the fight and is always in the thick of it. He is the divine charioteer, the 'sarathi', making us stay on course, our true strength, invisible as the Self within, visible as the radiance of the Self embodied in the beloved and bewitching form of Ramana in which he walked on earth. One is never away from his orbit of grace. He once told a devotee Chadda, 'The driver and the guard of a train are far apart. But they move at the same speed and are connected throughout. You can sit in any corner of the train and you will be equally connected to both'.

Ramana drives the engine of our life and guards us against frequent lapses into ignorant and identified existence. What can one say about this Sadguru Ramana but for whose steady guidance we would never have discovered our own true identity, our divinity here and now?

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