Inward Inward Is The Path!-Part II

Ramana Maharshi

-Staff

By Staff

Monday, May 26, 2008, 17:25

Many methods have been suggested and practiced to internalize the mind and stabilize it at the source. Desires are the cause of an insatiable activity orientation. It is therefore widely thought that if desires are controlled, suppressed, negated or sublimated the problem would be solved. Another method practiced is to cultivate noble thoughts, or the eightfold virtues, in order that the mind may be purified, in order that its 'sattvic' content may be increased. All this is undoubtedly efficacious, but quite obviously time consuming. The transformation is slow. The effort and the result are not commensurate.

The difficulty is all the greater if one remembers the inescapable time-frame of life. One has to pack all that one has got to push ahead with inwardness, to succeed in stabilizing the merging of the mind in its source. True, there would be another innings or more than one innings as long as the wrong notion of identification of one's self with the body lasts. But can one who is very serious about Self-knowledge be content with such a thought? If the urge to find out, if the compulsion to is strong, one has to look for a direct way which would yield the maximum results. It is here that Ramana's teaching matters.

Ramana himself terms self-enquiry the straight path. Why straight? Because it concerns itself with the mind, its origin and its essential nature. One 'Brahma astra' Ramana would invariably use. If you have desires, can they exist without the desirer? Find out who the desirer is. If you plead ignorance, again the same reply, find out who is ignorant. If you consider yourself impure find out who is impure, he would say. Why? This is in order to bring attention back to the basic question about one's identity.

To disabuse oneself of the habitual preoccupations with the second and third persons. Unles the focus is so clearly on 'I', unless attention is constantly brought back to it, one would remain a victim of his own ignorance, an ignorance which is responsible for mind's waywardness and restlessness. Since self-enquiry has revived the attention on the 'I', thoughts which depend on the individual's attention wither and fade for want of it. The mind turns inward and experiences the thrill of inherent joy.

To be continued