Ramana Maharshi Quotes

source: http://www.buddhasangha.com/quotes/quotes/spiritual_quotes_silence.htm

You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you.
Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.

Sages say that the state in which the thought `I' [the ego] does not rise even in the least, alone is Self [swarupa] which is silence [mouna]. That silent Self alone is God; Self alone is the jiva [individual soul]. Self alone is this ancient world.

All other knowledge are only petty and trivial knowledge; the experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge.

A man should surrender the personal selfishness which binds him to this world. Giving up the false self is the true renunciation.

What is the ego? Enquire. The body is insentient and cannot say `I'. The Self is pure consciousness and non-dual. It cannot say `I'. No one says `I' in sleep. What is the ego then? It is something intermediate between the inert body and the Self. It has no locus standi. If sought for it vanishes like a ghost.

If you keep on making the enquiry till you fall asleep, the enquiry will go on during sleep also. Take up the enquiry again as soon as you wake up.

The Self alone is real. All others are unreal. The mind and intellect do not remain apart from you. The Bible says, `Be still and know that I am God.' Stillness is the sole requisite for the realization of the Self as God.

If one surrenders oneself there will be no one to ask questions or to be thought of. Either the thoughts are eliminated by holding on to the root-thought `I', or one surrenders oneself unconditionally to the higher power. These are the only two ways for realization.

If the longing is there, realization will be forced on you even if you do not want it. Long for it intensely so that the mind melts in devotion. After camphor burns away no residue is left. The mind is the camphor. When it has resolved itself into the Self without leaving even the slightest trace behind, it is realization of the Self.

Greedily begging for worthless occult powers [siddhis] from God, who will readily give himself, who is everything, is like begging for worthless stale gruel from a gene rous-natured philanthropist who will readily give everything.

If one scrutinises one's own Self, which is bliss, there will be no misery at all in one's life. One suffers because of the idea that the body, which is never oneself, is `I'; suffering is all due to this delusion.