I was going to write more of my own blather on all this India spiritualism but then I thought that's stupid. Why shouldn't they just drink it direct from the horse's mouth?
Therefore I present these choice morsels of ULTIMATE WISDOM from Bhagawan Sri Ramanamaharish, only non-fake guru in the known universe.
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Bhagavan: This is what I know. If a teaching is to be imparted according to the traditional way, one must first see whether the recipient is qualified or not. Then puja, japa or dhyana are prescribed step by step. Later the Guru says that this is all only preliminary and one has to transcend all this. Finally, the ultimate truth that "Brahman alone is real" is revealed and to realise this, the direct path of self-enquiry is to be taught. Why this roundabout process? Should we not state the ultimate truth and direct path at the beginning itself rather than advocating many methods and rejecting them at the end?
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Question: I have this desire to live in a place where nobody visits. I feel another desire to get food without any effort. I also want to meditate constanly with my eyes closed, without seeing the world at all. These desires often come to me. Are they good or bad?
Bhagavan: If you have desires such as these you will have to take another birth to fulfil them. What does it matter where you stay? Keep your mind always in the Self. Apart from the Self, there is no solitary place 'outside'. Wherever you exist keeping company with the mind, that place is, without doubt, a crowded place.
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Question: It is said that the eyes of a jnani (Self-realized One) appear to look at things, but in reality they see nothing.
Bhagavan: Yes, the eyes of a jnani are likened to the eyes of a dead goat; they are always open, never closed. They glitter but they see nothing, though it seems to others that they see everything.
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Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try how hard you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to stop it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to be silent.
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Kailas is in the Himalayas; it is the abode of Shiva. Whereas this hill [Arunachala] is Shiva himself.
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The gracious Self, the great silence, swallows the mind, conquering all the religions that exist as a consequence of the mind.
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Religious observances are always concerned with the mind alone. The ever-silent Self is always free from such religious practices.
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Self is that which removes the power of speech from those who, seeing it, say nothing. Self is that extremely wondrous illumination which those who speak have not seen.
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Self is the pure consciousness, the infinite expanse that ignorant people get frightened of and mentally recoil from, thinking it to be a void.
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The Self has invented many arts, full of illusory concepts, for those whith insignificant intellects to know and delight in.
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THe effulgent Self becomes veiled in the same way that fire becomes veiled by the smoke that billow out from it and envelops it.
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Nandi said: That is the holy place. Of all, Arunachala is the most sacred. It is the heart of the world. Know it to be the secret and sacred Heart-center of Shiva. In that place he always abides as the glorious Aruna Hill.
