HUNTING THE ‘I’ according to Sri Ramana Maharshi By LUCY CORNELSSEN

HUNTING THE ‘I’

according to

Sri Ramana Maharshi

By

LUCY CORNELSSEN

Preface

Sri Ramana Maharshi is well known wherever there is a

longing for a life of Wisdom and Love, of inner Freedom. The

Sage of Arunachala was an embodiment of such a higher life

and a living proof that the longing for the highest Truth is no

escapism for weaklings from hard facts to soft dreams, but the

entrance to true Reality.

Sri Ramana Maharshi and his message need neither backing

nor propaganda; they have found their silent way all over the

world to those hearts that were ripe and ready for them. However,

for the Centenary of the Master’s birthday we wanted to bring

out something which will show that the Secret of the Sage of

Arunachala is not at all exhausted, but that still again and again

new perspectives are opening themselves to the searching soul.

In the auspicious atmosphere of the Sacred Hill things

seem to arrange themselves. Thus, it happened that V. Ganesan,

M.A., made the suggestion, the German authoress Lucy

Cornelssen, resident of Sri Ramanasramam, provided the

material. Prof. K. Swaminathan and Sri Viswanatha Swami were

kind enough to go through the typescript and offer useful

suggestions, and Jim Grant, a young Amercian devotee, took

great care in touching up the representation.

So... where is ‘the doer’? ... ...

‘Hunting the I’ goes out to the public as a small example

of the great Truth: Things happen; men are merely means, to

make them happen ...

May the blessings of the Star of Arunachala go with this

humble gift to the reader!

SRI RAMANASRAMAM,

THE LONE STAR

To view Chidambaram, to be born in Tiruvarur, to die in

Benaras, or merely to think of Arunachala is to be assured

of Liberation.

(Talks, 448)

THE SETTING

The map shows India as a triangular peninsula in the south

of Asia. Jutting into the sea, south of the vast Ganges plains, is

the Deccan plateau. With thousands of kilometres of railways

and thousands of kilometres of metal-roads, carrying bullock

carts as well as the most modern motor-traffic-vehicles, there

seems to be little difference between this Indian Deccan and

any other civilised part of the world.

The content of this book will soon reveal, however, that

‘India’ means still unknown areas, hidden depths beneath the

surface of our everyday world, and, strange to say, these begin

very near the soil under one’s feet.

There is a certain mountain, belonging to the Eastern

Ghats, about 200 km south-west of Madras, named Arunachala,

meaning ‘Hill of Fire’ or ‘Hill of Dawn’. The Puranas claim

that it is the most ancient mountain on earth. Folklore, legend,

fairy-tale? Well, geological research has confirmed the ‘fairytale’.

It is generally agreed nowadays that originally the Deccan

was not part of the main body of Asia, but represents the

remnant of a continent now lost in the depths of the ocean

stretching out over Malaysia to Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Celebes

and the Philippines. The Himalayas are said to have arisen only

in a later period, and the connection by the great plains between

the gigantic geological formation and the Deccan to have been

created by the sediments of the huge rivers coming down from

those mountains.

Thus the feet of the Hindus, children of this country, and

those of the foreign travellers do not touch merely rocks and

sands and mud, but their minds are given to a long and aweinspiring

history of civilisation over many centuries, and their

very hearts feel here the touch of a deeper mystery, though

wrapped up for ever in the silence of an inscrutable past.

Nevertheless this unfathomable silence is not dead. Time

and again this living mystery gives birth to great souls, who

know something – if not of the secret of this lost continent, yet

of the secret of its Spirit, which is the secret of Man.

Here in this region appeared once the great Sankara. It is

generally held he lived between A.D. 788 and 820, but tradition

has it that he flourished already about 200 B.C. was born at

Kaladi, on the west coast in Malabar.

An equally famous religious teacher was Ramanuja.

Whereas Sankara was the great logician, Ramanuja was the great

intuitionalist, who stressed the theistic aspect of the Upanishads.

He was born in 1027 A.D. a few miles west of Madras.

While the great work of Sankara was to draw out of the

rich religious tradition and compose the philosophy of Advaita-

Vedanta, the ‘One without a Second’, Ramanuja put against it

Visishtadvaita, qualified non-dualism.

The opposite interpretation to Sankara was set forth by

the Kanarese Brahmin Madhva. He was born in 1199 A.D.

some 60 miles north of Mangalore and stood firm for an

unqualified dualism.

Why, only three poor philosophers within a period of

400 years, long ago ... what is there extraordinary in it? Well,

there were many more of them, in each century. What we

want to point at is that philosophy means in India not only

theoretical and logical thought of scholars, but living religion,

the life of the soul. It is the teaching of these famous Three

which represents the living spirit of the man in the street and

in the office, the woman before her small house shrine, up to

the present day. It is not in their brains only, but in their

blood and their life, because it is the secret of the Deccan, the

land, lost in the sea.

This is also particularly the secret of Arunachala, the Hill

of Light. In the language of the Puranas, it is the Heart of the

World, and the ancient legend of its origin goes like this:

Brahma, the Lord of creation, and Vishnu, the divine

sustainer of it, were quarrelling about their status, as to which

one of them was the greater. As their discussion grew heated,

things in the universe got into disorder, and the minor deities

fell in fear and anxiety. Finally they resorted to Lord Siva, the

All-powerful, for aid. Between the quarrelling Gods there

appeared suddenly a gigantic pillar of light, the sight of which

dumbfounded them for a moment. Out of this light came a

mysterious Voice:

“He who shall find the upper or the lower end of Me shall

be deemed the greater one.”

Immediately both of the antagonists put themselves to work.

Vishnu took the form of a boar and started to dig deep into the

soil in search of the lower end of the column of light. Brahma

transformed himself into a swan and soared higher and higher.

Neither of them arrived at an end of the apparition.

Vishnu, catching the idea that the mysterious Voice might have

a deeper meaning, gave up and sat down, to find it in the depth

of meditation.

Brahma, troubled by the idea that Vishnu might have been

successful, became envious, and when there came falling just

then a heavenly flower, he grasped it and decided to pretend

that he had found it on top of the magic light.

Vishnu, thus being deceived, complained to Lord Siva,

asking why He had bestowed on Brahma the Grace of success.

Thereupon Siva revealed Himself in the pillar of Light, and,

blessing both of them, declared:

“I am Siva; I am Brahman, the mystery of the universe,

and thus Atman, the mystery of beings. Nobody can reach Me

by his own endeavour. But to those who surrender wholeheartedly

to Me, to them I reveal Myself. You ask Me to stay on earth for

being worshipped. Well, I shall stay here as Arunachala, the Hill

of Light, and when during Autumn the Moon shall arise on the

horizon at the same hour when the Sun is setting, there shall be

a huge fire lit on the summit, radiating far around. To those

who see the Light and meditate on it as the symbol of

enlightenment I shall grant the highest Truth.”

Thousands of Indian legends and parables are at the same

time veiling and revealing the living Truth about God, Man

and World. In this legend of Arunachala, Brahma stands for

buddhi, the reason, Vishnu for ahamkara, the ego of man, Siva

for Atman, the secret of man’s true Nature. Neither reason nor

ego can, of their own talents, reach the Supreme Atman, the

supreme Self, the true nature of man; they have to submit.

Only then the Atman reveals Itself.

This is the teaching of Arunachala...Siva, the Hill of Dawn,

the Dawn of Wisdom. It is also the teaching of Arunachala Ramana.

Who is Sri Ramana, the Maharshi of Arunachala?

Another Voice of the Spirit of the land, lost in the sea,

calling the spirit of the 20th century.

When India got her independence, she stressed her

intention to play her part in the concert of nations as a secular

state like all others, but did not proclaim any particular theoretical

ideal. More gifted than others, she was able to personify her

national intentions in a Triple Star of contemporary great souls:

Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sri Aurobindo,

each of them a national and social beacon-light who at the same

time stretched out a hand in friendship towards the world.

Let us remember: Swami Vivekananda laid the foundation

of the first nationwide organisation for the social uplift of the

suffering masses at home, simultaneously carrying abroad the

rich spiritual heritage of his country, which was then practically

unknown outside India.

Mahatma Gandhi brought the precious gift of national

independence to his tortured native country by the proclaimed

idea of non-violence, living himself as a personality of the highest

human standard, so that the world bowed down to him in

veneration when he laid down his very life in the service of his

people.

Sri Aurobindo, too, who retired finally for the greater part

of his life to Pondicherry in the South, had been very active in

the struggle for national freedom, before he took his eminent

place beside the other two by his Maha-yoga and his immense

literary work, in which he propagated a Divine Life on earth as

the goal of human evolution. A noble vision indeed!

The precious gifts of Gandhiji and Swami Vivekananda

are present everywhere in modern India and form her life and

blood, as it were. The radiance of the Triple Star of great souls,

surely a national symbol as worthy as it is meaningful, covers

the subcontinent... the mysterious land, lost in the sea... as an

invisible triangle spreading from northeast to northwest and to

the far south.

But during the time of that heroic and spectacular struggle,

when those great souls did tapas and offered their very lives as

yajna for the sake of the many who could not help themselves,

the spirit of the hidden depths had already silently embodied

itself in another great soul.

When Mahatma Gandhi’s political career as such might

be said to have begun, with the founding of the Natal Indian

Congress, at his instance and with his active co-operation in

Durban in May, 1894, when Swami Vivekananda had his

marvellous success at the World Congress of Religions in

Chicago in 1893, the boy Venkataraman, the later Maharshi

Ramana, was still a schoolboy, more fond of games than of

mathematics and English Grammar. When on his return in

1897 the Swami started his triumphal tour in the same region

of South India and prophesied in one of his speeches that South

India was going to take a leading part in the spiritual

regeneration of the world, that in the 20th century there was

going to rise in South India a flood of atmic power, which

would inundate not only the whole of India but the entire world,

that same boy Venkataraman, then in his seventeenth year, had

already given up school, home and family, past and future, name

and personality, and was living lost in the unfathomable Silence

of Arunachala, the most sacred Siva lingam, and in

contemplation of the Great Experience that had led him there.

He never went abroad to preach the ancient wisdom of

his race to the world like Vivekananda; he did not fight for

political Independence like Gandhiji; he did not even dream

of a future Divine Life on earth like Sri Aurobindo. His was a

quite different way.

Those three Great ones form for ever the Triple Star who

dedicated their lives to the uplift of the millions of their people.

He remained a Lone Star, living the life of man’s true nature, a

silent model for each individual who feels the agony of this age,

when man seems to have forgotten his true nature. He remained

the Lone Star of Arunachala, pointing steadily in the same

direction, like the polaris, guiding the individual and therewith

mankind to its highest destination.

THE SAGE

We know quite well, at least those among us who are

interested, that sages and saints cannot be understood by a study

of their life, because sagehood and sainthood are not related to

the person with the name and form or to the family and

circumstances. Nevertheless, whether we are aware of it or not,

we look with interest for traces in the outer life stories of those

rare beings.

The childhood of Ramana Maharshi was as ‘normal’ as

possible, as if already here, in the beginning, we should be

reminded of the basic truth that the jnani is not the person whom

we meet, but the Reality.

Born about a century ago, on the 30th December, 1879, as

the second son in a middle-class Brahmin family, the boy, named

Venkataraman, did not show the least trace of any extraordinary

piety or spirituality, though sometimes there was a hint of this in

his extraordinary deep sleep. However, most healthy children can

be transported without awakening them. His capacity for learning

was more than average, but his interest and application for it was

less. He decidedly preferred outdoor games.

When he was 12 years old, he lost his father and was sent

away with his elder brother from their birthplace, Tiruchuzhi,

to relatives living in Madurai. It was there that it happened, the

one event for which he was born, which had nothing to do

with his past or his surroundings.

Two incidents which happened as a kind of foreboding

were not taken at all as anything unusual:

One day young Venkataraman met an elderly relative who

arrived from a journey. Asked from where he had come, he

answered:

“From Arunachala.”

The boy knew the name, as every Hindu in the South

knows it. Still he felt a thrill, because he had from his childhood

a feeling that Arunachala was something indescribably great.

With excitement he enquired:

“Where is that?”

The traveller marvelled a bit about the sudden agitation

of the boy and answered:

“Why, don’t you know that Arunachala is Tiruvannamalai?”

Tiruvannamalai is the town at the foot of the hill.

Of course he did, and to be reminded of the fact cooled

down that strange excitement. The small incident was soon

forgotten.

Readers who believe in coincidence rather than in karmic

network will not be very impressed by that meeting, and may be

still less to learn that the boy soon after that came across the

Periyapuranam, which he had not seen before. He went through

the stories of the 63 Saivite saints of Tamil Nadu, and they awoke

a deep devotion in his young heart. Never had he seen anything

like that in his round of everyday life: waking up, eating, school,

games, sleeping. The life of an average Hindu family is regulated

by the performance of certain daily rites and others on certain

particular occasions. There are stories of gods and asuras, of heroes

and ascetics, but they were old stories, nice to listen to, and quickly

forgotten. Suddenly the saints in that Periyapuranam were living

beings in a living world quite different from that of his own.

Something within the boy that had been dormant was

waking up.

However, even this went soon to sleep again. To a child,

and even to an adult, the habitual influence of everyday-life is

much stronger, more ‘real’, than the reality of the Beyond.

However, only a few weeks later, one day in July of 1896,

the boy was sitting listless before his lessons. All of a sudden his

lazy mood was overwhelmed and wiped out by an alarming

onset of the fear of death. This was not a mental interpretation

of something vaguely felt but something so urgent and ‘real’

that he did not think of resisting or of calling for help. He

knew he had simply to submit.

Many years later the Maharshi talked about that to some

devotee:

“The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards

and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words:

‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying?

This body dies’. And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death.

I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had

set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the

enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that

no sound could escape, so that neither the word ‘I’ nor any other

word could be uttered. ‘Well then’, I said to myself, ‘this body is

dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there

burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body, am I

dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of

my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart

from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but

the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That

means, I am the deathless Spirit’. All this was not dull thought; it

flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly,

almost without any thought process. ‘I’ was something very real,

the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious

activity connected with my body was centred on that ‘I’. From

that moment onwards, the ‘I’, or Self, focussed attention on itself

by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and

for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that

time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various

notes of music, but the ‘I’ continued like the fundamental sruti

note that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether

the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was

still centred on ‘I’. Previous to that crisis I had no clear perception

of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no

perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any inclination to

dwell permanently in it.”

Though this report is close to what happened, it may leave

the reader somewhat disappointed, because it might look rather

like an interpretation of something which is beyond the mind,

which is the means of interpretation. We can leave it alone. The

central point of the Great Experience is striking and quite clear:

it is a revelation of true Identity.

The boy Venkataraman was not prepared in any way for

an experience of this kind. He knew practically nothing about

mysticism, or about religious ideas or concepts. Therefore no

visions interfered, no deities, nothing could offer itself as an

interpretation. His whole consciousness was focussed on the

one and only undiluted fact in this incident... the clear revelation

of his true identity.

However, there is another report by Sri Ramana of this

strange hour, to be found in the diary of a close devotee, Devaraja

Mudaliar. He noted it under the date of November 22, 1945:

“When I lay down with limbs stretched out and mentally

enacted the death scene and realised that the body would be

taken and cremated and yet ‘I’ would live, some force, call it

atmic power or anything else, rose within me and took possession of

me. I was reborn and I became a new man.”

Here is mentioned another, most important feature of the

great event: “Some force rose within and took possession” of

the experiencer.

Many mystics of all climes and centuries have known this

extraordinary experience of Venkataraman, but to all of them it

came as a religious experience, caused, recognised and interpreted

according to certain preconceived religious assumptions.

Venkataraman did not know anything like that. Thus it seems

that we have in his experience not another ‘variety’ of mystic

experience, but the original ‘absolute’ form of all revelations of

this kind, uncoloured by any personal psychological adjuncts.

One may wonder and ponder how such a rare and strange

thing could have occurred to an ‘ordinary’ schoolboy like

Venkataraman. Though the fact as such may be extraordinary,

it need not necessarily be a miracle. The miracle rests with the

boy; it lies in the fact that he was able to observe and recognise

in an almost scientific way what was happening to himself and

to remain for ever in that new dimension of consciousness which

had opened itself before him in this Great Experience.

The attempt to understand this central event of the life of

Arunachala Ramana, here and now, would be very difficult,

because for the time being we have no experience of our own

to compare with his. We may get at something later on and

then shall return.

One would expect that the boy Venkataraman would have

talked to his elders about this strange ‘Death’-experience. He must

have felt that there were no words available to transmit the ‘reality’

of the event. But they soon discovered of their own that the boy

was not any more the same as before. They saw that he tried to

behave the way they expected him to, but the result was poor. He

seemed to be indifferent to whatever food was put before him,

having lost all likes and dislikes. He avoided his comrades and

games. He gave himself quietly to the task before him, and had

obviously lost even the little attention which he had shown

previously for his lessons. Teachers and elders got alarmed.

The elder brother tried teasing, calling him ‘Yogiraj’ and

the like. When one day he cast aside his books and was about to

lose himself in meditation, the elder one broke out:

“I wonder what such a one as you has to do at all with

school and books and so on...” Venkataraman had cared little

all these days for his brother’s endeavour to correct him, but

this remark went home. Was not the brother quite right? Lessons,

teachers, books... what were they to him, after what he had

gone through? And like lightning it flashed through his mind:

‘Arunachala!’

He opened his eyes, gathered his books, and, preparing to

leave the room said: “I have to attend a special class in physics...”

“Then please take five rupees with you and pay my fee in

the college!”

Those five rupees did not reach the college at all.

Venkataraman took the needed Railway fare, immediately got

into a train and disappeared.

At dawn on September 1st 1896, he entered the great

Arunachaleswara Temple and stood before the most sacred

Lingam.

Thereafter he lost himself in a permanent silent

contemplation of his new Identity, first in several places

connected with the temple, and later on in the caves of the

Hill.

As his life before his Great Experience had been the life of

an ‘ordinary’ schoolboy, his present life seemed to be that of an

‘ordinary’ sadhu, to be known from his typical credentials ...

the loincloth, a certain type of name, sometimes a vow of silence.

In the case of the young Brahmana Swami of the Hill,

each of these signs was misleading. According to the Hindu

society, even the sadhu who has left his former society-status has

only exchanged it for another one, that of the traditional sadhu.

For some years the young Swami of the Hill did not speak;

people took it that he was observing mouna, silence. But behind

his silence there was no motivation, no tapas at all. He simply

did not feel any motive to speak and considered the curious

questions of visitors after his name, family and place not worth

answering.

As a rule, the genuine sadhu has a regular initiation into

his new way of life, particularly when he is a Brahmin by birth.

The Swami of the Hill never thought of that. Once a member

of a certain Math entreated him that, since he had been born a

Brahmin, he should respect the rules of yore and take the

prescribed initiation into sannyasa. The young ascetic remained

silent, and the sannyasi left him to himself to think over the

matter, promising to return for his decision.

Before him, an old man had passed the cave and left some

books behind, announcing that he would take them back on

his return. Now the young sadhu picked up one of the books to

take a look at it. It opened at a page which showed the ancient

promise of Lord Siva: “Whoever shall live in a circle of 3 Yojanas

around this Hill shall be sure to get liberated even in the absence

of initiation.”

When the sannyasi returned, the young hermit showed

him those lines, against which the admonisher could say nothing

more.

In the course of time, a famous poet, himself a well known

guru, came to see the young nameless Swami of the Hill. He

confessed to having a certain spiritual problem and received an

answer which thoroughly satisfied him. In his enthusiasm, he

composed on the spot a Sanskrit hymn on the youthful sage, in

which he named him Ramana, and he ordered his own disciples

to address him henceforth as ‘Maharshi’. Thus the nameless

Swami of the Hill got the name which would make him famous

all over the world.

However, he himself, after having lost his boyhood name,

never again used any name, not even to sign a legal document.

A name stands for a person. He was not the person.

Belonging neither to caste nor ashrama (stage of life), he was an

atiasrami, beyond any classification.

He was Satchidananda, the Bliss of Conscious Being.

Ramana Maharshi lived 54 years in the shade of

Arunachala. The first half of them was spent in its caves, the last

half in an Ashram at the foot of it which had grown round the

samadhi of his mother. He wrote some small treatises, his main

work being Ulladu Narpadu, Forty Verses on That which is,

Upadesa Saram, Essence of Instruction and Five hymns on

Arunachala, and translated some texts which he considered

important and useful for those who were following his advice.

For several years conversations with visitors were jotted down

and these offer the best commentary to the concentrated

teachings of his writings.

But though there is nothing in his teachings which cannot

be found in the scriptures, he was not teaching that wisdom of

the rishis of yore, nor did he need it for testifying to the truth

of his own. His teaching was an attempt to transmit to seekers

the Truth, as he had found it in his own Great Experience, thus

testifying to the truth and value of the scriptures.

Since this experience by its very nature evades being caught

in the net of language, he considered his most efficient ‘teaching’

to be Silence. For ‘Silence’ is not only the true nature, but also

the true ‘language’ of Atman, the mystery of Man.

However, for transmittance there must be a receiver, tuned

to the same wavelength. Thus his teachings in words, the gist of

which is given in the following pages, are meant in the first

lines as preparing the searching soul for the initiation into the

Silence of its true Identity.

The master came at his own time; he went when his time

was over.

The instrument, brought forth by the Spirit of the ancient

land, lost in the sea, to call the man of the 20th century, broke

down on April 14th, 1950, destroyed by an incurable sarcoma.

At that moment, a radiant meteor arose in the east, climbed

slowly up to the zenith, and disappeared behind the sacred Hill

The Lone Star of Arunachala had gone, but he left us his

Voice... and his Silence.

HUNTING THE ‘I’

‘What is the use of Self-Realisation?’

“Why should you seek Self-Realisation? Why do you not

rest content with your present state? It is evident that you

are discontent with the present state. This discontent is at

an end if you realise the Self.”

(Talks, 487

INVESTIGATION

Are you happy?

When you reply with the counterquestion ‘What is

happiness?’ that means that you have already observed how brittle,

how transient and short-lived your so-called happiness is.

But maybe what we have in mind was not happiness at all,

but only pleasure?

‘Pleasure’ means the fulfilment of some desire or the

removal of something unpleasant. But experience teaches that,

after one desire has been fulfilled, two other ones will emerge,

and after something unpleasant has been removed, something

else of a similar kind will present itself and obstruct our intention

to enjoy ourselves. We try and try again to change circumstances

and conditions; is it not our birthright to be happy?

It is.

Then why have we to struggle and to fight and still miss it?

Because of a single error of ours: We do not know ourselves

properly, and by that same error everything else is spoiled. Nor

do we know what happiness is.

Real happiness needs no struggle nor endeavour, no reason

nor cause; it is inherent in the real ‘I’. However you and I, we

live on a wrong ‘I’, as it were. That is the mistake which has to

be removed before we can claim our birthright on real happiness.

So says Ramana, the Maharshi. And he advises us to dive

deep into ourselves with the question: ‘Who am I?’

Don’t expect an answer to it; there is none, because every

possible answer which might come to our mind is wrong.

However, he promises us that one day, provided our

perseverance and patience keep us on the path, there will

emerge a real ‘I’ the identity of the Great Experience, and

together with it the true happiness, which is Satchi-dananda,

the Bliss of Conscious Be-ing.

Somebody asked Sri Ramana:

“When we start this enquiry, who is doing it?”

Sri Ramana’s answer: “The Self does no vichara. That which

makes the enquiry is the ego. The ‘I’ about which the enquiry is

made is also the ego. As the result of the enquiry the ego ceases

to exist and only the Self is found to exist.”

(Day by Day, 21.11.45.)

But there are people who feel unable to attack the wrong

idea of themselves immediately. They want first to be shown an

intellectual approach. There may also be some who do not even

know how to ‘go within’. To those we recommend first that

they take a closer look at their own ‘person’, at that which they

take as ‘I’.

You say: ‘I sit, I walk’, obviously taking the body as ‘I’,

because it is the body that sits or walks.

But don’t you also say; ‘I think, I believe, I decide’, etc.?

This ‘I’ seems rather to be of the nature of the thinking mind!

And what about your being glad or sad, elated or depressed?

Isn’t it an ‘I’ of some sort of feeling? And at another time there

emerges an ‘I’ which is intending something, planning,

designing, an ‘I’ which seems to be sheer willing?

The conclusion seems to be: ‘I’ means all this together as

my body-mind-person.

‘My?’ Whose? By looking at these ‘I’s quite frankly, we see

that this body-mind-person also is not ‘I’, but ‘mind’. So whose?

Where is the ‘I’ to be found in this case?

A strange whim of language?

Let us consider the body. It cannot be ‘I’, because everybody

talks about ‘his’ body. Apart from that, it has been born without

having asked its ‘I’ beforehand, and it shall die without asking

its ‘I’ whether it agrees to it or not. And in between it is living

upto its appointed hour without any consideration for its ‘I’, a

mere biological phenomenon, a product of this planet, and it

seems rather presumptuous to say even ‘my’ body. Moreover

‘my’ body does not at all obey me, its ‘I’. Does ‘my’ thinking

mind do that? The answer is: ‘No, on the contrary.’

Thus it seems that thinking, feeling and willing are

functions of the body, or, to be more specific, of its brain, a

biologically reacting mechanism which serves the body properly

without needing an ‘I’ for that purpose.

But still there seems to be an ‘I’, because we are conscious

of it vividly even now, at this moment, when it appears to lose

its last foothold!

Hold it!

Keep very quiet and observe: This ‘I’ does neither think nor

will; it has no qualities, is neither man nor woman, has neither

body nor mind; it has no trace of the ‘Person’ which you had in

mind during your previous questions about the ‘I’. It simply is

conscious of itself as ‘I am’. Not ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’; only ‘I

am’.............................................................................

But beware: It’s not you who has this ‘I’...Consciousness

as an object, but this Consciousness is your real ‘I’!

This pure be-ing ‘I am’ is the first glimpse of the real ‘I’,

the Self, which is by nature Pure Consciousness.

When your attention is keen, then you will discover

simultaneously that there is not now and never has been a wrong

‘I’. It has always been the same ‘real I’, only your mind has

covered it up with the idea which it has about your ‘person’.

There are other opportunities, when we could experience

this pure ‘I’ consciously. One such is during the tiny gap between

two thoughts, when the attention has given up its hold on one

thought and not yet caught the next one. But since we never

tried our attention is not trained this way, and we will hardly

succeed in the attempt.

There is a better chance to catch it between sleeping and

awaking. It is very important to try it, if you are serious in your

hunting the ‘I’. Take care of a few conditions: Try at night just

before you fall asleep to keep as the last thought your intention

to catch as the first thing of all on waking in the morning the

experience of your true ‘I’.

Another condition: You should take care not to awaken

too abruptly such as by an alarm clock, and also not to jump

headlong into your daily morning routine. The moment you

awake, don’t stir, but remember your intention from last night.

You will succeed after a few attempts. And what is possible

once even for a moment can be extended by practice.

This experiment gives you the advantage that you now

know the aim of your endeavour. It will help you in your further

sadhana like leavening in the dough.

Ramana Maharshi named it the transitional ‘I’ and stressed

the importance of this experience again and again.

“The ‘I’-thought is only limited ‘I’. The real ‘I’ is unlimited,

universal, beyond time and space. They are absent in sleep. Just

on rising up from sleep, and before seeing the objective world,

there is a state of awareness which is your pure Self. That must

be known.” (Talks, 311).

“The Self is pure consciousness in sleep; it evolves as ‘I’

without the ‘this’ in the transition stage; and manifests as ‘I and

this’ in the waking state. The individual’s experience is by means

of ‘I’ only. So he must aim at realisation in the way indicated

(i.e., by means of the transitional ‘I’). Otherwise the sleep...

experience does not matter to him. If the transitional ‘I’ be realised

the stratum is found and that leads to the goal.” (Talks, 314).

“I’-thought and ‘this’-thought are both emanations from

the same Light. They are related to rajoguna and tamoguna

respectively. In order to have the Reflected Light (pure sattva)

from rajas and tamas, it must shine forth as ‘I’ – I’, unbroken

by ‘this’-thought. This pure state momentarily intervenes between

sleep and waking. If prolonged it is cosmic consciousness. This

is the only passage to the realisation of the Self-shining Supreme

Be-ing.” (Talks, 323)

“Why is not that pure ‘I’ realised now or even remembered

by us? Because of want of acquaintance with it. It can be

recognised only if it is consciously attained. Therefore make

the effort and gain it consciously.” (Talks, 314).

This transitional ‘I’ is a moment of pure awareness, which

is aware only of itself as ‘I’, pure Identity in itself. Extended by

practice it becomes turiya, the ‘fourth’ of the normal states of

consciousness, the three others of which are the waking state,

dream and deep sleep. The waking state is consciousness in

movement, caused by sense perceptions and the activities of the

mind. In dreaming, consciousness is also moving under the

impact of dream-creations of the mind. In deep sleep,

consciousness is at rest, no thoughts, no pictures, no activity of

any kind. That means it is pure Consciousness. So it would be

Realisation, if we only would know how to become aware of it.

However we cannot; deep-sleep consciousness is covered up by

dullness. But since out of this ‘unconsciousness’ the transitional

‘I’ can arise in the shape of pure awareness of itself, as has been

shown, we think there must be a bridge between deep sleep and

the waking state.

There is none; and none is necessary. Actually there is only

one awareness underlying the three states of consciousness, being

their very substance and at the same time transcending them. It

is called turiya, the ‘fourth’, in relation to the ‘three states’, but

in itself turiyatita, ‘beyond the fourth’. Because of the turiya

being the substance of the other three states, we can become

aware of the transitional ‘I’ and in the same way we can realise

turiya as our true nature: Pure awareness, never waking or

sleeping, never being born or dying.

“Turiya is only another name for the Self. The three states

appear as fleeting phenomena on it and sink into it alone. Aware

of the waking, dreams and deep sleep states, we remain unaware

of our Self. Nevertheless the Self is here and now, it is the only

Reality.” (Talks, 353).

Somebody asked: ‘Relatively speaking, is not the sleep state

nearer to Pure Consciousness than the waking state?’

Ramana Maharshi: “Yes, in this sense: When passing from

sleep to waking the ‘I’-thought must start; the mind comes into

play; thoughts arise; then the functions of the body come into

operation; all these together make us say that we are awake. The

absence of all this evolution is the characteristic of sleep and

therefore it is nearer to Pure Consciousness than the waking

state.”

But one should not therefore desire to be always in sleep.

In the first place it is impossible, for it will necessarily alternate

with the other states. Secondly it cannot be the state of bliss in

which the jnani is, for his state is permanent and not alternating.

Moreover, the sleep state is not recognised to be one of awareness

by people; but the sage is always aware. Thus the sleep state

differs from the state in which the sage is established.

“Still more, the sleep state is free from thoughts and their

impression to the individual. It cannot be altered by one’s will

because effort is impossible in that condition. Although nearer

to Pure Consciousness, it is not fit for efforts to realise the Self.

“The incentive to realise can arise only in the waking state

and efforts can also be made only when one is awake. We learn

that the thoughts in the waking state form the obstacle to gaining

the stillness of sleep; stillness is the aim of the seeker. Even a

single effort to still at least a single thought even for a trice goes

a long way to reach the state of quiescence. Effort is required

and it is possible in the waking state only. There is the effort

here; there is awareness also; the thoughts are stilled; so there is

the peace of sleep gained. That is the state of the jnani. It is

neither sleep nor waking but intermediate between the two.

There is the awareness of the waking state and the stillness of

sleep. It is called jagratsushupti. Call it wakeful sleep or sleeping

wakefulness or sleepless sleep or wakeless waking...it is not the

same as sleep or waking separately. It is the state of perfect

awareness and of perfect stillness combined.” (Talks, 609).

To reach turiya we have first to scrutinize the three states.

In the waking state there is perceiving, thinking, discriminating,

and choosing, liking and disliking, desire and fear, memory

and anticipating, all of them moving round a perceiving centre

‘I’ and caused seemingly by outside objects. In dreams we

experience almost the same without outer promptings, the whole

picture, causes and effects, created by our imagination. In deep

sleep there is nothing; at least we do not remember anything.

But Identity is not wiped out, otherwise a Johnson who went to

sleep might awake as a Benson. How can we bring this Identity

from deep sleep up into the waking state? How can deep Silence

survive in turbulent noise?

We have to use our control of that biologically acting

mechanism, the brain. We do it more or less automatically during

the waking state.

Think of your own room or office. While moving around

you ‘see’ the furniture, because you have to avoid stumbling

over it, but you do not see it consciously; the act of perceiving

is cut short after the initial stage.

There is music coming out of a radio or transistor. Usually

it is similar to the aforesaid while you have to do some work:

you hear it, but not consciously; you cut short the act of listening

after the first stage.

Somebody might tell you something. You not only hear it

but you are listening attentively to grasp the meaning. If you

are not interested, you register the news to your memory... or

(Continued )

My humble salutations to the lotus feet of Bhagavan Sree Ramana Maharshi
and also gratitude to Bhagavan’s great devotees   for the collection)