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)



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