my article

In a comment on one of my recent articles, Self-enquiry, personal experiences and daily routine , an anonymous friend wrote: “...uninterrupted self-attentiveness...” This is not quite possible in my daily work life. I work as a software developer where I have to constantly think to write programs. I try to do be self-attentive while using elevators, walking the corridors... sometimes even while smoking, and also try to be self-attentive while driving. So please tell me how to hold on to the “I” while working. Here the words “... uninterrupted self-attentiveness ...” refer to a sentence that Sri Ramana wrote in the eleventh paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?) , which I quoted in that article , namely: … If one clings fast to uninterrupted svarupa-smarana [self-remembrance] until one attains svarupa [one’s own essential self], that alone [will be] sufficient. … As I explained in a subsequent article, Where to find and how to reach the real presence of our guru ? , the adjective that S...

In a comment on my recent article Self-enquiry: the underlying philosophy can be clearly understood only by putting it into practice , Kirk Crist asked, “in death of the body what are the differences in the experiencing or knowing in the janni and the ajanni”. Though the answer to this question is quite simple, when I started to write it one idea led to another, as a result of which I ended up writing the following: The death of the physical body makes absolutely no difference to a jnani , because jnana or true self-knowledge is the absolutely non-dual, undivided and therefore difference-free experience in which only ‘I am’ — our real self or essential adjunct-free self-conscious being — exists and is known by itself alone. In other words, in the experience of a jnani , who is jnana itself, there is no such thing as a body or world, and therefore no such thing as birth or death. As Sri Ramana says in verse 21 of Upadesa Tanippakkal (verse B-24 of Guru Vachaka Kovai ): The body is i...

The anonymous friend whose comment I replied to in my previous article, Self-enquiry: the underlying philosophy can be clearly understood only by putting it into practice , has replied to that article in another comment on the earlier article I think because I am, but I am even when I do not think . In this latest comment Anonymous writes: First of all, your reply in the form of a separate article is greatly appreciated. It makes me imagine the level of clarity you have on the subject. I confess that I was not very serious when I wrote my earlier comments, though I believe whatever I wrote was true/correct to me. I’m not sure whether I should be writing this reply now or perhaps after thoroughly reading and thinking about it... but I’m writing this as I keep reading your article and getting questions/doubts in between: ‘... sleep is not absolute unconsciousness …’. It would be good if you further clarify what is meant by ‘relative unconsciousness’. Does it mean some part of consciou...

In his written and spoken teachings, Sri Ramana has given us a clear, subtle, profound and complete philosophy, which prompts us to think about our experience of ourself and everything else more deeply than we would ever do without such prompting, and which provides us with a truly satisfactory answer to all the most essential philosophical questions that we could ever ask. However, he did not give us his philosophical teachings merely to satisfy our intellectual curiosity, but only for a single purpose, namely to urge and guide us to practise self-enquiry and self-surrender and thereby to know ourself as we really are. All the philosophy or theory that he has taught us has only this one aim or purpose, so until and unless we actually practise this one path of self-enquiry and self-surrender, we will not gain the real benefit that we should gain from studying his teachings. What he has taught us is not merely a theoretical philosophy but also a practical science, so if we try to restri...