Ramana Maharshi's Forty Verses on What Is

‘What actually exists is only ātma-svarūpa [the ‘own form’ or real nature of oneself]’.

But within the ego there is an element of reality, namely ‘I am’, and that ‘I am’ is the heart.

‘narpadu’ means ‘forty’, Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu actually consists of a total of forty-two verses, two of which form the maṅgalam or ‘auspicious introduction’ and the remaining forty of which form the main ‘text’.

When we study and try to understand his teachings, we should always bear in mind that all he teaches us has one purpose and one purpose alone, namely to direct us, motivate us and encourage us to turn back within to see ourself as we actually are and thereby surrender everything that we are not. All his teachings are therefore centred around and fo

Let anyone believe and follow whatever spiritual philosophy and practices that they want to believe, because what they believe and follow is what is best suited to them at their present level of spiritual growth.

‘uḷḷadu’ means ‘what is’ or ‘what exists’, in the sense of what actually exists rather than what merely seems to exist, and it also means ‘being’ in the sense of both ‘existence’ and ‘existing’.

Bhagavan does not ask us to blindly believe what he teaches us, so he begins his exposition of this philosophy of pure non-duality (advaita) by asking us to critically analyse our own experience of ourself in our three states of waking, dream and sleep, in order to understand why we cannot actually be what we now seem to be.

The awareness that is aware of phenomena (anything other than itself) is the mind or ego,

Verse 7: The world shines only by the mind, but what shines as the space for the appearing and disappearing of the world and mind is the real substance, the infinite whole