Ramana Maharshi's Forty Verses on What Is

the main subject matter of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu is not the nature of reality but the means to attain it. However, Bhagavan gives us in many verses pointers to the nature of reality, despite the fact that little can be said about it.

The two important pieces of information that Bhagavan conveys in this clause are firstly that the existing substance (the substance that actually exists) exists in the heart, which means within ourself, in our innermost core, and secondly that it exists without thought. Let us examine those two pieces of information more deeply.

wisdom or true knowledge is not merely some intellectual or theoretical knowledge, which can be attained simply by logical analysis and reasoning, but is actual knowledge of the absolute truth or reality, which can be attained only through direct and immediate experience.

the central aim of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, which was to teach us ‘the nature of reality and the means by which we can attain it’.

Verse 11: Knowing anything other than oneself is ignorance, but when one knows the reality of oneself, knowledge and ignorance of everything else will cease.

Verse 29: Investigating by an inward sinking mind where one rises as ‘I’ alone is the path of jñāna, whereas thinking ‘I am not this, I am that’ is an aid but not vicāra.

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

In the fourth paragraph of Nāṉ Ār? he says, ‘Excluding thoughts [or ideas], there is not separately any such thing as world’, and in the fourteenth paragraph he says, ‘What is called the world is only thought’.

to be the perfect happiness that we always actually are, it is necessary for us to be aware of ourself as we actually are, and the means for this is for us to investigate ourself and thereby surrender the false ‘self’ (namely ego) that we now seem to be.