The Path of Sri Ramana

One should attain this happiness without suppressing the desire for it! But do not toil to achieve objects of worldly pleasure, which give only fleeting happiness.

Oneself (ātman) is svayam-prakāśa (self-luminosity), which shines constantly as ‘oneself alone is oneself’, the form ‘I am’.

Thus this egotism (ahaṁ-bhāva) that rises as ‘I am this body’ is a mere phantom appearance, which is a mental fabrication without any real existence or form.

(leaving aside external phenomena)

All are motivated by a desire for a better state than the present.

So do not accept this ego, the truth of which you have not yet found out by scrutiny; deny it by giving no importance to its existence, root it out and burn it to extinction by attending to how or from what (whence) it rises! Instead of doing so,

If we thus find this ‘I’ to be non-existent, we will find the four defects also to be ever non-existent. Our real experience will then be the ever-shining defectless ātman alone.

Without such self-love and dispassion, it is not possible to know oneself.

If it is investigated in this way, ego will disappear, ceasing to exist, and what will then be experienced is not a place on the right side of the chest in the body but only ātman (our real nature) – which is devoid of the body, devoid of inside and outside, devoid of right and left, and devoid of the constraints of time and place.