The Path of Sri Ramana

the very nature of attending to ourself is itself grace. This means that whatever thing we attend to, witness, observe or look at, that thing is nourished and will flourish, being blessed by grace.

In the same way that the sun remains without taking part in the world activities or knowing about them, ātman is neither aware of nor associated with the mind-world emergence, existence, or dissipation. Hence ātman is not a witness aware of anything.

All spiritual practices, other than self-investigation, consider the existence of the individual being or ego rising in the form of ‘I am this body, I am so-and-so’ as real. They are based on the erroneous notion that only by undertaking one of those techniques can an individual (jīva), a trifling mental projection, attain its real nature or ātman

the correct meaning of the term ‘ātma-vicāra’ (self-investigation) is only facing oneself or being self-attentive.

‘ātma-vicāra’ [refers] only to [the practice of] always keeping the mind (that is, attention) on [or in] ātman [oneself]’, says Bhagavan in the treatise Nāṉ Ār?.

When the awareness ‘I am’ is mixed with the adjunct (upādhi) ‘I am so-and-so’, it becomes a thought. Of all thoughts, this thought is the first. But the awareness which shines as ‘I am I’ without any adjunct is indeed ātman or brahman.

“It is easy for me to send the mind forward but impossible for me to make it go backward, that is, to turn it inwards. I can go forward (that is, towards second and third persons) any distance at any speed, but I find it difficult to take even one step backwards (that is, backwards towards the first person)”.’

No one can understand the scriptures’ true spirit merely by his command over language or by his keenness and superiority of intellect.

Similarly, the advance information (given to us by the mahāvākyas, such as ‘I am brahman’) that our eventual reality is brahman may be a useful aid, but can it be the self-investigation practice itself? No, it cannot!