Five Questions

Sri Ramana Maharshi

3-1-1946 Afternoon

Mr. Joshi put five questions. I give below the questions and B's answers.

Q1: Should I go on asking 'Who am I?' without answering? Who asks whom? Which bhavana (attitude) should be in the mind at the time of enquiry? What is 'I' - the Self or the ego?

M: In the enquiry 'who am I?', I is the ego. The question really means, what is the source or origin of this ego? You need not have any bhavana in the mind. All that is required is you must give up the bhavana that you are the body of such and such a description, with such and such a name etc. There is no need to have a bhavana about your real nature. It exists as it always does: it is real and no bhavana.

Q2: I cannot be always engaged in this enquiry, for I have got other work to do, and when I do such work I forget this quest.

M: When you do other work, do you cease to exist? You always exist, do you not?

Q3: Without the sense of doership - the sense 'I am doing' - work cannot be done.

M: It can be done. Work without attachment. Work will go on even better that when you worked with the sense that you were the doer.

Q4: I don't understand what work I should do and what not.

M: Don't bother. What is destined as work to be done by you in this life will be done by you whether you like it or not.

Q5: Why should I try to realize? I will emerge from this state, as I wake up from a dream. We do not make an attempt to get out of a dream during sleep.

M: In dream, you have no inkling that it is a dream and so you don't have the duty of trying to get out of it by your effort. But in this life you have some intuition, by your sleep experience, by reading and hearing, that this life is something like a dream, and hence the duty is cast on you to make an effort and get out of it. However, who wants you to realize the Self, if you don't want it? If you prefer to be in the dream, stay as you are.