Efforts Only To Give Up Bodily Identification

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Mr. Joshi: I am a householder. I have dependants and obstacles in the way of my spiritual progress. What should I do?

B: See whether those dependents and obstacles are outside you, whether they exist within you.

I am a beginner. How should I start?

B: Where are you now? Where is the goal? What is the distance to be convered? The Self is not somewhere far away to be reached. You are always that. You only have to give up your habit, a long standing one, of identifying yourself with the non-Self. All effort is only for that. By turning the mind outwards, you have been seeing the world, the non-Self. If you turn it inwards you will see the Self.

After this, Lokamma began singing a Tamil song. B at once said, "Mother used to sing this song very often. This often repeats the very same thing we have been talking about now." Thereupon I asked who the author of the song was.

He said, "Avudai Ammal. She has composed a great many songs. They are very popular in those parts. Some of them have been published. still so many remain unpublished. They have been handed down orally from generation to generation, mostly through women, who learn them by heart, hearing them from others and singing them along with those who already know them."

Song's Meaning Below:

How did the Self that ever is

Awareness — bliss,

How did It till now behave

As if It had forgotten this?

Wonder of wonders, beyond understanding

Is your strange fear,

My Swan, my dear,

Your fear of me!

Mind learning, knowing and forgetting,

Body begotten, begetting and then dying,

Whence these impurities in Purity?

Bigness, smallness, class, rank, sight and seer —

Why these darkling waves in the full deep sea of bliss?

No need for speech or vow of silence;

No coming or going; no beginning, end or middle.

Nor light nor sound; no quality.

No separateness and hence no fear.

Oh wonder of wonders, the things that seem

In a dream!

In and out, high and low, and all the ten directions

Lost in light illimitably vast,

Unbroken, unsupported, full and calm,

Pure Awareness, Bliss immutable,

The once-remote, long — longed — for goal

Now here, joy, joy!