Nothing To Real-ize

Sri Ramana Maharshi

9-1-1946 Afternoon

Mr. P. B's question led B to speak further about realization and he said, "There are no stages in realization or mukti. There are no degrees of jnana. So that there cannot be one stage of jnana with the body and another stage when the body is dropped. The jnani knows he is the Self and that nothing, neither his body nor anything else exists, but the Self. To such one what difference could the presence or absence of body make?"

"It is false to speak of Realization. What is there to realize? The real is as it is, ever. How to real-ize it? All that is required is this. We have realized the unreal .i.e., regarded as real what is unreal. We have to give up this attitude. That is all that is required for us to attain jnana. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The akasa in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the akasa there. The akasa was there then and is also there now. Similarly we have simply to throw out all the age-long samskaras which are inside us, and when all of them have been given up, the Self will shine alone. Mukti-jnana-dhyana is our real nature. They are other names for the Self."