Atma Vidya

Sri Ramana Maharshi

26-2-1946 Morning

Next the talk drifted to the Self being pratyaksha and Bhagavan then related how the song Atma Vidya was composed. 

He said, "Any vidya is for the purpose of knowing something. If it is so self-evident as to render the well-known classical example of hastamalakam or a gooseberry on the palm a false analogy, as Muruganar had put it, where was the need for Atma vidya, whether you call it easy or not? What Muruganar meant to say was: 'In the classical example, a hand is necessary, a hand that will and can feel a fruit on it, a fruit, an eye that can see, a person that has already known what fruit it is, and so and so forth. But for knowing the Self, nothing at all except the Self is needed.' In sleep for instance nothing at all exists for us except ourselves and we admit we existed during that sleep. On waking we say, ‘I slept and none of us believes there are two ‘I’s, the one that slept and the one that is awake now. In the classical example all these must exist to make the fruit self-evident. All these depend on or derive from the Self and make the fruit self-evident. How much more self-evident must the Self itself be?"

"Anyhow there it was, Muruganar had written the pallavi and anupallavi and wanted the charanams. He said he could not possibly complete the song, as somehow no more lines would come to him, and so requested me to complete it. Thereupon I wrote this song. First I wrote only one stanza or charanam, but Muruganar wanted at least four, thereupon I made three more. Finally I recollected, I had not made any mention of Annamalai and so made a fifth charanam also and made mention of Annamalai in it, as Ponnambalam is mentioned in the stanzas of the song in Nandanar story on which our song is modeled."