Merging of the mind alone needed

Sri Ramana Maharshi

29-3-1946 afternoon

A visitor wrote some questions in Tamil and presented them to Bhagavan. Bhagavan said, “He wants to know how to turn the mind from sense enjoyments and realise that bliss which is said to be so much above sense-enjoyments. There is only one way, making the mind merge in That which is not senseenjoyment. As you concentrate on That, the sense attractions will fall of their own accord. Again, he asks, ‘When can I attain that bliss?’ He is daily enjoying that bliss in sleep. There, no sense object is present, and he still enjoys great bliss. We have not got to attain bliss. We are bliss. Bliss is another name for us. It is our nature. All that we have to do is to turn the mind, draw it from the sense objects every time it goes towards them, and fix it in the Self. He asks whether he will attain bliss after death. There is no need to die to attain bliss. Merging of the mind alone is necessary. Death is also another name for us. For what is death but giving up the body? Our real nature is to be without the body.”

After a pause Bhagavan added, “The story of Indra and Ahalya in Yoga Vasishta strongly illustrates how, by the force of the mind being merged in one thing, all other things will cease to affect one. There Ahalya, the wife of a king, falls in love with a rake called Indra and they passionately love each other. The matter reached the king’s ears and attains the magnitude of a great public scandal. The king then orders the couple to be put through various cruel tortures. But neither of them is affected by the tortures. Their faces do not even show a twitch of pain but are blissfully smiling at each other. The king, baffled by all this, asks them what the secret of their strength and resistance is. They said, ‘What! don’t you know? We are looking at each other, and so engrossed are we with each other, that our mind has no room in it for any other thoughts. So far as we are concerned, we two alone exist, each for the other, and nothing else exists. How then can we be affected by other things?’ Such is the power of the merged mind.”