Pradakshina - Going Round the Self

Sri Ramana Maharshi

15-4-1946 Morning

About 8 a.m. Nagamma came into the hall and prostrated herself before Bhagavan, after having gone round the hall a few times. Bhagavan said, “Ah! you too have started going round. Have you learnt it from Ravanamma? She used to go round and round, till I spoke to her about it the other day. If one goes round like that, everybody who comes here thinks ‘Apparently the proper thing here is to go round’ and starts going round. Thus all people go round. After all, the proper pradakshina is going round the Self, or, more accurately, to realise that we are the Self and that within us all the countless

spheres revolve, going round and round, as described in the following stanza of Ribhu Gita (3rd Chapter, 39th Verse).

Reflecting “I am the all-blissful Self”

Is worship as with words and flowers.

True circumambulation is the thought,

“In me the million universes roll”,

He who knows all beings bow to him

And he to none,

He bows before the Mahalinga-Self.

“Some go on doing a number of namaskarams, e.g. that Janaki, she goes on striking her head down countless times along with namaskarams. She goes round a number of times. At each window she falls down and does a number of namaskarams. However much I tell her, she won’t leave off such practices.” Somebody here interjected, “It seems she is known to Bhagavan since her childhood.” Bhagavan said, “Yes, yes,” and continued, “There are others who come and fall before me while I am moving. They lie prostrate for some minutes. I cannot stand for them on account of my physical infirmity. So I walk on, telling myself, ‘Only if we do namaskarams we will be benefited. After all, true namaskaram is only the giving up the ‘I’-sense, or killing the ego’.”