Do You Exist Or Not?

Sri Ramana Maharshi

17-8-1946

This morning, a number of Gujarati visitors arrived here, evidently returning from Pondicherry, after darshan there on the 15th. One of them asked Bhagavan, “What is meant by Self-realisation? Materialists say there is no such thing as God or Self.” 

Bhagavan said, “Never mind what the materialists or others say; and don’t bother about Self or God. Do you exist or not? What is your idea of yourself? What do you mean by ‘I’?” 

The visitor said he did not understand by ‘I’ his body, but something within his body. 

Thereupon, Bhagavan continued, “You concede ‘I’ is not the body but something within it. See then from whence the ‘I’ arises within the body. See whether it arises and disappears, or is always present. You will admit there is an ‘I’ which emerges as soon as you wake up, sees the body, the world and all else, and ceases to exist when you sleep; and that there is another ‘I’ which exists apart from the body, independently of it, and which alone is with you when the body and the world do not exist for you, as for instance in sleep. Then ask yourself if you are not the same ‘I’ during sleep and during the other states. Are there two ‘I’s? You are the same one person always. Now, which can be real, the ‘I’ which comes and goes, or the ‘I’ which always abides? Then you will know that you are the Self. This is called Self-realisation. Self-realisation is not however a state which is foreign to you, which is far from you, and which has to be reached by you. You are always in that state. You forget it, and identify yourself with the mind and its creation. To cease to identify yourself with the mind is all that is required. We have so long identified ourselves with the not-Self that we find it difficult to regard ourselves as the Self. Giving up this identification with the not-Self is all that is meant by Self-realisation. How to realise, i.e., make real, the Self? We have realised, i.e., regarded as real, what is unreal, the not-Self. To give up such false realisation is Self-realisation.”