Guru Vachaka Kovai

Sri Ramana Maharshi/Sri Muruganar

From Guru vachaka kovai (Collection of Guru's Sayings by Sri Muruganar)

Individual Gods and Goddesses and their particular powers will appear to be real only in the imagination of those minds which admire them. Such mental delusion is at all times completely non-existent for Self, which transcends the mind. 

It is only due to the false sense-bound knowledge of the ignorant that they say that Muktas who have realized the Truth have individuality [vyakti]. Truly, universality [avyakti] is the real state of a Jnani, whose nature is the Expanse of Consciousness; the individuality seen in Him by devotees is a reflection of their own individuality. 

That which shines in the heart of an earnest aspirant as the Supreme Reality is mere Jnana itself. Why therefore, after the annihilation of the ego, point out “This One is a great Jnani, and that One is another”? Are They merely the bodies? 

With great eagerness and wonder you fly to see one Mahatma here and another Mahatma there! If you inquire, attain and know the Maha-Atma [i.e. the Great Self] within your own heart, then every Mahatma is none other than that One [within you]. 

Whatever high and wonderful state of tapas one may have attained, if one still identifies oneself with an individuality, one cannot be a Sahaja-Jnani [i.e. One in the State of Effortlessness]; one is only an aspirant of, perhaps, an advanced stage. 

Leaving aside that true Self-Consciousness, which is devoid of the least feeling of individuality, and displaying any number of siddhis, is a sheer waste. Who but those fools who are incapable of knowing Self, will desire these senseless siddhis? 

The Jnani, the Formless One who ever abides as the Supreme Self, is a collected totality of all individual siddhis. All the siddhis which function through them are His alone, since He is the witness of them. Know Him as none other than Lord Dakshinamurti!