Sri Ramana Maharshi
Source: Letters from Sri Ramanansramam
Yesterday morning, a group of Andhras arrived, and started questioning Bhagavan within ten minutes of arrival.
Question: "Bhagavan teaches us always to know ourselves. He should kindly teach us how to know ourselves, and bless us."
Bhagavan's reply: "The kindness is always there. You should ask for something that is not there, and not for something that is there already. You should believe with all your heart that the kindness is there. That is all."
Source: Day by Day with Bhagavan
A barrister from Bombay asked Bhagavan, "I have tried Bhagavan's method for about six years and yet I have not made any progress. When I meditate, other thoughts come. For people like me, living in cities and doing our work and coming here only occasionally, what sadhana would Bhagavan advise so that we may succeed better than I have so far been able to do?"
Bhagavan: Your real nature is always there, your meditation, etc., come only temporarily. Reality being your Self, there is nothing for you to realise. All that is required is that you should give up regarding the unreal as real, which is what all are doing. The object of all meditation, dhyana or japa is only that, to give up all thoughts regarding the not-self, to give up many thoughts and to keep to the one thought. As for sadhana, there are many methods. You may do vichara, asking yourself "Who am I?" or, if that does not appeal to you, you may do dhyana "I am Brahman" or otherwise, or you may concentrate on a mantra or name in japa. The object is to make the mind one-pointed, to concentrate it on one thought and thus exclude our many thoughts, and if we do this, eventually even the one thought will go and the mind will get extinguished in its source.
Visitor: In actual practice I find I am not able to succeed in my efforts. Unless Bhagavan's Grace descends on me I cannot succeed.
Bhagavan: Guru's Grace is always there. You imagine it is something, somewhere high up in the sky, far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart, and the moment you effect subsidence or merger of the mind into its source, the Grace rushes forth, spouting as from a spring, from within you.