The self within waits for you

D: You often say, 'the whole world exists not without you', 'everything depends upon you,' 'what is there without you?', etc. This is really baffling. The whole world was there before my birth. It will be there after my death even as it has survived the deaths of so many who once lived as I am living now.

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Did I ever say that the world is there because of you? But I have put to you the question 'what is there without your self?' You must know that by the self the body, subtle or gross, was not meant.

Besides, the idea is put to you that if you once know the Self in which all the ideas move, not excluding the idea of yourself, of others like yourself and of the world, you can realise the truth that there is a Reality, a supreme Truth which is the Self of all the world you now see, the Self of all the selves, the one Real, which is the Parama Atman, the supreme Eternal, as distinguished from the Jeeva, the ego-self which is impermanent. You must not mistake the ego-self or the bodily idea for the Atman.

D: Then you mean the Atman is God?

Sri Ramana Maharshi: You see the difficulty. The Vichara 'to know the self' is different in method from the meditation "Shivoham" or "Soham", "Lord Shiva I am" or "He I am." I rather lay stress upon self-knowledge, for, you are first concerned with yourself before you proceed to know the world and its Lord. The "Soham" meditation or 'I am Brahman' meditation is more or less a mental thought. But the quest for the self I speak of is a direct method, indeed superior to the other meditation; for, the moment you get into a movement of quest for the self and go deeper and deeper, the real Self is waiting there to take you in and then whatever is done is done by something else and you have no hand in it. In this process, all doubts and discussions are automatically given up just as one who sleeps forgets, for the time being, all his cares.

D: What certainty is there that something else waits there to welcome me?

Sri Ramana: When one is a sufficiently developed soul (Pakvi) he becomes naturally convinced.

D: How is this development possible?

Sri Ramana: Various answers are given. But whatever the previous development, Vichara (earnest quest) quickens the development.

D: That is arguing in a circle. I am developed and so I am strong for the quest. The quest itself gives my development.

Sri Ramana: The mind has always this sort of difficulty. It wants a certain theory to satisfy itself. Really, no theory is necessary for the man who seriously desires to approach God or to realise his own true being.

~ Sat-Darshana Bhashya