The Magician Ramana

Awareness wherein brightly shine
These many forms of persons, places, time,
All separate-seeming though in substance One:
Into that same Awareness he transmuted
This `I' of mine. Now, nothing to be known,
My past undone, my being his,
I stand, unruffled Bliss,
Untouched by any shock.
Lord Siva-Venkatesa he who,
King of kings, came conquering
And made me his alone.

What is this `I' that rises from within?
Only a thought that, like a bubble, floats
Up to the troubled surface of Awareness.
In sleep the sea is still, no bubble rises:
Then too you are.
You're not the `I' that rises and then sets,
You are the sole Awareness in the All,
The eternal, uncreated Light of Being.

No form or feature has he of his own,
Yet form and feature to all beings gives;
Knowledge and ignorance, both to him unknown,
Each human mind from him alone derives.
He brought me into being but to think
Of him as `you', of me and mine as `yours';
And he has left me wordless, deedless, prone,
Helpless on death's brink.
Only the vast beatitude endures.

~ from Muruganar's `Suttaruttal', translated by Prof K. Swaminathan