our Beloved Bhagavan draws us into this ...

Two birds, one of them mortal, the other immortal,
live in the same tree. The first one pecks at the fruit,
sweet or bitter; the second looks on without eating.
Thus the personal self pecks at the fruit of this world,
bewildered by suffering, always hungry for more.
But when he meets the True Self, the resplendent God,
the source of creation, all his cravings are stilled.
Perceiving Self in all creatures, he forgets himself
in the service of all; good and evil both vanish;
delighting in Self, playing like a child with Self,
he does whatever is called for, whatever the result.

Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings,
vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle,
unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat.
Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue
utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind,
grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth.
He who finds it is free; he has found himself;
he has solved the great riddle; his heart forever is at peace.
Whole, he enters the Whole. His personal self
returns to its radiant, intimate, deathless source.
As rivers lose name and form when they disappear
into the sea, the sage leaves behind all traces
when he disappears into the light. Perceiving the truth,
he becomes the truth; he passes beyond all suffering,
beyond death; all knots of his heart are loosed.

~ Mundaka Upanishad, III.1.1-2.9

Seeing is being

You are the Self. You exist always. Nothing more can be predicated of the Self than it exists. Seeing God or the Self is only being God or your Self. Seeing is being.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day with Bhagavan

How can one best worship God?

D: What is the common ground of all religions?

Bhagavan: That one point where all religions meet is the realisation, in no mystical sense, but in the most worldly and everyday sense -- and the more worldly and everyday and practical the better -- the fact is that 'God is everything and everything is God'.

From this point the work of the practice of this mental comprehension begins, and all it amounts to is the breaking of a habit. One has to cease calling things 'things' and to call them God; and instead of thinking them to be things, to know them to be God; instead of imagining 'existence' to be the only thing possible, to realise that existence is only the creation of the mind (for if there were not existence the mind could not see anything) and that non-existence is a necessity if you are going to postulate existence. The knowledge of things only shows the existence of an organ to cognize. There are no sounds to the deaf, nothing to see for the blind, and the mind is merely an organ of conception or of appreciation of certain sides of God.

God is infinite, and therefore existence and non-existence are merely component parts. Not that I wish to say God is made up of definite component parts. It is hard to be comprehensible when talking of God ... True knowledge comes from within and not from without. And true knowledge is not "knowing" but seeing.

D: How can one worship God best?

B: How can you best worship God? Why, by not trying to worship him, by giving up your whole self to him, and showing that every thought, every action, is only a working of that One Life (God).

~ from A Practical Guide to Know Yourself, Conversations with Sri Ramana Maharshi, compiled and edited by Sri A. R. Natarajan

His sublime state of humility

One's greatness increases to the extent that one becomes humble. The reason why God is supreme to such an extent that the whole universe bows to Him is His sublime state of humility in which the deluded ego never rises unknowingly.

Is it not on account of His behaving so humbly, as one ever in the service of every creature, that God stands worthy of all the glorious worships ever performed by all the worlds? By seeing Himself in all, by being humble even to devotees who bow to everyone, and by naturally remaining at such a pinnacle of humility that nothing can be humbler than Himself, the state of being supreme has come to the Lord.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramana Darsanam

'i am' itself is God

Q: Why has God made me as I am?

Sri Nisargadatta: Which God are you talking about? What is God? Is he not the very light by which you ask the question? ‘I am” itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor the mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.

Q: How am I to find that love?

Sri N: What do you love now? The ‘I am’. Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing else. This, when effortless and natural, is the highest state. In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.


~ I Am That

To see Him is to be consumed by Him

17. To those who do not know the Self and to those who
do, the body is the `I'. But to those who do not know the Self
the `I' is bounded by the body; while to those who within the
body know the Self the `I' shines boundless. Such is the
difference between them.

18. To those who do not know and to those who do, the
world is real. But to those who do not know, Reality is bounded
by the world; while to those who know, Reality shines formless
as the ground of the world. Such is the difference between them.

19. The debate, `Does free will prevail or fate?' is only
for those who do not know the root of both. Those who have
known the Self, the common source of freewill and of fate,
have passed beyond them both and will not return to them.


20. To see God and not the Self that sees is only to see a
projection of the mind. It is said that God is seen by him
alone who sees the Self; but one who has lost the ego and
seen the Self is none other than God.

21. When scriptures speak of `seeing the Self' and `seeing
God', what is the truth they mean? How to see the Self? As
the Self is one without a second, it is impossible to see it.
How to see God? To see Him is to be consumed by Him.

~ from Reality in Forty Verses