Will meditation help me?

P: Will meditation help me?

Ramana: You must learn to realize the subject and object as one. In meditating on an object, whether concrete or abstract, you are destroying the sense of oneness and creating duality. Meditate on what you are in Reality. Try to realize that the body is not you, the emotions are not you, the intellect is not you. When all these are still, you will find ...

P: What?

R: You will discover, it is not for me to say what any individual experience will be. It will reveal itself. Hold onto that.

~ A. R. Natarajan, Timeless in Time

Don't differentiate between work and meditation

Sri Bhagavan often said, 'While doing the work, don't have the idea, 'I am doing the work'. If you can keep up this attitude, work will not be a burden, and no problems will touch you.'

Don't differentiate between work and meditation. If you don't differentiate, every job you do becomes meditation. And don't make distinctions between different kinds of work. Don't think, 'This is good work. This is bad work.' If you treat all work equally, any work you do will be your sadhana.'

~ Annamalai Swami, Final Talks

Bhakti-Vichara

When one adopting self-enquiry
Reaches the journey's end and gains
Samadhi's bliss, it is solely due
To the grace of God, one's inmost Self,
Life of one's life.

Unless the Self, the God within,
By power of grace pulls in the mind,
Who has the strength through his own effort
To stop the rogue mind's outward drift
And merge it in the Heart and so
Gain peace?

Without the Guru's grace one cannot
Win the grace of God with eightfold form.
And this God's grace comes neither from
Learning nor from aught else but through
Devotion and devotion only.

Whether or not God's grace abundant
Sustains you, entertain no doubt.
That you, avid for freedom from bondage,
Have started self-enquiry, this
is proof enough of grace.

To tell the truth, God's grace supreme
And the keen quest "Who am I?",
Which means abidance in the Heart,
Will work together as mutual aids
And bring one to the state of oneness
With the Self supreme.

This maya world-dream will not end
Unless the Self within speaks out.
The enquiry "Who is the dreamer
Of this dream?" is prayer addressed
To Him to speak and wake us up.

It is said that meditation
On one's own being is supreme
Devotion to all-transcending God,
Because, though spoken of as two,
They are in substance one.

The way of knowledge and the way of love
Are interwoven close. Don't tear
Asunder these inseparables.
But practice both together holding
In the heart the two as one.


Meditation on the Self
Is devotion to the Lord
Supreme, since He abides as this
Our very Self.
-Sri Bhagavan


~ Sri Muruganar, Guru Vachaka Kovai

the true Heart

Bhagavan frequently told me [Annamalai Swami] that I should be aware of the Self while I was working.

He repeatedly told me, 'Don't forget your real nature. It is not necessary that you should sit and meditate. You should meditate all the time, even while you are working.'

In the beginning, when I first came to Bhagavan, I asked him for a mantra. In response he told me to repeat 'Siva Siva' continuously. Later, Bhagavan advised me to keep my attention in the Heart while I was working. I had read that Bhagavan had spoken of a place called the Heart-centre which he located in the right side of the chest. I had assumed that Bhagavan wanted me to concentrate on this particular centre. However, when I started to practise in this way, Bhagavan stopped me and corrected me.

'This right-side Heart-centre is not the true Heart," he said. 'The real Heart is not located anywhere. It is all-pervasive.'

'Stop meditating on the Heart-centre,' he continued. 'Find the source. That is the true Heart. Just as electricity comes not from the individual meter boxes in people's houses but from a single source, so too the whole world has a single source, which is the Self or the Heart. Seek and enquire into this source of limitless energy. If the centre of the Self were really located in the body, the Self would die when the body dies."

~ from Living by the Words of Bhagavan