Ramana Maharshi Meditation Quotes and Sayings

• The Self is pure consciousness.
   
• The ignorance is identical with the `I'-thought. Find its source and it will vanish.
   
• You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you.
   
• If you keep on making the enquiry till you fall asleep, the enquiry will go on during sleep also. Take up the enquiry again as soon as you wake up.
   
• There is no other way to succeed than to draw the mind back every time it turns outwards and fix it in the Self.
   
• When you give up thinking of outward objects and prevent your mind from going outwards by turning it inwards and fixing it in the Self, the Self alone remains.
   
• This `I'-thought is not pure. It is contaminated with the association of the body and senses. See to whom the trouble is. It is to the `I'-thought. Hold it. Then the other thoughts vanish.
   
• `Who am I ?' is not a mantra. It means that you must find out where in you arises the `I'-thought which is the source of all other thoughts.
   
• After the rise of the `I'-thought there is the false identification of the `I' (Self) with the body, the senses, the mind, etc. `I' is wrongly associated with them and the true `I' is lost sight of.
   
• From where does this `I' arise? Seek for it within; it then vanishes. This is the pursuit of wisdom. When the mind unceasingly investigates its own nature, it transpires that there is no such thing as mind. This is the direct path for all. The mind is merely thoughts. Of all thoughts the thought `I' is the root. Therefore the mind is only the thought `I'.
   
• You withdraw your mind completely from the world and turn it within and abide there, that is, if you keep awake always to the Self which is the substratum of all experiences, you will find the world of which you are now aware is just as unreal as the world in which you lived in your dream.
   
• The mind, having been so long a cow accustomed to graze stealthily on others' estates, is not easily confined to her stall. However much her keeper tempts her with luscious grass and fine fodder, she refuses the first time. Then she takes a bit, but her innate tendency to stray away asserts itself and she slips away. On being repeatedly tempted by the owner, she accustoms herself to the stall until finally, even if let loose, she does not stray away. Similarly with the mind. If once it finds its inner happiness it will not wander outward.