Ramana Maharshi Quotes

We must become free. We are free; the work is to know it. We must give up all slavery, all bondage of whatever kind. We must not only give up our bondage to earth and everything and everybody on earth, but also to all ideas of heaven and happiness.

Work done for the Self gives no bondage. Neither desire pleasure nor fear pain from work. It is the mind and body that work, not I. Tell yourself this unceasingly and realise it. Try not to know that you work.

The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.

No one can be a yogi, maintaining a state of mental equilibrium, free from inner involvement in planned desireful activities, unless he has renounced identification with his ego and its unsatisfiable lust for the fruits of actions.

Real change isn't found in some new way to think about yourself, but in freedom from the need to think about yourself at all.

Only if you are joyful, you can be free from the fruit of action.

No practice can take you to liberation. That is important to know. It can be a little step that is useful until you realize you don't need it anymore, because after a certain point it becomes a hindrance.

Whoever does not detach himself from the ego never attains the Absolute and never deciphers life.

It's only when you become love - in other words, when you have dropped your illusions and attachments - that you will "know." As you identify less and less with the "me," you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything.

Who shall blame whom, who praise whom? Whom to seek, whom to avoid? I seek none, nor avoid any, for I am all the universe. I praise myself, I blame myself, I suffer for myself, I am happy at my own will, I am free. This is the Jnâni, the brave and daring. Let the whole universe tumble down; he smiles and says it never existed, it was all a hallucination. He sees the universe tumble down. Where was it! Where has it gone!

One has to go beyond the mind to experience the spiritual bliss of desirelessness.

All bad qualities centre round the ego. When the ego is gone, Realisation results by itself. There are neither good nor bad qualities in the Self. The Self is free from all qualities. Qualities pertain to the mind only.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

I have achieved an inner freedom.

Let us work without desire for name or fame or rule over others. Let us be free from the triple bonds of lust, greed of gain, and anger. And this truth is with us!

The Jivanmukta ('the living free' or one who knows) alone is able to give real love, real charity, real truth, and it is truth alone that makes us free.

Every practice at some point will become a hindrance. No practice can ever take you there, to freedom, to liberation. That's important to realize.

Take someone who doesn't keep score, who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he's free.

Words mean little unless you realize the truth of it yourself. And when you do, you'll be free at last.

The thrall in person may be free in soul

You are already free. You only have to know and realize this truth.

So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action-just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.

To give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all - living in the body, but not of it.

In the East all the religions preach egolessness. So in the East everybody is against the ego from the very beginning. Because of this anti attitude, ego never becomes strong, never comes to a point of integration from where it can be thrown. It is never ripe. So in the East it is very difficult to dissolve the ego, almost impossible.

When we free ourselves from name and form, especially from a body - when we need no body, good or bad - then only do we escape from bondage.