Ramana Maharshi Quotes

Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.

You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself.

The guru is just trying to help you, to bring you to a point where you can at least surrender the ego. Then a deep ecstasy will happen between you and your master. Wherever there is a 'let-go', ecstasy happens - that is the law.

If you wish to shine like day, burn up the night of self-existence. Dissolve in the Being who is everything.

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

It is enough that one surrenders oneself. Surrender is giving oneself up to the original cause of one's being. Do not delude yourself by imagining this source to be some God outside you. One's source is within oneself. Give yourself up to it. That means that you should seek the source and merge in it.

Complete surrender usually happens through living. Your very life is the ground where that happens. There may be a partial surrender and then there may be an opening, and then you may engage in spiritual practice.

Sannyas means dropping the fight with the river, going with the river, allowing the river to take you, learning the art of let-go. Those two small, simple words 'let', 'go', define the very spirit of sannyas. Then one can say 'Let thy kingdom come, thy will be done.' Then one withdraws one's will, and the moment you withdraw your will your life becomes immensely rich. Suddenly the whole is with you, and we can be victorious only when the whole is with us.

All that God asks you most pressingly is to go out of yourself … and let God be God in you

The art of surrender is the art of getting out of the way of your own growth.

It is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully.

Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.

I do not hold God ransom to my success; whatever is his will is my way. I stand by moments; I do not stand by time.

I know that for me I have to get out of the way and let God take control.

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth.

Each and every master, regardless of the era or the place, heard the call and attained harmony with heaven and earth. There are many paths leading to the top of Mount Fuji, but there is only one summit - love.

There is no 'I.' That's an illusion we've got to get beyond.

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.

We're in soul business here.

There is nothing in existence available without payment. If you want to know yourself, you will have to drop all false identities. They are your investments, they are your power, they are your prestige, they are your religion, they are your qualifications. It is difficult to drop them; it feels like death.

Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent.

The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum-total of that life is God.

Our ego seeks to understand everything. It wants all the answers. Part of what destroys the ego and connects us with the light is doing things that absolutely don't make any sense. If we want something beyond logic, like a miracle, we have to do something that is beyond logic.

If one can surrender, if one can trust the Master, one has surrendered to God, one has trusted God. And sooner or later one is bound to come out under the sky. One will remain grateful to the Master forever because without the window there was no sky, there were only walls. But one has to go through the Master and go beyond. One should not cling to the window; the window frame should not become a hindrance.

I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.