Ramana Maharshi Quotes

I am Walter, a body, but more important than the body is my spirit.

You are not your body; you are not your brain, not even your mind. You are Spirit. All you have to do is reawaken to the memory, to remember.

Come to the Root of the Root of your Self

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

We're all looking for love, in our confusion, until we find our way back to the realization that love is what we already are.

The state of self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been.

There is no mind to control if you realise the self. The mind having vanished, the self shines forth. In the realised man, the mind may be active or inactive, the self remains for him.

Books simply help you to see what is already within your self. That's what enlightenment is all about.

You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.

You are not a human being. You are not your body, you are not your mind, and you are not your soul. These are things that You have. The You that has these things - indeed, that has given your Self these things - is far bigger than any of them, and even all of them put together.

On the deepest level, what I know for sure is that who I am, essentially, is consciousness and consciousness is timeless and it transcends the body; it transcends the psychological "me," the egoic self. Everybody can know themselves as consciousness.

You yourselves are the Being you are seeking.

The truth is that we are a part of God. God could not have created anything except out of his own consciousness. We're all his dream, and our duty in life that God has assigned to us, that the universe has placed squarely in our laps, is to find out who we really are. "Gnothi seauton," as the Greeks used to say. "Know thyself." But to know thyself, if you trace it back, to the deeper and deeper levels, you discover that that self is not your body or your ego or your personality or your country or anything, that's just a sack of self-definitions that you carry around with you

Whatever be the means adopted, you must at last return to the Self, so why not abide as the Self here and now?

The "ego" like its correlative "non-ego", is the product of the body, mind etc. The only proof of the existence of the real Self is realisation.

Remove the Ego and Avidya (Ignorance) is gone. Look for it, the ego vanishes and the real Self alone remains.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher's or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself - Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.

As the body fades - which it will inevitably do as we stay here on the planet - it really behooves us to wake up to who we really are. You can either go along willingly or be dragged, because it will happen.

This ego - the less there is of it, the nearer I am to that which I really am: the universal body.

Focus your mind on what your Highest Self chooses to be.

Strictly speaking, "you" cannot become enlightened, because who you take yourself to be is like a ripple in the ocean of consciousness - or a little wave if you're a VIP - and the ripple doesn't become enlightened until it realizes that its ripple-identity is ultimately a misperception, that it is the ocean taking on a fleeting ripple-form.

Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to remember Who You Are. And to remember who everyone else is.

Anyone who knows who God made them to be will never try to be someone else.