http://riverganga.org/



Here then is the beginning and end Ramana Maharshi's teaching of self-inquiry:

* There is no problem anywhere to be found other than a false belief about what you are.
* The only solution to this problem is to know consciously the truth of what you are, and that truth cannot fail to bring to an end all experience of misery in your life, and projection of that misery on others.
* There is no need to understand what you falsely believe yourself to be, nor is it possible to do so.
* This false belief is entirely unconscious, and it cannot be seen.
* This is not a matter of this rather than that, a matter of believing that I am Consciousness say, rather than ego, but a matter of limitation. In truth, we are — you are — I am — everything that is. I am the ground, and I am the totality of spontaneously arising phenomena which comes and goes within me. There is nothing apart from me. The falseness lies entirely in the fearful move to limit, to carve out a defensible position within the limitless reality and name it me.
* There is nothing at all you can do — no practice you can undertake, or discontinue or perfect — that will in any way help you rid yourself of this false belief, apart from directly seeing for yourself the truth, in this moment, again and again.
* All that you know, all that you can know is that you are here. All the rest is story and conjecture. Self-inquiry, which is the effort to see the truth of what you are now, is therefore nothing other than the turning of attention deliberately, consciously to that simple, single knowing of your hereness for no purpose other than to see it directly for yourself.
* There is no understanding, no teaching and no teacher that can give you or show you what you are. You must do this for yourself. The most a teacher can give you is encouragement and practical direction from experience.

The self-inquiry of Ramana is unbelievably simple, and being so simple, it will take some time and careful effort actually to receive its essential transmission. We have all the time in the world to consider all this as carefully as needed.