Sometimes when we’ve looked up to a teacher or two for a loooong time it’s scary to even think we may have broken through (gone beyond) them in some area. We enter a lonely abyss and find – WOW!! – a whole new freedom! Beyond amazing.

WHY, OH WHY, can’t mankind (1) look for the [a] premise and [b] definition of terms oftentimes but not always clearly provided by the speaker (2) enter into the ensuing discussion adhering strictly to the “givens” and (3) draw conclusions based strictly on the fundamentals of said discussion? Pulling in a brand new element is tantamount to expecting your interlocutor to join you in your aphoristic juxtaposition of apples and oranges.

Some time ago, a Bengali youth asked Bhagavan,
“You say that the Self is present at all times and at all places. Where exactly is that ‘I’?”

Bhagavan replied with a smile,
“When I say you are present at all times and at all places and you ask where is that ‘I’, it is something like asking, when you are in Tiruvannamalai, ‘Where is Tiruvannamalai?’ When you are everywhere, where are you to search?
The real delusion is the feeling that you are the body. When you get rid of that delusion, what remains is your Self. You should search for a thing which is not with you but where is the need to search for a thing which is always with you?
All sadhanas are for getting rid of the delusion that you are the body.
The knowledge that ‘I am’ is always there:
call it Atma, or Paramatma or whatever you like. One should get rid of the idea that ‘I am the body’. There is no need to search for that ‘I’ that is the self.
That Self is all-pervading.”

As an illustration of this, I give hereunder the words of Bhagavan in “Unnadhi Nalupadhi”:

Without the Self
where is time and where is space?
If we are the body,
we have to be bound by time and space.
Are we the body?
We are one and identical now, then and
always; here, there and everywhere.
So, we are existent,
without time and space.”

• Reality in Forty Verses, verse 16

_______Letters from Sri Ramanasramam.
Excerpt from Chapter (73)
THE ‘I’ IS THE MIND ITSELF