Ramana Maharshi Quotes

In accordance with the prarabdha of each, the One whose function it is to ordain makes each to act. What will not happen will never happen, whatever effort one may put forth. And what will happen will not fail to happen, however much one may seek to prevent it. This is certain. The part of wisdom therefore is to stay quiet.

2. That, from where all the activities of the embodied beings emerge, is mentioned as the heart. The description of its form is conceptual.

Forgetfulness of your real nature is true death; remembrance of it is rebirth

12. The world is none other than the mind. The mind is none other than the heart. Therefore the entire story finishes in the heart.

Your own Self-realization is the greatest service you can render the world.

Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord. True surrender is the love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not even for the sake of salvation. In other words, complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self-enquiry or through bhakti marga.

Unless one is happy, one cannot bestow happiness on others.

Eating, bathing, going to the toilet, talking, thinking, and many other activities related to the body are all work. How is it that the performance of one particular act is alone (considered) work? To be still is to be always engaged in work. To be silent is to be always talking.

Peace is for the purification of one's mind. Power is for the growth of the community. Having established the community with power, one should then establish supreme peace.

The srutis [scriptures] speak of the Self as being the size of one's thumb, the tip of the hair, an electric spark, vast, subtler than the subtlest, etc. They have no foundation in fact. It is only being, but different from the real and the unreal; it is knowledge, but different from knowledge and ignorance. How can it be defined at all? It is simply being.

What message is needed when heart speaks to heart?

The Self itself is God.

What is called mind is a wondrous power existing in Self. It projects all thoughts. If we set aside all thoughts and see, there will be no such thing as mind remaining separate; therefore, thought itself is the form of the mind. Other than thoughts, there is no such thing as the mind.

The mind will subside only by means of the enquiry 'Who am I?'. The thought 'Who am I?', destroying all other thoughts, will itself finally be destroyed like the stick used for stirring the funeral pyre.

The place where even the slightest trace of the 'I' does not exist, alone is Self.