How I was brought to Ramana

A friend asked me recently to write about how I came to Ramana. I was brought to him by a chain of events that started with my father’s death and culminated in a visit to Meenakshi Amman Temple in southern India. I’ve written about some of those events on this blog in individual posts but […]

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What did Ramana mean when he quoted, “Be still and know that I am God”?

In Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk 338, we read: …the whole Vedanta is contained in the two Biblical statements: “I am that I AM” and “Be still and know that I am God.” I think people often misunderstand what Ramana meant when he quoted those statements. It’s natural to assume he intended these words […]

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Recordings of Ramana’s songs

The basic idea of this post is, “Please put links to recordings of Ramana’s songs in comments below.” I recently added Michael James’s translations of Ramana’s written works to realization.org. I like Michael’s translations very much because he emphasizes the meaning of Ramana’s words above everything else. I think his translations are probably the most […]

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Pathways Through to Space Two great books caught in a copyright horror show

Earlier today Louise quoted from a book that should be better known, Consciousness Without an Object by Franklin Merrell-Wolff. This is one of the greatest spiritual books of all time. Nothing like it has ever been written, as far as I know, except the same author’s other book, Pathways Through to Space. Unfortunately — multiply […]

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On the difficulty of discussing spiritual experiences

It’s notoriously difficult to make other people know what our spiritual experiences are like. People often say this is due to the fact that spiritual experiences are beyond the mind and therefore are ineffable. In my opinion, in most cases, this is not the real reason. The only experiences that are beyond the mind (unknown […]

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Francis Lucille comments on the observation that started this website

About twenty years ago I noticed something about my mind that seemed extraordinarily important to me for spiritual seekers, but to my surprise I couldn’t find more than partial mentions of it in spiritual literature. After reading and skimming many books over a period of about five years, I managed to find partial mentions in […]

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John Grimes

I seldom read spiritual books anymore but a few days ago I ran across a mention of John Grimes and for some reason, I can’t remember why, decided to read his book on Ramana. All I knew was that he is a retired professor of philosophy who specialized in Advaita Vedanta. The book turned out […]

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My new way of talking about Ramana’s method

From now on, for a while at least, I’m going to refer to Ramana’s method as Ramana’s method. I’m going to avoid saying “vichara” or “self-investigation” (Michael James’s favorite way to translate “vichara”) and “self-attention” (Michael’s second-favorite way). And I’ll avoid the commonest names, “Self-enquiry” and “Who Am I?”, because those names are the most […]

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Why most people get nowhere with Ramana’s method They look for an object

A friend wrote to me yesterday: More and more Ramana’s words come to mind, and I say, “Okay, but who or what is having those experiences?” As I go into that, nothing is there, and I find experience just is. How about that? My friend is finding nothing because he’s looking for an object (mental […]

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A brief summary of the first half of Ramana’s method

Metta used the phrase “greed of knowing” yesterday in a comment, and it triggered a long reply from me. When I finished writing, I realized I had produced a summary of Ramana’s method. Because there is a great deal of misunderstanding and misinformation about Ramana’s method on the Internet, I’ve decided to publish my reply […]

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