A friend sent me the following quotation from his favorite poem, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”: We think of the key, each in his prison, Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison I replied: It may be beautiful poetry but what does it say that’s of use for people like you and me who […]
Author: Freddie
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After nearly ten years, comments are now closed on this blog. You can email me at freddie.i.yam@gmail.com
Did Ramana contradict himself?
One of Ramana Maharshi’s main ideas is that the mind/ego exists only while it pays attention to objects. This is one of the reasons, he said, why mind/ego gets destroyed by his method of self-attention. He expressed this idea often. For example, in his little textbook, Nan Ar, paragraph 4, he wrote: The mind exists […]
An interesting coincidence Can your own efforts be God's grace?
An interesting coincidence occurred the other day as a result of my writing a comment on this blog. At the time I pointed it out in the comments but I keep remembering that it happened so I’m going to elevate the matter to a full post. I was replying to a comment by Rico Rico. […]
The essence of Ramana’s method Transfer your attention completely from mental activity to yourself
The essence of Ramana Maharshi’s method is to transfer your attention from mental activity to yourself. Stop paying attention to thoughts, emotions, images, sensations, memories, wishes, awareness of awareness, etc. Instead pay attention to yourself. By “yourself” I mean you who experience all those mental activities. You who know them. To make this work you […]
The atomic bomb of jnana Not your social media guru's version of awakening
Ramana Maharshi speaking about Self-realization: Later in the morning, at Rishikesananda’s request, Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] recounted his first experience of the Self in his upstairs room at Madura. “When I lay down with limbs outstretched and mentally enacted the death scene and realised that the body would be taken and cremated and yet I would […]
The lost-in-thought state: Summary Simulated scenarios stimulate strong emotions
Over the last couple of weeks I wrote a half dozen articles exploring new ideas about the lost-in-thought state (LITS). They’re on my Substack blog in case anyone is interested. I wrote them mainly for myself to clarify my thinking. My main conclusion is that LITS is the primary function of the mind. It’s not […]
Retraction The big idea that kicked off this website is wrong
The reason I created this website is because I noticed something in the early 2000s that shocked me. It was and is the most surprising thing that ever happened to me. I couldn’t find a clear, unequivocal mention of it in any published book (it was harder to do literature searches in those days because […]
Luckily it only seems that way
This picture popped up in my Facebook feed. A good illustration, I think, of the fundamental attitude of many spiritual seekers. “I want to be free — I have to escape from the prison of my mind — I need to crack this damn lock.” The room, the door, the lock — they are the […]