There are many books of Ramana’s dialogs; some report his words more faithfully than others. According to David Godman, the great scholar of Ramana’s life and works, Maharshi’s Gospel is among the more reliable ones. In Chapter III of that book we find the following dialog: Devotee: There are times when persons and things take […]
Author: Freddie
Annamalai Swami 1
Annamalai Swami once said: In the same way, mind is just a self-inflicted area of darkness in which the light of the Self has been deliberately shut out. When you see this remark, which is quoted in the wonderful book Annamalai Swami: Final Talks, you have two choices. 1. You can think, “That’s poetry. I’m […]
It is Always Now
Somebody wrote to me a few months ago about placing his attention on the Now. He thought this was very difficult but he had worked out a method for doing it, and he was optimistic that in the near future he would finally succeed in grasping the elusive Now. His method was based on his […]
Is the Aware State a New Concept?
K2Love left this comment a day or two ago at the bottom of my article How to Stop Thoughts: I can’t thank you enough for writing and posting this clear and detailed article! I started to meditate several months ago and I had been looking for some tangible suggestions — not philosophies or quotes or […]
Bask in the Sun
One way to think about meditation is that it’s like a cat basking in the sun. Gradually our minds dissolve in the sunshine. The sun does the work. All we do is enjoy the warmth. The sunshine is consciousness or love. The cat is the mind. The mind basks in consciousness or love, soaks in it, […]
How to Stop Pain and Increase Energy Flow
In 2004 a man named Robert Harry Hover published a book that almost nobody has heard of called Internal Moving Healing. It describes a dirt-simple technique for stopping pain and promoting energy flow in the body. I tried it a few months ago on back pain that had hurt for years. After one session, the […]
Ramana Maharshi 1
Update to this page (2024) I just happened to see this page for the first time in years. I no longer agree with it. I know now but didn’t know nine years ago when I wrote it that there are many mental states in which consciousness is evident. Only one of those states is what […]
Conscious Sleep
Last summer I experienced conscious sleep for the first time. I mean conscious deep sleep, not lucid dreaming. In this article I’ll describe what it felt like. Conscious sleep is mentioned in some of the upanishads, especially the Mandukya Upanishad, which says that the three states of consciousness — waking, dreaming, and deep sleep — […]
The Effortless Thought-Free State
In response to How To Stay Conscious 1 a friend wrote: The only question I have regarding the sadhana you have posted about is about effort. Any attempt to consciously still the mind is contrary to my nature and experience. Even repeating a mantra is for a set period of time and then I just […]
The Emotion that Has No Name
Part 1 The folks who write advertisements often call movies ‘heartwarming’. They wouldn’t do this unless they were sure that most people know what ‘heartwarming’ means. A movie is ‘heartwarming’ if it makes you feel a certain way. If it causes a certain emotion. What’s the name of this well-known emotion? This is a trick […]