| Ramana Maharshi |
| 'Have you seen God?' I asked. 'And if you have, can you enable me to see him? I am willing to pay any price, even my life, but your part of the bargain is that you must show me God.' 'No,' he (Ramana Maharshi) answered. 'I cannot show you God or enable you to see God because God is not an object that can be seen. God is the subject. He is the seer. Don't concern yourself with objects that can be seen. Find out who the seer is.' He also added, 'You alone are God,' as if to rebuke me for looking for a God who was outside and apart from me. ** When I appeared before him (again), the Maharshi asked, 'Where have you been? Where are you living?' 'On the other side of the mountain,' I replied. 'And what were you doing there?' he enquired. He had given me my cue. 'I was playing with my Krishna,' I said, in a very smug tone of voice. I was very proud of my achievement and felt superior to the Maharshi because I was absolutely convinced that Krishna had not appeared to him during that period. 'Oh, is that so?' he commented, looking surprised and interested. 'Very good, very nice. Do you see Him now?' 'No, sir, I do not,' I replied. 'I only see Him when I have visions.' I was still feeling very pleased with myself, feeling that I had been granted these visions, whereas the Maharshi had not. 'So Krishna comes and plays with you and then He disappears,' said the Maharshi. 'What is the use of a God who appears and disappears? If He is a real God, He must be with you all the time.' The Maharshi's lack of interest in my visionary experiences deflated me a little, but not to the extent that I was willing to listen to his advice. He was telling me to give up my search for an external God and instead find the origin and identity of the one who wanted to see Him. This was too much for me to swallow. A lifetime of devotion to Krishna had left me incapable of conceiving the spiritual quest in any other terms than that of a quest for a personal God - Papaji From the biography of H.W.L. Poonja aka Papaji "Nothing Ever Happened" by David Godman http://www.realization.org/page/doc0/doc0096a.htm |
| You are the Self |
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| "Jnana is given neither from outside nor from another person. It can be realised by each and everyone in his own Heart. The jnana Guru of everyone is only the Supreme Self that is always revealing its own truth in every Heart through the existence-conciousness 'I am, I am.' The granting of true knowledge by him is initiation into jnana. The grace of the Guru is only that Self-awareness that is one's own true nature. It is the inner conciousness by which he is unceasingly revealing his existence. This divine upadesa is always going on naturally in everyone." -Sri Ramana Maharshi |
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| "The Power of the Presence" Transforming Encounters with Sri Ramana Maharshi |
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| The quote above is an excerpt from a new book by David Godman called "The Power of the Presence" Part One, which is about transforming encounters devotees had with Ramana Maharshi. Please note that I have a few copies of this book directly from David Godman. It costs US $18 plus postage, depending on where you live. My email hur@nisargadatta.net |
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| Nothing Ever Happened A Biography of Sri H.W.L. Poonja compiled/edited by David Godman (1297 pages in 3 volumes) This 3 volume, 1297 page boxed paperback is a detailed description of the life of Sri H.W.L. Poonja, from his birth and amazing childhood in the Punjab to the mid 1980's when the "West" started to discover him. It includes his search for a Guru and his intense spiritual practices and how they lead him to his SatGuru, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi. "Nothing has ever happened. Nothing has ever existed. The world never came into existence or disappeared from it. That place is my real home. It is where I always am. One can say this with authority only when one abides in that ultimate place." |
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