Sri Ramana Maharshi

Barry Long gives the following advice in his book on Meditation: Go to the great sages - for example Krishnamurti, Meher Baba, Ramana Maharshi, among others." It occurred me that I didn't know anything about the last mentioned person and so I read the Wikipedia article about him. He lived from 1879 to 1950 in Southern India and Meher Baba thought highly of him, referring to him as a saint of the sixth plane. This means that he saw THE ONE everywhere and in everything but he had not yet crossed the great abyss that the separates the sixth plane from the seventh. Having crossed this abyss, there is no longer subject and object, there is only THE ONE.

Ramana attained to his near supreme spiritual state spontaneously in a Hindu temple in Arunachala at the age of 16 and, as with Meher Baba, his mother (Alagammal) became very concerned at his sudden and unexpected spiritual awakening and tried to persuade him to return home and resume a normal life. Ultimately though she ended up attending to him at the temple, as did his younger brother Nagasundaram. He was with his mother at the end of her life and announced on her death that she had been liberated.

Though he did not take a vow of silence as did Meher Baba, Ramana did approve of "the power of silence and the relatively sparse use of speech" and he led a very simple life. His teachings are summarised in the Wikipedia article as follows:

• As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of everyone there is observed supreme love for one's self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one's nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one's self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form "Who am I?", is the principal means.
  
  
• Knowledge itself is 'I'. The nature of (this) knowledge is existence-consciousness-bliss.
  
  
• 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 world.
  
  
• Of all the thoughts that rise in the mind, the thought 'I' is the first thought.
  
  
• That which rises in this body as 'I' is the mind. If one enquires 'In which place in the body does the thought 'I' rise first?', it will be known to be in the heart [spiritual heart is 'two digits to the right from the centre of the chest']. Even if one incessantly thinks 'I', 'I', it will lead to that place (Self)'
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• If other thoughts rise, one should, without attempting to complete them, enquire, 'To whom did they arise?', it will be known 'To me'. If one then enquires 'Who am I?', the mind (power of attention) will turn back to its source. By repeatedly practising thus, the power of the mind to abide in its source increases.
  
  
• The place where even the slightest trace of the 'I' does not exist, alone is Self.
  
  
• Self itself is the world; Self itself is 'I'; Self itself is God; all is the Supreme Self (siva swarupam)

Sri Ramana warned against considering self-enquiry as an intellectual exercise. Properly done, it involves fixing the attention firmly and intensely on the feeling of 'I', without thinking. It is perhaps more helpful to see it as 'Self-attention' or 'Self-abiding' (cf. Sri Sadhu Om - The Path of Sri Ramana Part I). The clue to this is in Sri Ramana's own death experience when he was 16. After raising the question 'Who am I?' he "turned his attention very keenly towards himself" (cf. description above). Attention must be fixed on the 'I' until the feeling of duality disappears.