Ramana Maharshi

Eating, bathing, going to the toilet, talking, thinking, and many other activities related to the body are all work. How is it that the performance of one particular act is alone (considered) work? To be still is to be always engaged in work. To be silent is to be always talking.

In accordance with the prarabdha of each, the One whose function it is to ordain makes each to act. What will not happen will never happen, whatever effort one may put forth. And what will happen will not fail to happen, however much one may seek to prevent it. This is certain. The part of wisdom therefore is to stay quiet.

When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation.

Peace is your natural state. It is the mind that obstructs the natural state.

Unless one is happy, one cannot bestow happiness on others.

The experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge.

Let knowledge be guessed by the sign of equality to all beings.

If the mind falls asleep, awaken it. Then if it starts wandering, make it quiet. If you reach the state where there is neither sleep nor movement of mind, stay still in that, the natural (real) state.

If you go on working with the light available, you will meet your Master, as he himself will be seeking you.

You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.

You impose limits on your true nature of infinite being. Then you get displeased to be only a limited creature. Then you begin spiritual practices to transcend these non-existing limits. But if your practice itself implies the existence of these limits, how could they allow you to transcend them.

No one succeeds without effort... Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance.

Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind.

The 'I' casts off the illusion of the 'I' and yet remains 'I'. Such is the paradox of Self-realization. The Realized do not see any paradox in it. Consider the case of the worshipper. He approaches God and prays to be absorbed in Him. He then surrenders himself in faith and by concentration. And what remains afterwards? In the place of the original 'I', self-surrender leaves a residuum of God in which the 'I' is lost. That is the highest form of devotion or surrender and the peak of detachment.

Calmness is the criterion of spiritual progress. Plunge the purified mind into the Heart. Then the work is over.

The Self alone exists. When you try to trace the ego, which is the basis of the perception of the world and everything else, you find the ego does not exist at all and neither does all this creation that you see.

Forgetfulness of your real nature is true death; remembrance of it is rebirth.

There is nothing wrong with God's creation. Mystery and Suffering only exist in the mind.

What exists in truth is the Self alone. The world, the individual soul and God are appearances in it. Like silver in mother-of-pearl, these three appear at the same time and disappear at the same time. The Self is that where there is absolutely no 'I thought'. That is called 'Stillness'. The Self itself is the world; the Self itself is 'I'; the Self itself is God; all is Siva, the Self.

You are all searching for the silence of the mountain. But you're looking for something outside. This silence is accessible to you right now, inside the center of your own being.

Why should we... constantly worry ourselves... as to what should be done and how, and what should not be done and how not? We know that the train carries all loads, so after getting on it why should we carry our small luggage on our head to our discomfort, instead of putting it down in the train and feeling at ease?