Ivan Frimmel

SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI – The Way of Self Enquiry

Sri Ramana Maharshi was born on 29 December 1879 in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, South India, the son of a
country lawyer Shundaram Ayyar, and given the name Venkataraman, abreviated as Ramana. The titles Sri
and Maharshi (Great Sage) were given to him much later by his followers.

As a schoolboy, Ramana was quite interested in and influenced by the Hindu religious beliefs and practices
of his family and neighbours, and fascinated to hear stories about a holy mountain Arunachala in Southern
India, which, according to some Hindus, is the abode or manifestation of Lord Siva.

One day, at the age of seventeen, Ramana had a mystical pre-experience of death, consisting of a temporary
but terrifying physical paralysis, intense fear, confusion and questioning... This experience completely
changed his outlook on life – and his future. It was during this time that he started asking himself questions
like ‘Who is it that dies?’ and ‘Who am I?’ that later became the core of his teaching method.

As a result of this experience, fear of death vanished once and for all for young Ramana – and ‘absorption in
the Self continued unbroken from that time on‘.

Shortly after this experience Ramana walked out of his family and – driven by a powerful spiritual force –
slowly made his way to Arunachala. On his arrival he threw away all his money, possessions and the future
his parents planned for him, and abandoned himself to his newly-found awareness.

His absorption in this awareness was so complete that for about three years he became almost totally
oblivious to the needs of his body and to the world around him. Living in a tiny, dark basement room under a
Hindu temple in Tiruvanamalai, near Arunachala, his body was wasting away because he scarcely cared for it
and rarely ate. Only after about three years, with the help of some caring friends and family members, he
started the slow process of returning to physical normalcy, and later teaching others about the state of
Self/God-realization, in which he was by then firmly established.

An ashram was built at the foot of Arunachala, where Ramana Maharshi spent the rest of his life. Thousands
of people from all over India and other parts of the world started visiting the ashram, and gradually many
other ashrams and teaching centres sprung-up all over the world in his name.

Over the years, many people reported that their lives were enriched or transformed just by meeting this
remarkable man, by sitting with him in silence, by his gaze, his talks (sometimes recorded onto tapes, or
transcribed into books), or by practicing his way of enquiry, consisting primarily of asking and answering
the question Who am I?

According to Sri Ramana Maharshi, asking this question is the basis of all spiritual seeking and the
answering of this question for oneself will lead to the ultimate goal of religions: the realization of one’s true
identity and unity with God. Maharshi usually used the term Self (or Atman) for one’s true identity but often
also the term God (or Brahman) – and he would frequently emphasise their ultimate unity, nonduality.

Many people visiting Ramana Maharshi’s ashram would ask him to answer the question for them... On one
such occasion he answered sharply, “If you don’t know who you are, who else can tell you?” - but usually he
would answer patiently and politely, by asking further helpful questions, or making statements that would
encourage the questioner to continue seeking the answer for himself or herself...

He would often give his questioners clues by making it very clear that one’s true identity, true “I”, cannot be
found in one’s body, sensations, emotions or mind, i.e. as an object of one’s consciousness (as a feeling,
idea, image, concept…), only through a sincere and persistent enquiry into the question Who am I?
culminating in the unshakeable non-conceptual and nondual realization of one’s true identity as Pure
Awareness, Consciousness, God, Atman/Brahman, Self...

“The essence of the mind,” he said, “is Awareness, Consciousness, God, Self... However, when the ego
overclouds it, it functions as reasoning, thinking or perceiving. The Universal Mind, Self, God,
Consciousness, not being limited by the ego, has nothing outside itself and is therefore only aware. This is
what the Bible means by ‘I am that I am’ ”.
To people who found the path of Self-enquiry hard to follow, he would advise the way of surrender to God:
longing for God’s will to be done, giving up the feeling that ‘I am the doer’, until the realization occurs that
there is no God’s will AND my will, only ONE universal will.

“Reality is only one and that is the Self,” says Ramana Maharshi, “all the rest are mere phenomena in it, of it
and by it... The seer, the objects seen and the seeing, all are the Self only… If you surrender your self, all is
well.”

Sri Ramana Maharshi was one of the greatest spiritual teachers and mystics of modern-day India, whose
teaching and personal example influenced the minds and lives of many great and ordinary people in this
century – and will undoubtedly continue to do so for many centuries to come.