Top 280 Ramana Maharshi Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Discover your undying Self and be immortal and happy.”

— Ramana Maharshi

202. “The enquiry ‘Who am I?’ is the principal means to the removal of all misery and the attainment of the supreme bliss.”

— Ramana Maharshi

203. “There are no impediments to meditation. The very thought of such obstacles is the greatest impediment.”

— Ramana Maharshi

204. “That alone is Real which exists by itself, which reveals itself by itself and which is eternal and unchanging.”

— Ramana Maharshi

205. “Reality must be always real. It is not with forms and names. That which underlies all these is the reality. It underlies limitations, being itself limitless. It is not bound. It underlies unrealities, itself being real. Reality is that which is. It is as it is. It transcends speech. It is beyond the expressions ‘existence’, ‘non-existence’ etc.”

— Ramana Maharshi

206. “A realized one sends out waves of spiritual influence in his aura, which draw many people towards him. Yet he may sit in a cave and maintain complete silence.”

— Ramana Maharshi

207. “A day will dawn when you will laugh at your past efforts. What you realize on the day you laugh is also here and now.”

— Ramana Maharshi

208. “Remaining quiet is what is called wisdom-insight. To remain quiet is to resolve the mind in the Self. Telepathy, knowing past, present and future happenings and clairvoyance do not constitute wisdom-insight.”

— Ramana Maharshi

209. “If a person realises his position and stays in his own self, things that are to happen will happen. Things that are not to happen will not happen. The shakti that is in the world, is only one. All these troubles arise if we think that we are separate from that shakti.”

— Ramana Maharshi

210. “The normal self is the mind. The mind is with limitations. But pure Consciousness is beyond limitations, and is reached by investigation into the “I.””

— Ramana Maharshi

211. “Meditation helps concentration of the mind. Then the mind is free from thoughts and is in the meditated form.”

— Ramana Maharshi

212. “To perform one’s duty is the greatest service to God.”

— Ramana Maharshi

213. “The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself.”

— Ramana Maharshi

214. “Peace is for the purification of one’s mind. Power is for the growth of the community. Having established the community with power, one should then establish supreme peace.”

— Ramana Maharshi

215. “Consciousness is indeed always with us. Everyone knows ‘I am!’ No one can deny his own being.”

— Ramana Maharshi

216. “Grace is within you. If it were external, it would be useless.”

— Ramana Maharshi

217. “Whatever draws the mind outward is unspiritual and whatever draws the mind inward is spiritual.”

— Ramana Maharshi

218. “Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. ‘I am that I am’ sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that ‘I am so and so’. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?”

— Ramana Maharshi

219. “The revelation or intuition arises in its own time and one must wait for it.”

— Ramana Maharshi

220. “That is the ego which rises and sinks periodically. But you exist always. That which lies beyond the ego is consciousness – the Self.”

— Ramana Maharshi

221. “See what helps you to keep away all other thoughts and adopt that method for your meditation.”

— Ramana Maharshi

222. “The pure mind is itself Brahman; it therefore follows that Brahman is not other than the mind of the sage.”

— Ramana Maharshi

223. “The Seeker himself becomes the knower. The thing to be known is already there. There is nothing to be known afresh. More-over there are no two things. There is only the seer, the knower.”

— Ramana Maharshi

224. “The man who prays, the prayer, and the God to whom he prays all have reality only as manifestations of the Self.”

— Ramana Maharshi

225. “The sense of “I” pertains to the person, the body and the brain. When anyone knows true Being for the first time, something else arises from the depths and takes possession... That something is behind the mind; it is infinite, divine, eternal. Some people call it the Kingdom of Heaven, others call it the soul, and others again Nirvana, and Hindus call it liberation; you may give it what name you wish.”

— Ramana Maharshi

226. “Mind your business. Take care of what you came here for. Find the ‘I’ first and you may afterwards speak of other matters.”

— Ramana Maharshi

227. “The body which is matter says not ‘I’. Eternal Awareness rises not nor sets. Betwixt the two, bound by the body, rises the thought of ‘I’. This is the knot of matter and Awareness. This is bondage, jiva, subtle body, ego. This is samsara, this is the mind.”

— Ramana Maharshi

228. “Realization is our true nature. It is nothing new to be gained. What is new cannot be eternal. Therefore there is no need to be doubting whether we would gain or lose the self.”

— Ramana Maharshi

229. “It is beyond words or thoughts.”

— Ramana Maharshi

230. “The deeply learned ones know the mind as the directly expressed meaning of the supreme knowledge. The heart is the meaning aimed at. The Supreme is none other than the heart.”

— Ramana Maharshi

231. “One of two things must be done. Either surrender because you admit your inability and require a higher power to help you, or investigate the cause of misery by going to the source and merging into the Self. Either way you will be free from misery. God never forsakes one who has surrendered.”

— Ramana Maharshi

232. “While God sustains the burden of the world, the spurious ego assumes its burden, grimacing like an image on a tower, seeming to support it. If the traveller in a carriage, which can carry any weight, does not lay his luggage down but carries it painfully on his head, whose is the fault?”

— Ramana Maharshi

233. “Everything in the world was my Guru.”

— Ramana Maharshi

234. “Such happiness is relative and is better called pleasure or satisfaction.”

— Ramana Maharshi

235. “A dreamer dreams that everyone else in his dream must awaken before he can awaken.”

— Ramana Maharshi

236. “For those who have obtained unobstructed knowledge of Self, the world is seen merely as a bondage causing imagination.”

— Ramana Maharshi

237. “The explorers seek happiness in finding curiosities, discovering new lands and undergoing risks in adventures. They are thrilling. But where is pleasure found? Only within. Pleasure is not to be sought in the external world.”

— Ramana Maharshi

238. “First set yourself right, and only then set out to improve others. Change the hearts of men and the world will surely change. But one must begin somewhere; and one can only begin with oneself.”

— Ramana Maharshi

239. “Having set one’s family in consonance with the community, he should make his family prosperous to ensure the prosperity of the community.”

— Ramana Maharshi

240. “The activity affected by causes like fainting, sleep, excessive joy, grief, possession by spirits, fear etc goes to the heart, its own place.”

— Ramana Maharshi

241. “When the pot is carried, the space within the pot, Though conceived of as carried, Is it not the pot only that is carried? The Self too, like Space, remains motionless. 53. When the pot breaks, the space in the pot Merges one with the great Space. When the inert body passes away, the Self, seemingly in the body, Becomes immediately one with the Supreme Self.”

— Ramana Maharshi

242. “The macrocosm is in its entirety in the body. The body is in its entirety in the heart. Therefore heart is the summarised form of all the macrocosm.”

— Ramana Maharshi

243. “People such as inventors searching for new material, make their discoveries in a state of self-forgetfulness. It is in a condition of deep intellectual concentration that this forgetfulness of the ego arises and the invention is revealed. This is also a way of developing intuition.”

— Ramana Maharshi

244. “Your concentration must come as easily as the breath. Fix yourself on one thing and try to hold onto it. All will come right. Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts. The dissipated mind is a sign of its weakness. By constant meditation it gains strength.”

— Ramana Maharshi

245. “As the activities of the wise man exist only in the eyes of others and not in his own, although he may be accomplishing immense tasks, he really does nothing.”

— Ramana Maharshi

246. “The fruition of this process is samadhi which yields release, which is the state of unsurpassed bliss. The revered Gurus also have said that release is to be gained only by devotion which is of the nature of reflection on the truth of the Self.”

— Ramana Maharshi

247. “Even in intake, the one steadfast thought is said to be the natural state. Nirvikalpa Samadhi will result when the sensory objects are not present.”

— Ramana Maharshi

248. “3. It is said that the I-activity is the root of all activities. From where the I-thought emerges, that in short is the heart.”

— Ramana Maharshi

249. “Thoughts of bondage and of freedom last only as long as one feels, ‘I am bound’. When one enquires of oneself, ‘Who am I, the bound one?’ the Self, Eternal, ever free, remains. The thought of bondage goes; and with it goes the thought of freedom too.”

— Ramana Maharshi

250. “Controlling speech and breath, and diving deep within oneself – like one who, to find a thing that has fallen into water, dives deep down – one must seek out the source whence the aspiring ego springs.”

— Ramana Maharshi