This is from 'Talks with Ramana Maharshi'
Sri Bhagavan always stressed the one essential truth that is necessary for Liberation. This cannot be repeated too often. 'You are the Self ' He tells us, 'there is nothing but the Self, anything else is just imagination. So BE THE SELF HERE AND NOW.
There is no need to run off to a forest or shut oneself in a room. Carry on with your essential activities but free yourself from the association as THE DOER of them. SELF IS THE WITTNESS. YOU ARE THAT.
So it seems that by quoting, 'Talks by Ramana Maharshi' we have started our new emphasis on the Truth by dishing up the entire banquet at one sitting. What more is there to say?
What about love, tho. Swami says if we really truly focus on love while saying His name we need nothing more to obtain the 'Big L' So you see, if we can focus on the love in the above statement by Ramana, we need nothing more. Grab it. swallow it down and make it your very own.
I am convinced that love is the essential ingredient even though Ramana's statement is pure Vedanta, Jnana. In fact, I think that if you try to imbibe these Vedanta Truths without the elixir of pure Divine love you'll whither and die of thirst. Ramana and Sai are embodiments of that love which is God. When we try to see different attributes rather than just the love, we cannot approach reality.
Excuse me please, John Stewart is on the TV now.
John Stewart was very funny and I think that we really need to laugh as often as possible. I think it may create that 'wittiness state' mentioned above.
What is love, I mean besides being God. Perhaps it is 'bliss' which does not depend on our thoughts, words or deeds. That bliss is, according to Swami, our true state. I am a chronic depressive. Even when things are going well, the depression remain just under the surface. I think the bliss may remain also. But we were dissecting love, weren't we. Love between family, friends and lovers we already know about. Oh and love of our possessions and our pets, our country, our ideas etc. Perhaps love is just a feeling that encompasses all these attachments. But there doesn't have to be attachment to produce love does there? Well we don't 'love' anyone else's mother or house or pet, only our own. Does that mean our ego does the loving. Swami loves everyone even those who criticize Him. But Swami doesn't have an ego to limit His love and we do now or do we? I think that maybe the idea of 'a doer' is that ego. When we realize we are not that 'doer' we will move closer to knowing who we are.
I am hoping that you may have some thoughts on the subject. I hope they aren't too complicated because as I grow older the old brain doesn't move so fast any more.
Atma is eternal, however, and does not change.
In response to your question "what is love?” Isn’t it simply is our natural state? Awareness of it occurs when the "I" I imagine myself to be (this woman, with these attributes) isn’t obscuring it with its insistence that the person and the world are alone real. It is not an emotion, though it manifests as emotion just as it manifests in everything. One way to move toward it (though it is right here) is to question what we think of as reality when we're looking through the eye of personality. Through earnestness, and inquiry into the nature of the self, we can also realize the love that we are. I do not find inquiry lacking in love. In fact, in order to be vigilantly involved in the continuous inward looking, there has to be a deep earnestness. To me earnestness in this endeavor is driven by love itself. It could not happen without love. AND, I feel my Swami's hand in it all.
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