Question: If the Self is itself aware, why am I not aware of it even now?
Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom?
The Self is ever present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. The best definition is 'I am that I am'. ]
The Srutis (scriptures) speak of the Self as being the size of one's thumb, the tip of the hair, an electric spark, vast, subtler than the subtlest, etc. These descriptions have no foundation in fact. It is only being, but different from the real and the unreal; it is knowledge, but different from knowledge and ignorance. How can it be defined at all? It is simply being.
Question: When a man realises the Self, what will he see?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: There is no seeing. Seeing is only being. The state of Self-realisation, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been.
All that is needed is that you give up your realisation of the not-true as true. All of us are regarding as real that which is not real.
We have only to give up this practice on our part. Then we shall realise the Self as the Self, in other words, 'Be the Self.' At one stage you will laugh at yourself for trying to discover the Self which is not self-evident. So, what can we say to this question?
That stage transcends the seer and the seen. There is no seer there to see anything. The seer who is seeing all this now ceases to exist and the Self alone remains.
Question: How to know this by direct experience?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: If we talk of knowing the Self, there must be two selves, one a knowing self, another the self which is known, and the process of knowing.
The state we call realisation is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything. If one has realised, one is that which alone is and which alone has always been.
One cannot describe that state. One can only be that. Of course, we loosely talk of Self-realisation, for want of a better term. How to 'real-ise' or make the real that which alone is real?
Question: What is Mouna (silence)?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: That state which transcends speech and thought is mouna. That which is, is mouna. How can mouna be explained in words?
Sages say that the state in which the thought"I" (the ego) does not rise even in the least, alone is Self (swarupa) which is silence (mouna). That silent Self alone is God; Self alone is the jiva (individual soul). Self alone is this ancient world.
All other kinds of knowledge are only petty and trivial knowledge; the experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge. Know that the many objective differences are not real but are mere superimpositions on Self, which is the form of true knowledge.
