‘Bhagavan Sri Ramana as I knew him’
[...] His whole teaching was succinctly expressed in the biblical quote, ‘Be still and know that I am God’. That is to say, one should attain quiescence or real mauna and realise the Self that is within each of us as ‘I am’.
To attain this state of thoughtlessness Bhagavan asked us to concentrate on the question ‘Who am I?’ He wanted us to find the source of this I-thought, which is the root of all other thoughts.
Through this enquiry, he said, the individual ‘I’ will disappear and the Self will emerge.
Though Bhagavan always said this vichara method was the best, he almost always added, ‘If you say this method is too hard for you, or if you are too weak to follow it, you had better completely surrender to God. The same result will follow.’ Thus he advocated the bhakti [devotion] method almost in equal measure, saying that the bhakta will eventually come to realise there is only the Self and not a dichotomy of God and devotee. I never, however, saw Bhagavan recommend either the karma yoga or raja yoga methods.
~ Sri Devaraja Mudaliar, Sri Ramanasramam
http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.com/2011/05/bhagavan-sri-ramana-as-i-knew-him.html












