Manuscript of the essay version of Nan Yar? (Who am I?) handwritten by Sri Ramana, reproduced in The Mountain Path, June 1993, p. 45
For the mind to subside [permanently], except vicāraṇā [vichara, self-investigation] there are no other adequate means. If made to subside by other means, the mind will remain as if subsided, but will emerge again.
Even by prāṇāyāma [breath-restraint], the mind will subside; however, though the mind remains subsided so long as the breath remains subsided, when the breath emerges [or becomes manifest] it will also emerge and wander under the sway of [its] vāsanās [propensities, inclinations, impulses or desires]. The birthplace both of the mind and of the prāṇa [the breath and other life-processes] is one.
Thought alone is the svarūpa [the ‘own form’] of the mind.
The thought called ‘I’ alone is the first thought of the mind; it alone is the ego.
From where the ego arises, from there alone the breath also starts.
Therefore when the mind subsides the prāṇa also subsides, and when the prāṇa subsides the mind also subsides.
(*) “However in sleep, even though the mind has subsided, the breath does not subside. It is arranged thus by the ordinance of God for the purpose of protecting the body, and so that other people do not wonder whether that body has died. When the mind subsides in waking and in samādhi [any of the various types of mental absorption that result from yōgic or other forms of spiritual practice], the prāṇa subsides.”
The prāṇa is said to be the gross form of the mind. Until the time of death the mind keeps the prāṇa in the body, and at the moment the body dies it [the mind] grabs and takes it [the prāṇa] away. Therefore prāṇāyāma is just an aid to restrain the mind [or to make it subside temporarily], but will not bring about manō-nāśa [the annihilation of the mind].
(*) The three sentences that I have italicized in this “Paragraph Eight” were not in the original essay version written by Sri Ramana, but were interpolated afterwards, either in the mid-1930s or later. They were not in the manuscript of this essay handwritten by Sri Ramana, which was reproduced in The Mountain Path, June 1993, pp. 44-47, nor were they included either in the essay version in the first edition (1931) of ஸ்ரீ ரமண நூற்றிரட்டு (Śrī Ramaṇa Nūṯṟiraṭṭu, his Tamil collected works) or in the 1932 editions of either the thirty or the twenty-eight question-and-answer versions. I also could not find them in any of the versions published prior to that that I have seen, or in any of Sivaprakasam Pillai’s notebooks. The earliest edition in which I have seen them included was the 1936 edition of the twenty-eight question-and-answer, so it was probably added first in that version and later in this essay version.
According to the central teachings of Sri Ramana, the body and world are both mental creations, so they seem to exist only so long as we experience them, and hence they do not exist when our mind is subsided in sleep. For those who are willing to accept this teaching, the idea that ‘in sleep, even though the mind has subsided, the breath does not subside’ is not an issue, because if the existence of the body (and hence of its breathing) is dependent upon the activity of the mind, it is clear that in sleep ‘when the mind subsides the prāṇa also […] subsides’, as Sri Ramana stated explicitly in the previous sentence. Therefore, if these three interpolated sentences were something that Sri Ramana actually said, he presumably said so as a concession in reply to someone who was unable or unwilling to accept (even tentatively as a possibility) his teaching that the body, prāṇa, world and everything else seem to exist only in the self-deluded view of the mind, and hence cease to exist whenever the mind has subsided, as in dreamless sleep.
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi - WHO AM I?, Paragraph Eight
Original Tamil prose by
Bhagavan Sri Ramana
with English translation by Michael James