Ramana Maharshi's life, teachings and devotees
There was a lively debate on my blog a few years ago about whether it was necessary to desire the Self to attain liberation, or whether even that desire should be given up. One of the readers following the debate asked me to contribute and to restrict my citations to what Bhagavan himself had said on this topic.
This is an article I wrote on my blog many years ago in response to a query about whether jnanis, liberated beings, ever incarnated again.
Ramana Maharshi usually never replied to letters that were addressed to him, but in 1931, at the request of Ganapati Muni, he dictated a letter to T. K. Sundaresa Iyer that responded to several philosophical points that Ganapati Muni had raised in a letter.
This is a slightly updated and revised version of an article that appeared on my blog. In it I explain why I believe that some texts that record Bhagavan’s teachings are more reliable than others.
In this article I take issue with the views of Swami Siddheswarananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order who taught in Paris for many years. He made a few comments on Bhagavan’s teachings on creation that I felt obliged to contest.
B. V. Narasimhaswami started to edit a collection of dialogues with Bhagavan around 1929. After he left Ramanasramam around 1930 the project was abandoned and was not published until a few years ago. In this article I discuss one of the claims that his manuscript contained: that certain qualifications are necessary in order to do self-enquiry.
There is a traditional classification that ranks jnanis on the basis of how well they ‘know’ Brahman. Bhagavan was asked about it on a couple of occasions and his response was that there were no grades or hierarchies in the world of jnana.
In this article, first posted on my blog, I attempt to address the topic of why some enlightened beings have the power to awaken others, and some don’t.
