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Sri Ramana Maharishi Thoughts on Meditation and Self Enquiry – Which is Better?

The goal is the same for the one who meditates and the one who practices self enquiry. One attains stillness through meditation, the other through knowledge. One strives to attain something; the other seeks the one who strives to attain. The former takes a longer time, but in the end attains the Self.

Mentally imagining oneself to be the supreme reality, which shines as existence-consciousness-bliss, is meditation. Fixing the mind in the Self so that the unreal seed of delusion will die is enquiry.

Whoever meditates upon the self in whatever mental image attains it only in that image. Those peaceful ones who remain quiet without any such mental image attain the noble and unqualified state of the formless state of the Self.

Self enquiry directly leads to realization by removing the obstacles which make you think that the Self is not already realized.

Meditation differs according to the degree of advancement of the seeker. If one is fit for it one might directly hold on to the thinker, and the thinker will then automatically sink into his source, pure consciousness.

If one cannot directly hold on to the thinker one must meditate on God and in due course the same individual will have become sufficiently pure to hold on to the thinker and to sink into absolute being.

Meditation is possible only if the ego is kept up. There is the ego and the object meditated upon. The method is therefore indirect because the Self is one. Seeking the ego, that is its source, the ego disappears. What is left over is the Self. This method is the direct one.

SourceBook titled “Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi” By David Godman, Sri Maharshi