It is because you love someone, that you give yourself… and then you start making demands on that relationship. Now, when you start demanding, love diminishes.
Will Power – Sri Ramana Maharshi
Your idea of will-power is success insured. Will-power should be understood to be the strength of mind which makes it capable for meeting success or failure with equanimity. It is not synonymous with certain success. Why one’s attempts should be always attended with success.
Success develops arrogance and the man's spiritual progress is thus affected. Failure on the other hand is beneficial, in as much as it opens the eyes of the man to his limitations and prepares him to surrender himself.
Self-surrender is synonymous with eternal happiness. Therefore one should try to gain the equipoise of mind under all circumstances. That is will-power. Again, success and failure are the results of prarabdha and not of will-power. A man may be doing only good and noble actions and yet prove a failure. Another may do otherwise and yet be uniformly successful. This does not mean that the will-power is present in the one and not in the other. (Sri Bhagavan in TALKS, 390-1)
What is the place of pranayama in the teaching of Sri Ramana Maharshi?
Bhagavan repeatedly says that the most direct and simple path for Self-Knowledge is self-enquiry, the tracking of the 'I'-thought to its source.
If, however, one is unable to pay attention to the 'I’-thought, one may use breath-control for quieting the mind. This breath control recommended by Bhagavan differs from hatha yoga which deals with inhalation, exhalation and retention of breath and Sri Ramana Maharshi prescribes simply watching the breath and tracing it to its source. This is Ramana Maharshi’s definition of pranayama. Such watching of breath and attention to its source would also take one back to the source of "I", as both breath and mind have a common source.
Re-Birth Questions
All problems arise only with the support of a 'personal' I. When the experience dawns that there is no separate individual 'I', all philosophical speculations become meaningless.
Ramana Maharshi’s reply to such questions is: "Find out the I — then there is neither rebirth nor free-will... It is you who think, that you will be reborn. See, for whom this question arises. Unless the questioner is found, the question can never be set at rest rest." (Ramana Maharshi’s Talks, p 602, No. 644)
And: "Find out, to whom free-will or destiny matters. Abide in it: then these two are transcended. That is the only purpose of discussing these questions. To whom do these questions arise? Find out and be at peace." (Talks, p. 393, No. 426)