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The Path of Sri Ramana
- Introduction
- The Path of Sri Ramana -
Part One
- The Path of Sri Ramana -
Part Two
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books
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Introduction
The Path of Sri Ramana
is an English translation of ஸ்ரீ ரமண வழி (Sri Ramana Vazhi),
a Tamil book written by Sri Sadhu Om, in which he explains in great
depth and detail the philosophy and practice of the spiritual teachings
of Bhagavan Sri Ramana.
Sri Ramana taught us that the only means by which we can attain the
supreme happiness of true self-knowledge is atma-vichara
– self-investigation or self-enquiry – which is the simple practice of
keenly scrutinising or attending to our essential self-conscious being,
which we always experience as ‘I am’, in order to know ‘who am I?’
However, he also described this practice of atma-vichara
or self-investigation as the path of atma-samarpana
or self-surrender, because unless we give up our false self we cannot
truly know or be clearly conscious of our real self.
Our false finite self or mind rises by imagining itself to be a
physical body, and it sustains its imaginary existence by constantly
attending to thoughts or objects, which it experiences as other than
itself. Without attending to otherness, we cannot continue imagining
ourself to be this mind. Therefore when we turn our attention away from
all otherness towards our own essential self, our mind will subside and
lose its existence as a seemingly separate entity.
Since our true nature is not thinking, doing or knowing anything other
than ourself, but is just self-conscious being, we will become clearly
conscious of our true nature only to the extent to which we willingly
surrender our constantly thinking, doing and object-knowing mind. The
reason why we think and know objects other than ourself is that we love
to do so, and we love to do so because we wrongly imagine that we can
obtain happiness thereby. Therefore we will surrender our thinking mind
and remain as our true self-conscious being only when we understand
that happiness does not exist in anything other than our own real self,
and when our love just to be our real self thereby becomes greater than
our love to think or know any other thing.
In other words, in order to succeed in our efforts to know our real
infinite self and thereby to surrender our false finite self, we must
be consumed by overwhelming love for our own true self-conscious being,
‘I am’. True bhakti or devotion, therefore, is the
perfectly non-dual love that we should each have for our own real self
or essential being.
Therefore, though Sri Ramana taught us that in order to experience the
infinite happiness of true self-knowledge we must attempt either to
know our real self by investigating ‘who am I?’ or to separate ourself
from our false self by surrendering it to God, he also repeatedly
emphasised the truth that in essence these two paths are one, because
we cannot know our real self without surrendering our false self – our
illusory sense of being this body-bound mind – and we cannot relinquish
our false self without knowing who or what we really are.
Thus self-enquiry and self-surrender – the path of jnana
or true knowledge and the path of bhakti or true
love – are not two different paths, but are just two inseparable
aspects of the same single path – the one and only path by which we can
experience the infinite happiness of true self-knowledge.
In Part One of The
Path of Sri Ramana Sri Sadhu Om explains the first of these
two aspects of this one path, namely the practice of self-enquiry,
while in Part Two he
explains various other closely related aspects of Sri Ramana’s
teachings, including the practice of self-surrender.
The Path of Sri Ramana
- Part One
Sri Sadhu Om begins Part One by explaining in the
first three chapters the real nature of happiness and the reason why we
can attain the eternal experience of infinite happiness only by
practising atma-vichara – self-enquiry or
self-investigation. In the fourth chapter he completes laying the
theoretical foundation of self-enquiry by explaining what we are and
what we are not, and in the next four chapters he clarifies what true atma-vichara
is and what it is not, explaining in great detail why we can know
ourself only by attending to ourself – our own essential self-conscious
being, ‘I am’ – and not by attending to any other thing. Thus he leaves
us in no doubt that the correct technique of atma-vichara
taught by Sri Ramana is only keen and vigilant self-attention or
self-scrutiny.
Thus Part One of The Path of
Sri Ramana contains the following eight chapters:
- Eternal
Happiness is the Goal
- What
is Happiness?
- Self-enquiry
is the Only Way to Happiness
- Who
Am I?
- The
Enquiry ‘Who Am I?’ and the Four Yogas
- ’Who
Am I?’ is not Soham Bhavana
- Self-Enquiry
- The
Technique of Self-Enquiry
In
the first chapter, ‘Eternal Happiness is the Goal’, Sri Sadhu Om
explains that happiness is the natural and legitimate goal of all
sentient beings, but that the means by which we all seek to obtain
happiness are wrong.
In the second chapter, ‘What is Happiness?’, he explains that happiness
is our real nature, and that the transient happiness that we seem to
derive from external experiences actually arises only from within
ourself, and is experienced by us due to the temporary calming of our
mind that occurs whenever any of our desires are fulfilled.
In the third chapter, ‘Self-enquiry is the Only Way to Happiness’, he
explains why we can attain true and infinite happiness only by
practising atma-vichara or self-enquiry. That is,
happiness is experienced by us only to the extent to which our mind
subsides, because the activity of our mind disturbs us from our natural
state of peaceful happiness, distracting our attention away from our
mere being. Therefore when our mind subsides partially or temporarily,
we experience partial or temporary happiness, and if it subsides
completely and permanently – that is, if it is destroyed or annihilated
– we will experience complete and permanent happiness.
Our mind is a thought, the primal thought ‘I’, and it rises or becomes
active only by attending to other thoughts. Without attending thus to
thoughts other than itself, it cannot stand. Therefore when it turns
its attention away from all other thoughts towards itself, it subsides
and disappears. Thus we can destroy our mind only by keenly vigilant
self-attention. Therefore self-enquiry or self-scrutiny is the only
means by which we can attain the experience of infinite and eternal
happiness.
In the fourth chapter, ‘Who am I?’, after clarifying why we are neither
this body nor this mind, nor any other such transitory adjunct, Sri
Sadhu Om explains that our real nature is only our fundamental
consciousness of our own essential being – the one true adjunctless
being-consciousness or sat-chit – and that this
non-dual being-consciousness is itself true happiness or ananda.
In the fifth chapter, ‘The Enquiry ‘Who Am I?’ and the Four Yogas’,
he explains why this simple practice of self-enquiry – investigating
‘who am I?’ by keenly scrutinising our own essential
being-consciousness, ‘I am’ – is itself the essence of all the four yogas,
the four traditional types of spiritual practice, namely karma
yoga (the path of nishkamya karma or
‘desireless action’, that is, the practice of doing action without
desire for any sort of personal benefit but only out of love for God), bhakti
yoga (the path of love or devotion to God), raja
yoga (the practice of a system of techniques that include
specific forms of internal and external self-restraint, pranayama
or breath-restraint, and various methods of meditation, the ultimate
aim of which is to attain yoga or ‘union’ with
God), and jnana yoga (the path of knowledge, the
aim of which is to know God as he really is).
The practice of investigating ‘who am I?’ is not only the essence of
all these four yogas, but is also the only
effective means by which we can achieve the goal that each of them aims
to attain. Though the traditional practices of these four yogas
will gradually purify our mind and thereby ultimately lead us to the
practice of self-enquiry, it is in fact not necessary for us to do any
such traditional practices, because the simple practice of self-enquiry
is itself the most effective means by which we can achieve the purity
and strength of mind that we require in order to practise it perfectly.
Therefore if we practise self-enquiry from the outset, we will never
need to practise any other form of yoga, as Sri
Ramana makes very clear in verse 14 of Ulladu Narpadu
Anubandham and verse 10 of Upadesa Undiyar,
in which he says:
Scrutinising
‘To whom are these [four defects], karma [action], vibhakti
[non-devotion], viyoga [separation] and ajnana
[ignorance]?’ is itself karma, bhakti,
yoga and jnana,
[because] when [we] scrutinise [ourself thus], [our ego or individual
‘I’ will be found to be non-existent, and] without [this finite] ‘I’
these [four defects] do not ever exist. Abiding [or being fixed
permanently] as self is alone unmai [the truth,
which is sat-bhava, our real state of being or
‘am’-ness].
Being [firmly established as our real self] having subsided in [our]
rising-place [our ‘heart’ or the core of our being, which is the source
from which we had risen as our mind], that is karma
[desireless action] and bhakti [devotion], that is yoga
[union with God] and jnana [true knowledge].
In
the sixth chapter, ‘Who Am I? is not Soham Bhavana’,
Sri Sadhu Om explains the difference between this practice of
investigating ‘who am I?’ and soham bhavana, the
practice of meditating ‘I am he’ (that is, ‘I am God’ or ‘I am brahman’),
which is an incorrect practice of jnana yoga, but
which has traditionally been mistaken to be the correct practice.
While explaining the crucial difference between these two practices,
and the reason why soham bhavana cannot enable us
to know ourself as we really are, he enables us to understand that the
teachings of Sri Ramana have breathed a fresh life into the ancient
texts of advaita vedanta, restoring to them their
true and original spirit and import, by clarifying the essential
practice that they intended to teach us, namely atma-vichara
– the thought-free practice of non-objective self-investigation or
self-scrutiny.
In the seventh chapter, ‘Self-Enquiry’, Sri Sadhu Om explains in great
detail the correct meaning of the term atma-vichara
– self-enquiry or self-investigation. That is, in essence he explains
that atma-vichara is the simple practice of
self-attention or self-scrutiny – focusing our attention keenly and
exclusively upon our own essential self-conscious being, ‘I am’.
This practice of atma-vichara or self-attention is
not an action or a state of thinking, but is our natural thought-free
state of just being. Thinking is an action, because it is an active
process of paying attention to things other than ourself, but
self-attention is not an action, because it is a passive state of
perfectly peaceful being in which our attention rests naturally in its
source, which is our own essential being – our fundamental
self-consciousness, ‘I am’.
Finally in the eighth chapter, ‘The Technique of Self-Enquiry’, Sri
Sadhu Om discusses the practice of atma-vichara in
greater depth and detail, disclosing many subtle clues to help, guide
and encourage us in our practice.
In addition to these eight chapters, which form the main body of the
book, Part One also contains ‘A Brief
Life History of Sri Ramana’ as an introduction, and three appendices.
Appendix One contains an English translation of Nan Yar? (Who am
I?), the most important prose work of Sri Ramana, which explains in
detail the philosophy and practice of atma-vichara
or self-enquiry.
Appendix Two contains an English translation of four poems from Sadhanai
Saram (The Essence of Spiritual Practice), a compilation of
Tamil verses by Sri Sadhu Om giving clear guidance and many valuable
clues regarding the practice of self-enquiry and self-surrender. These
four selected poems are Atma-Vichara Patikam
(Eleven Verses on Self-Enquiry), Yar Jnani? (Who is
Jnani [a sage who
knows self]?), Sandehi Yarendru Sandehi (Doubt the
Doubter) and Japa (repetition or remembrance of a
name of God).
Appendix Three is an essay entitled ‘Sadhana and
Work’, which was adapted from a letter that Sri Sadhu Om wrote in reply
to a friend who had written asking, ‘How is it possible in practice to
maintain unceasing self-attention when, in the course of a day, various
activities demand some or all of one’s attention?’
The Path of Sri Ramana
- Part Two
Whereas in Part One Sri Sadhu Om discusses
only the philosophy and practice of atma-vichara or
self-enquiry, in Part Two he discusses many other
important and closely related aspects of Sri Ramana’s teachings such as
the reality of the world and God, bhakti or
devotion, and karma or action.
Thus Part Two is a very useful supplement to Part One, because by
discussing in it such subjects and relating them constantly to the
practice of self-enquiry, Sri Sadhu Om repeatedly emphasises the need
for us to know ourself, and the truth that in order to know ourself we
must persistently practise the one true spiritual path of self-enquiry
and self-surrender – the simple practice of sinking within, subsiding
in our natural state of thought-free self-conscious being.
The main body of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana
contains three chapters:
- The
World and God
- Love
or Bhakti
- Karma
In
the first chapter, ‘The World and God’, Sri Sadhu Om explains that the
world and the ‘God’ whom we imagine to be other than ourself are both
mental projections – creations of our own mind or power of imagination
– as indeed is our own finite self or ‘soul’. The root cause of the
appearance of these three seemingly separate entities, the world, soul
and God, is our own pramada or self-forgetfulness.
Because we have used our infinite freedom to choose to ignore or forget
what we really are, we now imagine ourself to be this finite body-bound
mind or soul, and hence we imagine the existence of otherness, which
appears as this seemingly external world, which is governed or
controlled by a power that we call ‘God’.
However, though God as a seemingly separate entity is no more real than
our mind, which imagines his separateness, he is absolutely real as our
own true self. He appears to be other than ourself only because we have
imaginarily separated ourself from his infinite being by imagining
ourself to be this finite object-knowing consciousness that we call our
mind.
Since ourself, the world and God all appear to have come into existence
as seemingly separate entities only because we have chosen to ignore
our true nature, which is thought-free and therefore adjunctless
self-conscious being, all this duality will cease to exist only when we
know ourself as we really are, and we can know ourself thus only by
withdrawing our attention from all otherness and focusing it keenly and
exclusively on ourself. That is, since self-forgetfulness is the root
cause of all this seeming multiplicity and consequent misery,
self-remembrance or self-attention is the only means by which we can
restore ourself to our natural state of absolutely non-dual
self-conscious being.
In the second chapter, ‘Love or Bhakti’, Sri Sadhu
Om explains how our devotion or bhakti takes
different forms at the various stages of the development of our
spiritual maturity, using the example of the different standards that a
child progresses through in school. In the ‘school of bhakti’
there are five ‘standards’, each of which represents a certain type of
religious or spiritual devotion that characterises a particular stage
in our spiritual development.
The first standard is characterised by faith in ritualistic actions – a
faith that is often so blind that it attaches so much importance to
such actions that it overlooks God, the real power that ordains the
fruit of action. This is the type of faith that was personified by the
so-called rishis or ‘ascetics’ living in the Daruka
forest, in the story that formed the context in which Sri Ramana
composed Upadesa Undiyar.
The second standard is characterised by faith in many different deities
(such as the many names and forms in which God is worshipped in the
Hindu religion, or the many saints to whom a devout Catholic or
Orthodox Christian might pray), each of whom is supposed to have some
particular power to fulfil a particular type of desire or to ward off a
particular type of evil.
The third standard is characterised by faith in and single-minded
devotion to only one particular name and form of God. However, this
third standard is divided into two stages, standard 3(a) and 3(b),
because it is in this third standard that the most significant change
of heart takes place within us.
That is, in standards 1, 2 and 3(a), our devotion is not real devotion
to God, but is only devotion to the material and other personal
benefits that we hope to achieve from our ritualistic actions, worship
and prayers. In other words, it is kamya bhakti –
devotion practised only for the fulfilment of our personal desires.
This is the spirit of devotion with which most so-called religious
people practise their respective religions.
However, when we practise such kamya bhakti for
many lives, our mind gradually gains spiritual maturity – the clarity
of mind that enables us to discriminate and understand that true
happiness does not lie in the mere fulfilment of our personal desires –
until in the final stages of standard 3(a) we come to understand that
the real source of our happiness is not any of the benefits that we
seek to gain from God, but is only God himself, who has so much love
for us that he grants our prayers and wishes. Thus we progress from the
kamya bhakti of
standard 3(a) to the nishkamya bhakti of standard
3(b) – that is, true devotion to God, not for the sake of anything that
we may gain from him, but for his own sake alone.
It is at this stage in our spiritual development that God manifests
himself in the form of guru to teach us the truth
that happiness does not exist outside ourself – not even in the
all-loving God whom we imagine to be other than ourself – but only in
ourself, as ourself. Thus in the form of guru God
directs us to turn our mind selfwards and thereby to sink into the
innermost core or depth of our own self-conscious being, which is his
true form – the form of infinite sat-chit-ananda or
being-consciousness-bliss.
This stage at which we sincerely and wholeheartedly attempt to practise
this path of self-enquiry and self-surrender that guru
has taught us is true guru-bhakti, which is the
fourth standard in our ‘school of bhakti’.
Finally when, as a result of our devoted and perseverant practice of
self-enquiry, our self-surrender becomes complete – that is, when we
merge and lose our finite self in the infinite clarity of thought-free
self-conscious being – we will experience the non-dual state of true
self-knowledge, which is our natural state of svatma-bhakti
or true self-love. This svatma-bhakti is the fifth
standard – the final goal of our ‘school of bhakti’
– beyond which nothing exists to achieve or know.
In the third chapter, ‘Karma’, Sri Sadhu Om explains
the truth of action or karma, but while doing so he
begins from a perspective that is radically different to the
perspective from which we normally understand karma.
That is, karma is usually explained and understood
from the perspective that we are a finite self, a body-bound mind or
‘soul’, whose nature is to do action by mind, speech and body, whereas
Sri Sadhu Om begins by explaining that we are in truth the one infinite
self, the absolute reality or brahman, whose real
nature is just to be and not to do anything.
Having begun from this perspective, he explains that as the one
infinite reality we are perfectly free and all-powerful, because there
is nothing other than ourself that could limit either our freedom or
our power. Thus we are free to will or choose either to be as we really
are, or to imagine ourself to be a finite self that does action or karma.
In order to imagine ourself to be a finite self, which we are not, we
must first ignore or forget ourself as we really are. Therefore our
present condition as a seemingly finite body-bound mind is the result
of our misusing our infinite freedom to choose to forget our real self
and thereby to imagine ourself to be this false self. Having thus
imagined ourself to be this limited mind and body, our perspective is
now distorted, as a result of which we see our true ‘being’ as ‘doing’
or karma.
Thus all our ‘doing’, action or karma is merely an
unnatural distortion of our natural state of just being. Therefore if
we investigate ‘who is doing these actions?’ – that is, if we keenly
scrutinise ourself, the ‘I’ whom we now imagine to be thinking,
speaking and doing bodily actions – we will discover that the one
reality underlying this entire illusion of action or karma
is our own essential being, our real self, which in truth never does
anything, and which therefore never knows anything other than our own
natural state of being.
Having thus established that the underlying reality and basis of all
‘doing’ or karma is only our own true being, and
that the appearance of karma is caused only by our
ignoring or forgetting our real nature as simple non-dual
self-conscious being, Sri Sadhu Om proceeds on this basis to explain
the entire web of karma that we have thus woven for
ourself.
That is, he explains the three forms of karma,
namely agamya karma or the actions that we are
constantly doing by our own free will (which is a limited form of our
original infinite freedom to will and act), sanchita karma
or the accumulation of the ‘fruits’ (or moral results) of our past agamya
karmas that are yet to be experienced by us, and prarabdha
karma or our present destiny, which is those ‘fruits’ of our
past agamya karmas that God has selected from the
vast store of our sanchita karma for us to
experience as pleasures and pains in the lifetime of this present body
that we now imagine to be ourself.
In addition to these three chapters, Part Two of The Path of
Sri Ramana also contains the following four appendices:
- Self-Effort
(Personal Effort)
- The
Resumption of Actions Birth after Birth
- Personal
Cleanliness (Acharas)
- Explanatory
Notes on (a) Verse 6 of Sri Arunachala Ashtakam,
(b) Verse 8 of Ulladu Narpadu and (c) Verses 9, 10,
11 and 12 of Ulladu Narpadu
The
first two appendices are a continuation of some of the important truths
discussed in the third chapter. In Appendix One Sri Sadhu Om explains
that effort can take either of two forms, namely the form of pravritti,
which is the effort that we make in doing actions or karmas
by mind, speech or body, thereby entangling ourself further in the
dense web of karma, or the form of nivritti,
which is the effort that we make to attend to our own essential being,
our real self, thereby weakening our attachment to our mind and body,
and thus cutting the very root of all karma.
In Appendix Two he explains that whenever we take a new birth (that is,
whenever having ceased to imagine ourself to be one body we begin to
imagine ourself to be another body), we take with us not only all our karma-phalas
or accumulated fruits of our past action that are yet to be experienced
by us, but also all our karma-vasanas – our latent
desires, impulsions or propensities to do particular actions. Our karma-phalas
are like the edible part of a fruit, while our karma-vasanas
are like the seeds contained in that fruit.
However, there are two types of vasana that we can
cultivate, namely karma-vasanas, inclinations or
desires to do actions, and sat-vasana, the
inclination or love just to be. By doing actions we cultivate karma-vasanas,
and by practising self-enquiry or self-surrender, which is the art of
just being, we cultivate sat-vasana. Therefore if
we have a liking in this life to attend to our real self and to
surrender our false self, we must have been gradually cultivating this sat-vasana
in our previous lives.
The experience of true self-knowledge cannot be attained as the result
of any action or karma, so it is in no way related
to or dependent upon our destiny or prarabdha –
that is, it cannot be either caused or obstructed by our destiny –
because our destiny is just the fruit of our past actions, which we did
due to the impulsion of our karma-vasanas.
Therefore the truth is that we can attain self-knowledge only by
cultivating sat-vasana, the true love to know and
to be nothing other than our own real self – our action-free being, ‘I
am’.
In Appendix Three Sri Sadhu Om narrates a story that Sri Ramana told in
order to explain the true inner purpose of acharas
(orthodox codes of personal cleanliness prescribed in certain Hindu
scriptures), the essence of which Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 680
of Guru Vachaka Kovai.
In Appendix Four(a) Sri Sadhu Om explains the meaning of verse 6 of Sri
Arunachala Ashtakam, in which Sri Ramana uses the analogy of
the projection of a cinema film to illustrate how our mind projects the
appearance of the world through the medium of this body (which is like
the projector) and its five senses (which are like the lenses in the
projector).
In Appendix Four(b) Sri Sadhu Om explains the meaning of verse 8 of Ulladu
Narpadu, in which Sri Ramana says that though by worshipping
the nameless and formless essential reality that we call ‘God’ in name
and form it is possible for us to see him in name and form, becoming
one with him – which is possible only by scrutinising and knowing our
own truth (our formless essence or ‘am’-ness) and thereby subsiding and
merging in his truth (his formless essence or ‘am’-ness) – is alone
seeing him in truth.
Finally in Appendix Four(c) Sri Sadhu Om clarifies a confusion that has
occurred in some translations and interpretations of verses 9, 10, 11
and 12 of Ulladu Narpadu. That is, in these verses
Sri Ramana has taught us that our mind or ego is the cause and
supporting base of the appearance of all the ‘dyads’ and ‘triads’, that
is, the pairs of opposites such as knowledge and ignorance and the
three factors of objective knowledge (namely the ‘knower’, the
‘knowing’ and the ‘known’, that is, our knowing mind, its act of
knowing and the objects known by it), but unfortunately some people
whose understanding of his teachings is rather superficial have wrongly
interpreted these verses as meaning that our real self is the cause and
base of them.
Though the ultimate base or reality underlying the appearance of our
mind and hence of these ‘dyads’ and ‘triads’ is indeed our real self,
the immediate base of them is our mind, because they are experienced
only by our mind or ego, and hence they exist only in its perspective
and not in the non-dual perspective of our real self. This is the
reason why Sri Ramana says in verse 26 of Ulladu Narpadu,
“If ego comes into existence, everything comes into existence. If ego
does not exist, everything does not exist. [Therefore] ego itself is
everything. ...”
About the English translation of
these books
Though the present English translation contained of the two parts of The
Path of Sri Ramana does convey much of the import of the
original Tamil text, Sri Ramana Vazhi, it is
unfortunately neither a complete nor an entirely satisfactory
translation. There are several reasons for this, which can best be
explained by giving a brief outline of the evolution of this book.
Most of the material in this book was compiled over a period of time
from notes that friends of Sri Sadhu Om had made of explanations that
he had given orally and from letters that he had written in answer to
questions that he had been asked about various aspects of the teachings
of Sri Ramana. Many such notes and letters were copied by a friend, Dr
R. Santanam, who wished to publish them as a book, and who therefore
requested Sri Sadhu Om to compile them into a form suitable for
publication.
Sri Sadhu Om felt that the explanations that would potentially be most
useful to fellow devotees of Sri Ramana were those that related
specifically to the philosophy and practice of atma-vichara,
so he selected only such explanations and compiled them into eight
chapters, which form most of what is now the main body of Part One of Sri
Ramana Vazhi. Therefore in 1967, when Sri Ramana
Vazhi was first published in Tamil, it consisted only of a
briefer version of Part One of the present book. Later, at the request
of many devotees of Sri Ramana who did not know Tamil, this original
version of Part One was translated into English, and the English
translation was published in 1971.
The Tamil and English versions of this book soon became very popular
among the devotees of Sri Ramana, because many people found it to be
the clearest available explanation regarding the practice of atma-vichara.
However some devotees felt that it was incomplete, because it
concentrated only on atma-vichara, which is the
core of Sri Ramana’s teachings, and did not discuss many other closely
related aspects of his teachings, so they requested Sri Sadhu Om to
write a sequel discussing such matters as God, bhakti
and karma.
Therefore from the notes and letters that he had discarded while
compiling Part One, Sri Sadhu Om compiled Part Two. However, since
there were no funds at that time to publish it, Part Two remained in
manuscript form for some years, until a friend in America offered to
finance the publication of an English translation of it. Thus Part Two
was first published in English in 1976.
In 1979, when the second Tamil edition of Sri Ramana Vazhi
was published, it contained Parts One and Two in a single volume. After
all the copies of this second edition had been sold, we began to make
arrangements for the publication of a third edition, and at that time I
requested Sri Sadhu Om to incorporate in it many additional
explanations that I had heard him giving either to me or to other
friends, so when the third edition was published in 1985 (shortly after
his passing away) it was a revised and enlarged version of the earlier
editions.
Since most of the friends who helped Sri Sadhu Om translate Sri
Ramana Vazhi into English were not native English-speakers,
and since some of them had only a very limited knowledge of Tamil, the
present translation of it is not very satisfactory. Though the
translation in the first English edition of Part One had been
thoroughly revised in preparation for the second edition, the revised
translation was not actually a very great improvement, so shortly
before it was published in 1981, Sri Sadhu Om asked me to check it and
make any corrections that I felt to be necessary. If I had had
sufficient time to do so, I would have liked to work with him to make
an entirely fresh translation, but since the time available was very
limited, all I could do was to correct the most obvious errors in the
rather clumsy existing translation.
The translation of Part Two in its first English edition was even more
clumsy than the translation of Part One, so in the early 1980’s Sri
Sadhu Om and I began to make an entirely fresh translation of Part Two,
but unfortunately we had time to retranslate less than three-quarters
of the first chapter (that is, up to about page 38 or 39 of the present
third edition). Therefore except for these first 38 pages or so, the
rest of Part Two is still the same unsatisfactory translation that was
published in the first edition.
Moreover, since the existing English translations of both parts were
made before Sri Sadhu Om incorporated the final additions in the 1985
edition of the Tamil book, the translations are not only a rather poor
reflection of the original Tamil text, but are also not a translation
of it in its present complete form. Therefore, if I ever have the time
to do so, I would like to make an entirely fresh translation of the
entire Tamil book, in order to convey as well as I can full import and
spirit of this rich and profound book.
However, as I said above, though the present English translation of
Parts One and Two is neither complete nor entirely satisfactory, it
does nevertheless succeed in conveying – albeit in a not very elegant
manner – much of the import of the original Tamil text, and over the
years many devotees who do not know Tamil have derived great benefit
from reading it. Therefore even in its present form, The Path
of Sri Ramana is a book that should be read by any spiritual
aspirant who wishes seriously to practise the path of self-enquiry and
self-surrender that Sri Ramana has taught us as the only means by which
we can experience the infinite happiness of true self-knowledge.
Printed copies of these books
The two parts of The Path of Sri Ramana are
currently available in two separate volumes, which have been published
by Sri Ramana Kshetra, and both of
them can be obtained from Sri Ramanasramam Book Stall, Sri Arunachalaramana Book Trust, Sri Ramana Kshetra or the Buy Books page of David
Godman’s website, as explained in more detail in the How to buy books by Sri Sadhu Om and Michael
James section of the Books page of this website.
Part One of The Path of Sri Ramana can also be
purchased from Amazon.com via the following link:
Amazon.com: The Path of Sri Ramana
- Part One
E-book
copies for free download
Part One
and Part Two of The
Path of Sri Ramana are also both available here for free
download as PDF e-books. In order to download these PDF versions, you
can either left-click on the following links to open them in your web
browser, after which you can save a copy, or you can right-click on
these links and select ‘Save Target As…’ from the pop-up menu:
The Path of Sri Ramana
Part One – e-book
The Path of Sri Ramana
Part Two – e-book
I
would like here to express my gratitude to all those friends who helped
me to make these PDF copies of the printed books available here,
especially N. Sankaran, who supervises the publication of most of the
Tamil and English books of Sri Sadhu Om; S. Pandurangan of Aridra
Printers, who printed the books and created these PDF copies of them;
M. V. Sabhapathy, Vasuki Seshadri and S. Ramaswamy, who encouraged him
to create them; and John Manetta, who added the bookmarks in Part One
and rectified many of the technological defects in Part Two.
Print-friendly PDF copy of this
page
To open a print-friendly PDF copy of the original version of this page
(which was kindly made by John Manetta, but before some recent minor
modifications were made to it), please click on the following link:
The Path of Sri Ramana –
introduction and synopsis by Michael James
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