Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi on Life, Death, Rebirth and Suicide

Sri Ramana Maharshi

What is Life?

Materially speaking Life is the body; spiritually speaking it is the Ultimate Consciousness. It depends on how you look at it.

What is Death?

Death, like life, is a mere thought. It is oblivion of one's real nature. When you are “awake,” you incessantly think, and when you go to sleep and dream, you do not think any the lesser. But when you pass from dreamful to dreamless sleep, your thoughts cease and you enjoy undisturbed peace, till you wake again and resume your thinking and with it your restless, peace-less state.

Life is miserable because it consists of nothing but thoughts. When death strikes down the body, the dreamless, thought-free state prevails for a brief period, but soon thinking starts again in the dream – “astral” – world, and continues till a full “waking” takes place in a new body, after another dreamless lull. 

This daily cycle of waking and sleeping is a miniature of the cycle of life and death in man and the universe, of alternation of activity and rest. The substance of the former is thoughts and sensations and of the latter the peaceful being from which these arise. To transcend birth and death we have, therefore, to transcend the processes of thought and abide in the eternal being. 

- 4th Jan 1937 -

What is the cause of tanha, thirst for life, thirst for rebirth?

Real rebirth is dying from the ego into the Spirit. This is the significance of the crucifixion of Jesus. Whenever identification with the body exists, a body is always available, whether in this or in any other one, till the body-sense disappears by merging into the Source – the Spirit, or Self. The stone which is projected upwards remains in constant motion, till it returns to its source, the earth, and rests. Headache continues to give trouble, till the pre-headache state is regained.

Thirst for life is inherent in the very nature of life, which is Absolute Existence – Sat. Although indestructible by nature, by false identification with its destructible instrument, the body, consciousness imbibes a false apprehension of its destructibility, hence it tries to perpetuate that instrument, which results in a succession of births. But however long these bodies may last, they eventually come to an end and yield to the Self, which alone eternally exists.

Give up the false identification and, remember, the body cannot exist without the Self, whereas the Self can exist without the body; in fact it is always without it.

Is a human being may take an animal birth in some other life?

Let him who takes birth ask this question. Find out first who it is that is born, and whether there are actual birth and death. These are only of the ego, which is an illusion of the mind.

- 4 April 1937 -

Is suicide a wrong act?

Killing the innocent body is certainly wrong. Suicide must be committed on the mind, where the suffering is deposited, and not on the body, which is insentient and feels nothing. The mind is the real culprit, being the creator of the anguish which tempts to suicide, but by an error of judgement, the innocent, insentient body is punished for it.

- 5th May, 1943 -

Is there rebirth?

Do you know what birth is? There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present. Yesterday was the present to you when you experienced it, and tomorrow will be also the present when you will experience it. Therefore experience takes place only in the present, and beyond experience nothing exists.

Are then Past and Future mere imagination?

Yes, even the Present is mere imagination, for the sense of time is purely mental. Space is similarly mental; therefore birth and rebirth, which take place in time and space cannot be other than imagination.

- 3 Sep 1948 -

A well-educated North Indian came forward, prostrated to Sri Bhagavan Raman Maharshi and sat in the front line. He asked in excellent English:

Visitor.  What is the cause and origin of the universe?

Bh.  Have you no worries of your own?

V.  Of course I have; that is why I want to know about Life, Death, Consciousness, etc.

Bh. Begin with the beginning: who has Life, Consciousness, etc.? Have you, for instance, life?

V.  Of course I know I am alive, for I see my body.

Bh. Do you always see the body? What happens to it and to the universe when you go to sleep?

V.  I don’t know, it is a mystery.

Bh.  You may not know what happens to them, but do you for that reason cease to exist?

V.  I don’t know.

Bh.  How do you then know that you exist even now?

V.  Now I have awareness and see my body moving and thinking.

Bh. But you see your body also moving and thinking and being in all sorts of places while it is actually lying fast asleep in Tiruvannamalai.

V.  It is a mystery. Can I say that I, the permanent, am ever present and only my ego changes?

Bh.  So you think you are two persons: the permanent ‘I’ and the ego. Is that possible?

V.  Then please show me the way to the Real.

Bh. The Real is ever-present, like the screen on which all the cinematographic pictures move. While the pictures appear on it, it remains invisible. Stop the pictures, and the screen, which has all along been present, in fact the only object that has existed throughout, will become clear. All these universes, humans, objects, thoughts and events are merely pictures moving on the screen of Pure Consciousness, which alone is real. Shapes and phenomena pass away, but Consciousness remains ever.

A few days later Sri Bhagavan gave a different answer to a similar question asked by Dr. Godel, a French Medical Officer of the Suez Canal. He told the doctor: 

“You must distinguish between the ‘I’, pure in itself, and the ‘I’- thought. The latter, being merely a thought, sees subject and object, sleeps, wakes up, eats and thinks, dies and is reborn. But the pure ‘I’ is the pure Being, eternal existence, free from ignorance and thought-illusion. If you stay as the ‘I’, your being alone, without thought, the I-thought will disappear and the delusion will vanish forever. 

In a cinema-show you can see pictures only in a very dim light or in darkness. But when all lights are switched on, all pictures disappear. So also in the flood-light of the Supreme Atman all objects disappear.”

Dr. G.  That is the Transcendental State.

Bh.  No, transcending what, and by whom? You alone exist.

                                          - 22 Feb 1949 -