Annamalai Swami

1906 Tondankurichi, India - 1995 Turuvanamali, India
Path: Ramana Maharshi bio

This page last updated on 2/1/22.

If you have an oil lamp and you forget to put oil in it, the light goes out. It was your forgetfulness and your lack of vigilance that caused the light to go out. Your thoughts were elsewhere. They were not on the tending the lamp. In every moment, you only have one real choice: to be aware of the Self or to be identify with the body and the mind. If you choose the latter course, don't blame God or God's will, or predestination. God did not make you forget the Self.

Forgetfulness or non-forgetfulness is not a part of your destiny. It is something you choose from moment to moment. That is what Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] said. He said that you have the freedom either to identify with the Self and have the understanding that the body is performing its predestined activities, animated and sustained by the power of the Self, or you can identify with the activities of the body and the mind, and in doing so forget the Self. If you choose the latter course, don't blame God or God's will, or predestination. God did not make you forget the Self. You yourself are making that choice every second of your life.

QUESTION : What is the easiest way to be free of the “little self”?
Annamalai Swami: Stop identifying with it. If you can convince yourself “This "little self” is not me", it will just disappear.
Question: But how to do this?
Annamalai Swami: The “little self” is something which only appears to be real. If you understand that it has no real existence it will disappear, leaving behind it the experience of the real and only Self. Understand that it has no real existence and it will stop troubling you.
Consciousness is universal. There is no limitation or “little self” in it. It is only when we identify with and limit ourselves to the body and the mind that this false self is born. If, through enquiry, you go to the Source of this “little self”, you find that it dissolves into nothingness.

Self-inquiry must be done repeatedly and steadily. The wandering mind slowly loses its energy when it is subjected to constant scrutiny.

The mind derives all its energy from the attention you give to thoughts and emotions. If you refuse to give them any attention and instead challenge each thought as soon as it appears, sooner or later your attention will stop going out to all your stray thoughts.

When the attractiveness of transient thoughts diminishes to the point where you no longer feel obliged to hold on to them whenever they appear, you will be able to rest quietly in the experience of your real nature without being distracted.

The experience of this “I am” is God. All of us have this “I am”, this basic sense of existing. This consciousness is the ultimate and only reality.

This life is all a dream, a dream within a dream. We dream this world, we dream that we die and take birth in another body. And in this birth we dream that we have dreams. All kinds of pleasures and suffering alternate in these dreams , but a moment comes when waking up happens. In this moment, which we call realizing the Self, there is the understanding that all the births, all the deaths, all the sufferings and all the pleasures were unreal dreams that have finally come to end.

Watch the thoughts come and go without identifying with them in any way. If you can resist the impulse to claim each and every thought as your own, you will come to a startling conclusion: you will discover that you are the consciousness in which the thoughts appear and disappear. You will discover that this thing called mind only exists when thoughts are allowed to run free.

When you have become one with the Self; A Great Power takes you over, and runs your life for you. IT looks after your body, it puts you in the right place at the right time; it makes you say the right things to the people you meet. This power takes you over so completely that you no longer have any ability to decide, or discriminate.

You have to keep up the enquiry, 'To whom is this happening?' all the time. If you are having trouble remind yourself, 'This is just happening on the surface of my mind. I am not this mind or the wandering thoughts.' Then go back into enquiry 'Who am I?'. By doing this you will penetrate deeper and deeper and become detached from the mind. This will only come about after you have made an intense effort.