All Guru’s are real teachers.

When I first came across Bhagavan’s teachings and for some years afterwards, I didn’t like them very much and much preferred teachings that emphasised the oneness of formlessness and form or spoke about ‘no self’ rather than True Self such as the modern Buddhist style teachings and the modern non-dual teachings we see in the West. I also preferred the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, Dzogchen, Mahamudra and the like, as they made much more sense to my mind.

I used to think things such as ‘there is no outer or inner, so how can you turn within? And what entity would turn within? Perhaps these ‘turn within’ teachings are lower teachings for those who do not have non-dual insight already…’

Again, these teachings intellectually made more sense to my mind than all this talk of ‘Self’ and ‘attend to the Self’ or ‘ Abide as the Self’ that Bhagavan spoke of. I thought even using concepts such as ‘Self’, and phrases such as ‘cling to the self’, concretised something that didn’t need to be concretised, and that ‘no self’ was a much more accurate and a generally more helpful expression. Now I know that intellectuals often think in this way.

However luckily for me, for some unknown reason (ok, it was by his Grace ❤️), I felt intense love, devotion and surrender to Bhagavan Sri Ramana. Even then, I still didn’t like his teachings though! It was only after much devotion and surrender and through his grace ❤️ that I came to appreciate just how wonderful and rare his written teachings actually are, how they are relatively unique and how they have a power to truly liberate in a way that most other teachings do not.

~ Tom Das

🙏🙏🙏