The Core Teachings of Ramana Maharshi

RAMANA: Everything is predetermined.

"In accordance with the prarabdha (destiny) of each, the One whose function it is to ordain makes each to act. What will not happen will never happen, whatever effort one may put forth. And what will happen will not fail to happen, however much one may seek to prevent it. This is certain. The part of wisdom therefore is to stay quiet."

lives in the hot sun without food and shelter. There is no reason for you to cry since you just finished your dinner and the chair in the air conditioned room is very comfortable – but yet here you are crying. This is the error. You have nothing to do with the story on the TV but you superimpose the problems of the hero and heroine on yourself by identifying with them and suffer the consequences of this identification. First it is a just a story, second the problems belong to the hero and heroine and third you have nothing to do with their problems. But the identification is so intense that you are unable to separate the problems of the seen from that of seer, yourself. You are the seer, the subject and the movie; the hero and heroine are the seen, the objects. The seer is different from the seen. Yet, because of intense identification with the characters that are seen, you superimpose their problems as your problems. you are not even aware that you are superimposing that which does not belong to you.

Imagine that you are relaxing after a scrumptious dinner sitting on a comfortable chair in an air conditioned room and intently watching a movie on TV. You are so involved in the movie that you start sweating and crying since the hero and heroine in the movie are miserably suffering, running away to save their

How can that be? I feel I am a limited mortal who is unhappy; I am born on a particular day and will die one day. How can I be immortal? I do not know many things – I do not know many subjects starting from physics to chemistry to astrology to many other “ologies”. How I can be knowledgeable entity. Apart from the occasional happiness that I get when my desires are fulfilled, I am miserable most of the time. How can I be happy? Vedanta says that the fundamental problem is that you do not know your true nature and, because of that ignorance of your true nature, you take yourself to be other than your true nature. This is what is called a superimposed error. You do not know what you are or who you are; you take yourself to be what you are not and suffer the consequences of that identification.