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A visitor said: I am told that according to your school I
must find out the source of my thoughts. How am I to do it?'

Bhagavan: I have no school; however, it is true that one
should trace the source of all thoughts.

Visitor: Suppose I have the thought `horse' and try to trace
its source; I find that it is due to memory and the memory in its turn is due to prior perception of the object `horse', but that is all.

Bhagavan: Who asked you to think about all that? All those
are also thoughts. What good will it do you to go on thinking about memory and perception? It will be endless, like the old dispute, which came first, the tree or the seed. Ask who has this perception and memory. That `I' that has the perception and memory, whence does it arise? Find out that. Because perception or memory or any other experience only comes to that `I'. You don't have such experiences during sleep, and yet you say that
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you existed during sleep. And you exist now too. That shows that the `I' continues while other things come and go.

Visitor: I am asked to find out the source of `I', and in
fact that is what I want to find out, but how can I? What is the source from which I came?

Bhagavan: You came from the same source in which you
were during sleep. Only during sleep you couldn't know where you entered; that is why you must make the enquiry while waking.

Some of us advised the visitor to read Who am I?? and
Ramana Gita and Bhagavan also told him he might do so. He did so during the day and in the evening he said to Bhagavan: "Those books prescribe Self-enquiry, but how is one to do it?"

Bhagavan: That also must be described in the books.

Visitor: Am I to concentrate on the thought `Who am I?'

Bhagavan: It means you must concentrate to see where
the I-thought arises. Instead of looking outwards, look inwards and see where the I-thought arises.

Visitor: And Bhagavan says that if I see that, I shall realise
the Self?

Bhagavan: There is no such thing as realising the Self.

How is one to realise or make real what is real? People all realise, or regard as real, what is unreal, and all they have to do is to give that up. When you do that you will remain as you always are and the Real will be Real. It is only to help people give up regarding the unreal as real that all the religions and the practices taught by them have come into being.

Visitor: Whence comes birth?

Bhagavan: For whom is birth?

Visitor: The Upanishads say "He who knows Brahman
becomes Brahman."

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Bhagavan: It is not a matter of becoming but being.

Visitor: Are the siddhis mentioned in Patanjali's sutras
true or only his dream?

Bhagavan: He who is Brahman or the Self will not value
those siddhis. Patanjali himself says that they are all exercised with the mind and that they impede Self-realisation.

Visitor: What about the powers of supermen?

Bhagavan: Whether powers are high or low, whether of
the mind or super-mind, they exist only with reference to him who has the powers; find out who that is.

Visitor: When one attains Self-realisation, what is the
guarantee that one has really attained it and is not under an illusion like the lunatic who thinks he is Napoleon or some such thing?

Bhagavan: In a sense, speaking of Self-realisation is a
delusion. It is only because people have been under the delusion that the non-Self is the Self and the unreal the Real that they have to be weaned out of it by the other delusion called Self-realisation; because actually the Self always is the Self and there is no such thing as realising it. Who is to realise what, and how, when all that exists is the Self and nothing but the Self?

Visitor: Sri Aurobindo says the world is real and you
and the Vedantins say it is unreal. How can the world be unreal?

Bhagavan: The Vedantins do not say the world is unreal.

That is a misunderstanding. If they did, what would be the meaning of the Vedantic text: "All this is Brahman"? They only mean that the world is unreal as world, but it is real as Self. If you regard the world as not-Self it is not real. Everything, whether you call it world or maya or lila ^[?] or sakti ^[?], must be within the Self and not apart from it. There can be no sakti ^[?] apart from the sakta.

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Visitor: Different teachers have set up different schools
and proclaimed different truths and so confused people. Why?

Bhagavan: They have all taught the same truth but from
different standpoints. Such differences were necessary to meet the needs of different minds differently constituted, but they all reveal the same Truth.

Visitor: Since they have recommended different paths
which is one to follow?

Bhagavan: You speak of paths as if you were somewhere
and the Self somewhere else and you had to go and reach it. But in fact the Self is here and now and you are that always. It is like you being here and asking people the way to Ramanasramam and complaining that each one shows a different path and asking which to follow.

Nagamma has been keeping a record of interesting events
that she writes to her brother, D.S. Sastri, at Madras in the form of letters. This was placed before Bhagavan and he looked through it and suggested that she should paste a list of contents on the cover. One of the extracts referred to squirrels and this led Bhagavan to start speaking about them.

"There was once a regular war between the people here
and the squirrels for a whole month. They used to build their nests over my head. Each day the people would destroy them and the next day the squirrels would have built them again. At last all the holes in the roof were stopped up and the squirrels could do nothing. At one time they used to run all over my couch and get into the sides and under the pillows and everywhere, and I had to look carefully before I sat down or leaned back. It has sometimes happened that I have accidentally leaned heavily on some small squirrel and given it samadhi without knowing. The same thing sometimes happened on the Hill too, at Skandasramam. There too the squirrels used to nestle in my mattress and pillows. It began even before that. Even
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when I was at Gurumoortham birds and squirrels used to build their nests all round me. There is a bird that builds its nest of mud. Once while I was there such a nest was built and after the birds had left it squirrels occupied it."