I Am (K)Not the Body - Jnana Yoga

I Am (K)Not the Body

Introduction

I had a collection of handwritten notes that were prepared while going through two books, the ‘Guru Vachaka Kovai’ (the garland of Guru’s sayings) and ‘Padamalai’. These are teachings of Bhagwan Sri Ramana Maharshi recorded in Tamil verse by his disciple Muruganar made generously available to the whole world in English by Mr. David Godman and his team. I had the feeling ‘I am not the body’ when I held these books in hand even before I had read them. Thus I started taking down notes with this idea in mind and this collection is the outcome of that effort. This soft copy was only recently prepared as I felt that many spiritual aspirants may find them useful as I did.

Pradeep Apte
1st January 2009

Excerpts

47. Worship of the formless (reality) will be possible for those
in whose minds the idea ‘I am the body’ has perished. Any
worship done by holding onto this idea is the worship of
form only and not the formless.

48. After negating everything as ‘not I’ and finally the body as
well by the strength of the firm conviction ‘I am not the
body’, the nature of the knowledge that remains is
existence-consciousness-bliss (‘sat-chit-ananda’).

89. Only when the ‘I am the body’ feeling leaves, will the
experience of the Self, in which everything wholly shines
as the Self will be attained. Thus have the firm conviction
‘I am not in the body but the body is in me’.

155. After the destruction of the ‘I am the body’ idea, one enters
the real and permanent state which is the Self itself.
Although relatively called the fourth state or ‘turiya’, it is
the only state that is.