RiverGanga Foundation

Ramana Maharshi

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ramana

 

 

As a sixteen-year-old boy, in an absolutely unexpected circumstance, Ramana found that the story that he believed to be himself vanished and yet he remained.

He left his home; he left the people he knew. He went to Tiruvanamalai, and he sat in the basement of the temple there.  He was honored and venerated by the Hindu priests and holy people there, and he spent the next twelve years not speaking to anyone. 

During those first twelve years, he learned from all traditions; he learned about different ways of looking at self-realization. He created for himself a vocabulary of concepts and words that seemed to be consistent with his own experience. And he found in the ancient texts and in the ancient teachings, the idea that one could find directly, consciously, the reality of what one is, and that nothing else is of any value.

For the rest of his life, in all of his meetings with the people who came to see him, he always came back to the rock bottom foundation upon which he stood and that was the question "Who am I?"

All things whatsoever with Ramana — all questions, confusion and wanderings — were brought back to this question, "Who am I?" which he puts in our face all the time.

What is offered in the self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi is absolutely practical and down to earth.  It does not require the intervention of any divine being or any guru. What is required is the determination within oneself to know what is true, what is real, and the recognition that I must find this for myself.

From a Meeting with John Sherman in October 2006

 

 


 

Thanks to the Sri Ramanasramam and the Baghavan Ramana Maharshi website, we are now offering the following Ramana Maharshi books as free downloads.

All books are published by Ramanasraman, Tiruvanamalai, India.

All of the files on this page are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format inside a ZIP Archive. Please download the ZIP file and extract the PDF file to your hard-drive. Any ZIP utility will be able to extract the file.

 

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

Who Am I?

Words of Grace

Qui Suis-Je? (Who Am I? - French translation)

 

More books, as well as articles, newsletters, the Mountain Path Journal, accommodation and travel information to the ashram, photographs and video clips are also available as free downloads from the Ramana Maharshi Website.

 

 

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next event
Worldwide Online Meeting

Saturday, March 13 at 1 pm PT (GMT/UTC -8)

People all over the world gather together online with John for a couple of hours. John is available to listen to your questions, and to help you sort out any difficulties you might experience in your own practice of the vichara.

This is very much like a call-in radio show. If you simply want to listen to the meetings, all you need to do is to install the software and have speakers attached to your computer. If you wish to speak with John, then you will need a headset with microphone. You can also use earbuds and a microphone.

Download our 2010 Schedule of Events:

All our events are always free of charge.

All are welcome, with no regard for religious and spiritual beliefs and practices.

Spontaneous donations for the support of our work are always welcome and gratefully accepted.

Featured Letter of the Month
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Podcast

A Meeting with John Sherman - February 13, 2010

"Self-reliance is not easy. Self-reliance is full of mistakes, stumbling blocks, false trails and premature conclusions. Self-reliance isn't pretty. Self-reliance is hard, it is not easy. It is easy to abandon self-reliance and try to find answers in other people's understandings and experiences. That's easy. Trying to manifest experiences that we have come to believe to be what we need to be in order to be free and happy and satisfied and fulfilled, that's easy. But it is not self-reliance."  John Sherman

Complete, live recording of a Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman broadcast live from Ojai, California on February 13, 2010.

Video Blog

Our Work

First, last, and always, my advice is only to look at the feeling of being you, without the mediation of understanding, the need to resolve paradox, or the requirement that this looking lead to any conclusion. Simply make every effort just to look, and persist in that effort as often as you can. In this effort, understanding is irrelevant, belief is irrelevant, even duration is irrelevant -- the briefest look, repeated over time, does all the work.

A Message from John Sherman, videotaped in Ojai, California on May 15, 2009.

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Our work is to bring the vichara to all who are interested.

The only problem anywhere to be found is the false belief that you are at the mercy of your life, and the only solution is the truth, which is everywhere and always present and self-evident. Ridding oneself of the false is as easy as repeatedly tasting the truth of being here, unmovingly, unchangingly here. This repeated looking directly at oneself is the infallible method of the vichara.

Although our meetings are free of charge, they are certainly not free of cost. The money needed for this work must come entirely from the generosity and compassion of those who, like us, have seen for themselves the immense worth of spreading this good news to all humanity.

Please help provide financial support for the work of making this method more widely available in the world by making a donation or a monthly pledge in any amount now.

All gifts to the RiverGanga Foundation are fully tax-deductible as charitable donations.

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RiverGanga Foundation
PO Box 1566
Ojai, California 93024-1566
Phone: (805) 649-1600
Email: info@riverganga.org

RiverGanga Foundation is a not-for-profit, 509(a)(2) public charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code.

Our Internal Revenue Service Employer ID Number is 77-0561647. All donations are tax deductible for US residents as charitable contributions.

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