Question: I find surrender is easier. I want to adopt that path.

Ramana: By whatever path you go, you will have to lose yourself in the One. Surrender is complete only when you reach the stage ‘Thou art all’ and ‘Thy will be done’. The state is not different from jnana (knowledge or understanding).

In soham there is dvaita (duality). In surrender there is advaita (non-duality). In the Reality there is neither dvaita nor advaita, but That which is, is.

Surrender appears easy because people imagine that, once they say with their lips ‘I surrender’ and put their burdens on their Lord, they can be free and do what they like. But the fact is that you can have no likes or dislikes after your surrender and that your will should become completely non-existent, the Lord’s Will taking its place.

Such death of the ego is nothing different from jnana. So by whatever path you may go, you must come to jnana or oneness.

Taken from Day by Day with Bhagavan, p.85

Tom’s comments:

Ramana states that the path of surrender and the path of knowledge (Jnana) lead to the same goal.

They lead us not to some state of duality or non-duality, but to ‘that-which-is’, ie. what is already here. This place is simply what is beyond concepts such as duality or non-duality, or indeed other concepts such as self/no-self, consciousness or even oneness.

He states that Jnana is simply the death of the ego. This is not some knowledge of metaphysics or consciousness, but the loss of the ego-illusion. What is the exact illusion that is lost? It is the loss of the illusion of doership and the self-centred compulsive desires that flow from that illusion. This is what is meant by ‘death of the ego’.

This understanding can be ‘gained’ through the path of surrender, or through self-enquiry: either give yourself to the Lord (surrender) or see that the doer is a fiction (through self-enquiry) and end up with Understanding (Jnana).

❤ Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya ❤