The following excerpt is taken from Aham Sphurana 9th August 1936, you can download the entire text here.

Questioner: If this suffering world is some sort of joke, I find God’s sense of humour distasteful – revolting, even.

Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi: The world is not external to you. Because you imagine yourself to be confined to this body, such a thing called ‘world’ appears outside you. In truth, only you are there and there is nothing else.

Q.: If I am the formless Aathman, how and why did I come to be trapped within or confined to this body?

B.: Who complains that he is limited to a phenomenal body? Is the Aathman raising this complaint?

Q.: No; I am.

[Tom: we will see that the questioner is lead to realise that the entity asking the question is neither the insentient physical body, not the exquisite perfect self, but some imposter that lies inbetween the two – ie. the ego-mind]

B.: Are you apart from the Aathman?

Q.: Yes; the Aathman is formless and perfect; I am confined to the form of this perishable body and therefore imperfect. Am I correct?

B.: Does the body bemoan the fact of its caducity?

Q.: No; I do.

B.: According to your own admission, you are neither the body nor the Aathman. Who, then, are you?

Q.: I am the intermediary entity, namely the individual soul [Tom: ie. Jiva or sense of separate self] or mind.

B.: How are you conscious of the mind’s existence? Is the mind you or are you aware of it as something apart from you?

[Tom: we will see that Bhagavan leads the questioner to realise that there are 2 aspects to his supposed identity or sense of self – consciousness and the thought or personality stream; he will see that consciousness is fundamental whereas the mind-personality-stream is not]

Q.: The mind seems to be the sentient life-force or stream of consciousness underlying my personality.

B.: Which is dependant on which for survival?

Q.: The mind’s sentience or consciousness is the fuel for my personality to function…

B.: Among these two, which can be eliminated by you?

Q.: Consciousness seems to be a given force or current. All I can do is to avoid the personality by refusing to indulge in thoughts; for thoughts seem to constitute the personality.

B.: So, if there are no thoughts, there is no possibility of raising the question ‘How and why did I come to be trapped within or confined to this body?’ or any other question; is that correct?

Q.: No doubt in the thought-free state the question cannot possibly be raised; but the question – as such – remains! Will avoiding the question address it?

B.: The question supplies the answer as itself!

Q.: I do not understand.

B.: The thought ‘I have a body’ is not a description of an independant situation. The body appears to exist ONLY by virtue and as a consequence solely of such thought.

Q.: So, it is the thought ‘I have a body’ that is responsible for creating the false impression that I have a body, whereas in truth I have none. Am I correct?

B.: Yes.

Q.: In that case, if I think, ‘I have no body’, the body should disappear, but it does not disappear. Why is this so?

B.: Intensely thinking about the disappearance of the body does make it disappear; but accquisition of such worthless siddhis is not our objective. You were asked to remove the idea ‘I have a body’ and keep quiet. Instead you remove that idea and in its place introduce the idea ‘I have no body’. Jnana is the disappearance of all ideas. ‘All ideas must disappear’ is also an idea. Eschew that idea also and keep quiet.

Q.: How will day-to-day life go on in the absence of thoughts?

B.: Many times better than it is going on now.

Q.: Can we move or speak without thinking?

B.: Once the ego is burnt away in the crucible of Jnana, all actions become automatic.

Q.: This is the Jnani’s point of view. Can it apply to an ajnani?

B.: Never mind Jnanis and ajnanis. Keep quiet and see whether your body’s actions are not spontaneously guided by an unfathomable Higher Power.

Q.: Can the Higher Power be trusted to always act in accordance with my interest?

B.: He always does the right thing. What he does may or may not co-incide with your weltanschauung and your understanding of or preferance for how things ought to go about or events ought to unfold. His actions may even seem unwise in your eye. What you should do is to close the eye of perception or judgement once and for all and open the eye of wisdom once and for all. Let the Master take care of the body and the circumstances, favourable or adversarious, that it is destined to face. You remain permanently submerged in the Heart and lose yourself there. Then it will not matter whether the body is drenched in rain or roasted in the sun or buried in the bowels of the earth; you remain unaffected, irrevocably and irretrievably lost in supreme shanti and not knowing anything apart therefrom.

Q.: Only a Jnani could be so indifferent to the body.

B.: Be a Jnani, then.

Q.: But it is said to be the hardest of all attainments.

B.: On the other hand, it is always your natural state.

Q.: If so why am I unaware of the same?

B.: Because you think you are unaware.

Q.: How to remedy the affliction?

B.: Stop thinking.

Q.: How is that done?

B.: Every time a thought arises, ask yourself, ‘To whom has this thought arisen?’ and then take the mind back to its origin, which is the primordial state of subjective-awareness-sustained-effortlessly-and-volitionlessly.

Q.: The thought ‘To whom has this thought arisen?’ is also a thought.

B.: The stick which is used to stir a burning pyre – what is its ultimate fate?

Q.: Generally it is thrown into the pyre itself to burn.

B.: Exactly.