Unless you turn away from arising phenomena, the sense of being an individual person and the suffering that comes along with it (ie. ignorance and duality) keeps on returning.

This is why all genuinely liberating spiritual teachings advocate deep meditation (or deep silence or deep self-inquiry).

Some people think turning away from something means a teaching is dualistic, but this is because the true nature of Non-Duality has not really been known, and the mind has acquired a false (conceptual) understanding of an non-duality that makes sense to the mind, but is not actually true or liberating.

This is also why those teachings that do not advocate turning away from phenomena do not result in the total cessation of suffering.

Some of these false teachings even state that it is impossible for suffering to be totally and completely removed, thus contradicting the testimony of all the great sages and spiritual traditions.

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Bhagavan Ramana repeatedly taught that we should turn away from phenomena/objects, (just as the Upanishads and all true spiritual teachings do) eg.:

Q. What in brief is the means to know one’s own real nature? What is the effort that can bring about the sublime inner vision?

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Strenuously withdrawing all thoughts from sense objects, one should remain fixed in steady, non-objective [ie. subjective] enquiry. This, in brief, is the means of knowing one’s own real nature; this effort alone bring about the sublime inner vision.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramana Gita, Chapter 3, verses 4-6

If, on the contrary, you withdraw your mind completely from the world and turn it within and abide thus, that is, if you keep awake always to the Self, which is the substratum of all experience, you will find the world, of which alone you are now aware, just as unreal as the world in which you lived in your dream.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Maharshi’s Gospel

291. If one wants to be saved, one is given the following true and essential advice: just as the tortoise draws all its five limbs within its shell, so one should draw the five senses within and turn one’s mind Selfward. This alone is happiness.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Vachaka Kovai verse 291

Commentary from Sri Sadhu Om on the above verse: This important advice, to withdraw the mind from the five senses and to turn it Selfward, is not given to one and all; it is given only for the benefit of those who wish to save themselves, and not for those who are still vainly hoping to save the world. Such people, who want to save the world, will find no taste for Self-attention, and thus they are not yet fit even to save themselves, let alone to save the world; unless one has first learnt to swim, it is vain and futile to jump into the water to save others.

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