Here we have wonderful teachings from Sri Ramana Maharshi in his own handwriting – and best of all for us English speakers and readers – he has written these teachings in English himself!

Many of the core themes of the teachings are given and because they have been written by Bhagavan, and because he was writing out in English the verses he himself corrected (see below for the full context), this means we can be sure of the authoritativeness of these teachings given below.

Be sure to download the PDF files below which contain even more verses than what I have included in this post. They were taken from editions of The Mountain Path (a quarterly Journal founded in 1964 by Arthur Osborne and published by Sri Ramanansramam) from 2005.

The following are all Sri Ramana Maharshi’s own English handwriting:

Sri Ramana Maharshi’s English Handwriting PDF 1 (Mountain Path April 2005)

Sri Ramana Maharshi’s English Handwriting PDF 2 (Mountain Path July 2005)

The following images are taken from The Mountain Path April 2005:

In the Mountain Path (April 2005) it explains the following:

In 1917 Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi composed five cryptic Sanskrit slokas in Arya metre entitled Arunachalapancharatnam. These verses, the quintessence of upanishadic teachings, he later translated into Tamil and they are chanted by devotees at the end of the Tamil parayanam. Sri K. Lakshmana Sharma (WHO) wrote a Sanskrit commentary on these slokas entitled Laghu Vritti (Short Commentary) and this he submitted to Sri Bhagavan, who, on perusal of the text, corrected the title to vartikam. Vartikam is defined as a supplement which elucidates that which is said, that which is left unsaid, or that which is imperfectly said and needs clarification. There is a historical precedent in Sri Sureswaracharia, a direct disciple of Adi Sankara, who was known as Vartikakara because he had written a Vartikam on Sri Sankara’s bhashya (commentary) on Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and Dhakshinamoorthy stotra among others. Since Bhagavan corrected Sri Sarma’s title to Vartikam, he also named him Vartikakara.

A second note book containing Bhagavan’s corrections was submitted to Bhagavan who confirmed his original corrections and added some more verses. The original commentary of 79 slokas was increased to 108 slokas. The corrections made by Bhagavan with English and Tamil translations of this Vartikam was again rewritten in a pocket size note book by Bhagavan himself, and this book is maintained in the Ashram Archives. We have a rare example here of Bhagavan’s handwriting in three languages, namely Sanskrit, Tamil and English. This is one of the few instances of his written English; for reasons of its rarity we decided to print here only the English translation of some verses. In the next issue, Advent 2005 [see PDF downloads on this page], we will publish examples of Bhagavan’s handwriting in all three languages together for specific verses. We have slightly magnified the writing. Any discrepancies in size are due to the varying sizes Bhagavan used to accommodate the verses in the limited space available in the notebook.

In verses 1 and 2, above, Sri Ramana declares that he is nothing other than the Self, pure consciousness.

In verse 3 above, Bhagavan Sri Ramana states that the Self, also known as Turiya, is worldless, that is, without objective phenomena, and in verse 4 he states it is blissful and free from evil.

In verses 5 (above) and 6 (below), Sri Ramana writes that his teaching is the true Upanishad (ie. the genuine revealed teaching or shruti).

In verse 7 (below) it is stated that because the teachings are authoritative, the conclusions will be stated in brief (without the need to provide logical reasoning as a support or proof).

Verse 8 (below) starts with ‘O Sea of the Nectar of Grace…’ and states how Arunachala, which is the Self, will swallow up the worlds (objective phenomena) just as light ‘swallows’ darkness, indicating how the world, which is illusion (see below) is merely ignorance (darkness).

Below Sri Ramana explains ‘Here it is also shown that the Supreme Being is worldless’ (verse 9), meaning that the world appearance does not appear in the Self, and that the world appearance is due solely to ignorance (verse 25).

The triad of ‘soul, God and object’ in verse 25 refers to Jiva, Iswara and Jagat.

Verse 26 shows that ‘the world as it really is’ refers to pure consciousness devoid of objective phenomena, ie. when the nama rupa (names and forms) have been removed the Self is revealed, as the verse says, the world needs to be renounced.

Below in verse 36 Sri Ramana states that the whole teaching is only to facilitate Self Enquiry (‘The Quest’), and in verses 36 and 49 he states that to do Self Enquiry one must ‘turn inwards’ explaining this means to turn ‘away from the world’:

Here in verse 63 Bhagavan Sri Ramana states that Awareness of Self is Deathlessness, Silence and Fearlessness, also known as the Fourth (Turiya).

In verse 64 below Sri Ramana states that there are no objects and no knower of objects in the Self (which is formless and objectless, One Whole without any differentiation whatsoever):

The following images are from The Mountain Path July 2005:

Here in verses 14 and 31 Sri Ramana states that the world is certainly not real, the world being a creation or projection of the mind:, only the Self, the Pure Consciousness devoid of objects and full of bliss is the only reality (and this must be known directly through Self-Enquiry, see verse 97 below)

Here in verse 97 Sri Ramana states that unless one does Self-Enquiry (Vichara) or Self-Surrender, one will not end suffering. The asterixed portion confirms that Self-Surrender itself is essentially Self-Enquiry, there being truly onle One Path to the One Self: