The following is taken from the text Aham Sphurana, 19th September 1936:

Questioner: In ‘Ulysses’ we find Mr. Joyce to have deployed the words, “And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine.” I am frequently beginning to think on such lines now-a-days. We feed and clothe the body; we find for it a warm shelter to live under. In return, what is our gain? The body keeps getting new diseases and fills us with agony and misery by putting us in pain. This is a traitorous body which returns evil for good. I don’t want it anymore. Is the body a gift from God? Is it a sin to refuse to remain in acceptance of it anymore?

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi: It is not so easy to get rid of the body. Physical annihilation of the body might remove it from this earthly realm, but again your mind will find another body for you. The body was manufactured only by the mind. There is only one way to kill the body: that is to kill the mind. Mind dead, not only does the body die, but also the whole of the cosmos. Our effort must therefore be directed toward killing the mind, not the body.

[Tom: Bhagavan is stating that it is the mind, also known as ego or ignorance, that ‘manufactures’ or creates/projects the body as well as the world and entire cosmos. If we merely kill the body, the mind will project a new body to inhabit, so samsara does not end. However, if we kill the mind, that is realise the self and thereby destroy ego/ignorance, then all that will remain is the worldless formless Self]

The body is not a gift from God inasmuch as God never asked you to take the form of the body – i.e., to imagine that you are one and identical with the body. You ask what is gained by holding on to the body. Who is it who says he is holding on to what he refers to as being his body? Discover the identity of that villain. Then you Realise that you never did have any body. The body has nothing to do with you.

You are bodiless always. Realise It. How? The same Mr. Joyce mentioned by you also writes, “…remember, my dear boys, that we have been sent into this world for one thing and for one thing alone: to do God’s holy will and to save our immortal souls. All else is worthless. One thing alone is needful, the salvation of one’s soul. What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world if he suffer the loss of his immortal soul? Ah, my dear boys, believe me there is nothing in this wretched world that can make up for such a loss.” If the soul is immortal how can it be lost? So, what is attempted to be communicated? The Immortal and Imperishable Soul is seemingly lost because of avarana [Tom: the veiling power of tamas]. That is the meaning. To tear asunder this veil of iniquity is the one and only relevant goal of one’s life.

Q.: And it can be accomplished by asking oneself, ‘Who am I?’?

B.: People who come here say, I practise the investigation ‘Who am I?’ for an hour each day, or for a few hours each day. What can we say to them? It is not a practice that is to be pursued a few hours each day. It is a fundamental change or shift in the direction in which one’s extroverted mind happens to incumbently be oriented. Relentlessly pursue the investigation day-in and dayout till the Self is Realised.

Q.: How can the investigation, which seeks to curb thought, be at all combined with activities that necessarily entail thinking?

B.: With persistent practise of the practice, activities – that you now think are being done by you – will automatically go on effortlessly. Your intervention will then be unnecessary – in fact, impedimentous. We are under the impression that we do things. What is the fact? It is the Higher Power that does everything. Is it the chiselled figures found at and forming part of the base of the Rajagopuram that bear the weight of the same? Is it not the earth that bears the entire load? Yet those sculpted figures have facial features that are wildly contorted with the evident strain of carrying the huge structure. It is a clever, artistic sham. Likewise here. The ego never does anything, but simply appropriates to itself credit for the body’s actions, which happen exclusively and spontaneously in accordance with Ishwara’s pre-destined script for it.

In other words, thoughts do not cause action to take place. Actions always go on only of their own accord: only we assign to them a spurious sense of personal doership or individual agency, and suffer thinking that free-will is real.

Q.: But actions follow thoughts. First I think and decide; then I act accordingly.

B.: That is just what is NOT true.

Q.: How so?

B.: The apparent causal-synchronicity between thought and action is a sham. That alone transpires which is destined to transpire. The preceding thought motivating the [body’s] action is not the result of free-will. Why? Because there is no such thing as free-will. How then is there cohesion between thought, which occurs first, and action, which occurs in subsequent concatenation? It is because the extroverted mind is also subject to destiny, just as the body’s actions are subject to destiny.

Q.: How cheerless to think that free-will is a myth…

B.: It cannot be denied that from the standpoint of the individual person free-will is indispensable. But where is the need to be an individual person when you can BE THAT?