Sri Ramana Maharshi:

Effortless and choice-less awareness is our real nature. If we can attain that state and abide, that is all right. But one cannot reach it without effort, the effort of deliberation or meditation, whether it be upon Self inquiry, surrender or both. All the age-old vasanas (inherent tendencies) turn the mind outward to external objects. All such thoughts must be given up, the mind turned inwards. That, for most people, requires effort. Every teacher and every scripture tells the aspirant to keep quiet, but it is not so easy to do.

That is why all this effort is necessary. Even if we find somebody who has achieved this supreme state of stillness without seeming effort, you may take it that the necessary effort had already been made in a previous life. So effortless and choice-less awareness is attained only after deliberate meditation. That meditation can take whatever form that most appeals to you. See what helps you to be free of thought and adopt that for your meditation.

Bliss will ensue if you keep still, but however much you tell your mind this truth, it will not keep still. It is the ego-mind that tells itself to be still in order for it to attain bliss, but it will not do it. Though all the scriptures have said it and though we hear it daily from the great ones and even from our Guru, we are never quiet, always straying into the world of Maya (illusion) and sense objects. That is why conscious, deliberate effort is needed to attain that effortless state of stillness.

Indeed, until the supreme, effortless state is attained, it is impossible for a man not to make effort. His own nature compels him to, just as Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita told Arjuna that his own nature would compel him to fight.

If you can keep still without engaging in any other pursuits, well and good. But for so long as you are obliged to be active, do not give up the attempt to realize the Self. Often glimpses of Realization are attained before it becomes permanent, and in all such cases effort remains necessary.

Yet, the belief that you have to make an effort to get rid of this dream of a waking state and attain Realization or real awakening is also a part of the dream. When you attain Realization you will see that there was neither the dream during sleep nor the dream during the waking state, but only yourself and your real nature.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi.

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