Questioner: Hi Tom, can you please explain verse 32 of Ulladu Narpadu (40 verses on Reality, a text written by Sri Ramana Maharshi)?

When the Vedas have declared, ‘Thou art That’ – not to seek and find the nature of the Self and abide in It, but to think ‘I am That, not This’ is want of strength. Because, That abides forever as the Self.

Sri Ramana Maharshi, Ulladu Narpadu, Verse 32

Tom: The idea is that we should turn within and discover what we truly are by inwardly and intuitively going towards the sense of ‘I’. When we go within in this way (this is also called self-enquiry) our mind becomes increasingly withdrawn and we start to discover, and eventually do discover, what we actually are: the formless, eternal, birthless, deathless Spirit that is devoid of objectivity, multiplicity, ego and suffering.

If instead of discovering what we truly are, we remain extroverted, sensing and perceiving objects and multiplicity, and merely repeat or think to ourselves ‘I am that’ or ‘all is already one’ or something like this, then we are fooling and deceiving ourselves, and we are weak and uncourageous, for we are not applying ourselves and developing true bravery or strength, which is turning within, away from the world, to discover our actual nature.