"Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind"
About this Quote
Ramana Maharshi points to a core Advaita Vedanta insight: the mind is not a substance separate from consciousness but consciousness narrowed by identification. Your fundamental nature is unbounded awareness, whole and self-sufficient. Through habit, memory, and the felt sense of being a distinct doer and experiencer, that open field of awareness appears to contract into a stream of thoughts, images, and preferences called the mind. The result is the familiar subject-object split, with an I inside and a world outside.
The word later does not imply a real transformation in time so much as a pedagogical way of speaking. From the absolute standpoint nothing becomes anything; the ocean never turns into the wave. Yet from the human standpoint, consciousness seems to put on clothing, what Vedanta calls limiting adjuncts, such as body, name, roles, and stories. With those limits come suffering, because what is taken to be I becomes fragile, defensive, and never complete.
Unlimited and perfect is not a claim about personal exceptionalism or moral flawlessness. It points to the completeness of pure being-awareness, often rendered as sat-chit-ananda: being, consciousness, bliss. That wholeness is recognized whenever the mind lets go, as in moments of wonder, meditation, or even deep sleep, where the mind subsides yet existence continues.
The practical thrust is disidentification. Instead of trying to perfect the mind, investigate the one to whom the mind appears. Maharshi’s method of self-inquiry, asking Who am I?, turns attention back to the sense of I and reveals it as a thought arising in awareness. When the root I-thought quiets, what remains is the natural, unlimited clarity that was present all along.
Thus the mind becomes a useful instrument rather than a prison. Freedom is not gained by adding anything new but by seeing through the borrowed limits and resting as the open, ever-present consciousness that is your original nature.
The word later does not imply a real transformation in time so much as a pedagogical way of speaking. From the absolute standpoint nothing becomes anything; the ocean never turns into the wave. Yet from the human standpoint, consciousness seems to put on clothing, what Vedanta calls limiting adjuncts, such as body, name, roles, and stories. With those limits come suffering, because what is taken to be I becomes fragile, defensive, and never complete.
Unlimited and perfect is not a claim about personal exceptionalism or moral flawlessness. It points to the completeness of pure being-awareness, often rendered as sat-chit-ananda: being, consciousness, bliss. That wholeness is recognized whenever the mind lets go, as in moments of wonder, meditation, or even deep sleep, where the mind subsides yet existence continues.
The practical thrust is disidentification. Instead of trying to perfect the mind, investigate the one to whom the mind appears. Maharshi’s method of self-inquiry, asking Who am I?, turns attention back to the sense of I and reveals it as a thought arising in awareness. When the root I-thought quiets, what remains is the natural, unlimited clarity that was present all along.
Thus the mind becomes a useful instrument rather than a prison. Freedom is not gained by adding anything new but by seeing through the borrowed limits and resting as the open, ever-present consciousness that is your original nature.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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