Key among Bhagavan’s directives for devotees on the path is summa iru—Be still![1] This, he tells us is ‘the path to peace’. But how do we enter it?
Bhagavan’s vichara centres on turning the attention inward, withdrawing the senses from outer objects, focusing the awareness upon the source of consciousness and inquiring into whatever may appear there. In its early stages, this involves concentration—the steadying of the mind which ultimately results in a deep union with the object of inquiry. When sustained, thought streams settle, the mind becomes calm and there is a deep sense of being united with the universal. Bhagavan called this practice being asleep while awake (jagrat sushupti)[2]. In other words, the active thinking mind is at complete rest just as when in deep sleep, and yet, awareness remains.
As we journey into stillness, strange things may start to happen. Out of the silence, things long forgotten emerge, some of which are unnerving. The experience can be so jarring that we find ourselves dislodged from the place of peace and have to examine accumulations from the past.
We may recall from an earlier Saranagati[3] a saying that goes, ‘to become zero, you have to become one’. What does this mean? It seems to suggest that we must get our lives in order before any genuine transformation can take place. We have to cultivate a coherence between inner intentions and outer actions, aligning what we do with what we believe to be right. We find that this coherence needs to be so finely tuned that even the intentions hidden in our heart should line up with the words we speak. When they don’t, our best option is acknowledging the fact and making needed adjustments. When unwholesome intentions and longings emerge in the heart, we do not wish them away or pretend they don’t exist but identify them and seek to understand their causes. We become thoroughgoing in the endeavour to name what is not whole within us and to work with it patiently. This is what it means to ‘become one’.
‘Becoming zero’ means quietening the heart and mind and moderating the compulsion toward endless cogitation. The heart and mind find a modicum of rest and are thus able to register the more subtle trends within. Bhagavan tells us:
Concentration is not the act of thinking one thing; it is the quiet exclusion of all thoughts that veil our true nature. Every effort in practice is simply to remove ignorance. At first, it seems difficult to still the mind, but in the awakened state, it is harder to summon thoughts at all—for what is there to think about when only the Self exists? Thought depends on objects, but when no objects remain, how can thought arise? The difficulty lies only in habit. Once the error is seen, no one would continue the needless strain of thinking.[4]
We took Bhagavan’s silence to mean the absence of audible words (material silence). But we soon discover that the silence he was referring to is deeply mysterious and little understood, a profound calm at the depths of the heart. Such silence does not lend itself to word-descriptions because it is the portal to a realm beyond the rational ego and the thinking mind. In a hymn to Arunachala, Bhagavan versifies its greatness:
In silence Thou saidst, ‘Stay silent’ and Thyself stoodst silent, Oh Arunachala! Happiness lies in peaceful repose, beyond speech, enjoyed when resting in the Self. [5]
Bhagavan adds:
Ignorance cannot be destroyed by any other act than by the intense activity called ‘silence.[6]
If till now, the literalizing ego has steadfastly resisted stillness, it is because it fears it would cease to exist in the face of it. The land of zero is the place where neither thoughts nor words impinge on the Heart, or when they do, they come only as wisps in the mind and do not intrude on our inner tranquillity.
We oscillate between periods of inner stillness in the meditation hall and the distractions of daily life. We have lived our lives under the assumption that what is hidden cannot hurt us. But hidden afflictions express themselves in unsuspecting ways, to our detriment, whereas going after them in the realm of zero, they can be identified, befriended and mended.
Running, Ever Running
If we find ourselves running—mentally or otherwise—if we feel perpetually compelled to hasten toward the next task in daily life, it may be time to inquire into the mechanisms presently at work in us.
Running means trying to come free of the moment because it feels uncomfortable. When we run, we do not know we are running. Running is a defence against inner discomfort and saves us from the poignancy of nakedly encountering the vast, unadorned stillness within.
We shrink from stillness, ever deflecting from what is most intimate through distraction, indulgence, preoccupation, compulsive activity, and obsession with being busy—anything to avoid intimacy within. We may be running from ourselves, mistaking the movement for identity, believing that we are the running. Yet the running is precisely the movement away from what is most genuine.
Running has become a feature of the collective, wrought by an overarching feeling of insufficiency. The incessant urge to be busy is a futile gesture at manufacturing a sense of purpose and value. The emphasis on performance and production is born of a contrived sense of self-worth gained through activity, seeking to justify our existence through accomplishments—a compensation for the lack of wholehearted presence in our lives day in and day out.
In the post-pandemic hyperdigital era, two-dimensional screen time has displaced three-dimensional presence. As human relating becomes increasingly mediated through devices, the reward such virtual engagement offers leaves us feeling bereft. We therefore compensate by increasing time and energy devoted to our devices. The more we run, the more we must keep running, for we have forgotten how to stop. Neurologists suggest this is key in accounting for the high rate of anxiety in the 21st century.[7]
Running helps distract us from the cognitive dissonance born of an ego-driven life in the realm of simulation. We dwell in representations, and the ego becomes our sole preoccupation. Its flat world asks little of us—no surrender, no silence, no real seeing.
Samsara is nothing other than the drive to keep moving—to flee the realm of zero. The frenetic ego cries out hysterically, “Don’t just sit there—do something!” Bhagavan, by contrast, directs us, “Don’t just do something—sit there.”[8] In other words, don’t just rush about doing things in order to make the ego feel solid, rather, be still, be silent, and inquire into the nature of the frantic doer. Look into your mind and your heart. Make peace with any turbulence found there. And inquire into it. Be present to the reality of each moment through inner investigation. Find the courage to confront the rough edges of your inner being—the grief, fears, subtle humiliations that come with life’s change and loss. Stop your running, which means risking meeting the one you have abandoned in your haste: your own Self. Bhagavan adds:
Being still is what is called wisdom (jnana), tapas, and yoga. The effort to be still is the only true effort.[9]
If you find you cannot stop, at least notice that someone is running—and inquire into that one. Who is the runner? Who is it that flees this present experience? The act of noticing already introduces stillness. As the Katha Upanishad reminds us: “Resting in the Self, one neither acts nor causes to act. Bhagavan adds:
Since the Self shines as that which is still, know that the state of perfect stillness alone is the state of true knowledge.[10]
Uncovering the Hidden Realm
If the realm of zero brings calm, it also brings challenges. We discover that hidden within are layers of afflictions from the past. This is a crucial preliminary stage because no wound can be healed unless it be seen and known.
The afflictions of the heart and mind have been carefully kept out of view—to our peril. The ego does not want stillness and peace; it wants information, sense stimulation, excitement, even crises—anything to drown out the haunting cries of the defilements. When afflictions appear in stillness, the urge is to escape them, either through thinking or some other outward diversion. Patience here means acquiring the capacity to maintain stillness for long periods, allowing regrets and remorse to be recognised.
We have steadily hidden things away because of the shame and embarrassment they cause us. As our awareness about what causes us pangs of conscience become more subtle and finely tuned, we are better able to navigate life and avoid actions and speech that would later cause us grief or regret. We become expert in allowing our heart to communicate to us what brings it peace and what causes it agony. By avoiding further karmic accumulation and by cleaning up existing karmic accumulations, the veil concealing the land of zero is made permeable. With increased vision comes added clarity about how to proceed moment by moment. We need no books on etiquette to guide us because we are being guided from within by our heart’s innate intuition in respect of what is just and right.
The Realm of the Defilements
The gate to the land of zero is where we encounter the root karmic defilement, namely, the illusion of a separate self. As our vision sharpens, more subtle impurities present themselves and the deception regarding separateness turns out to be nothing more than karmic accumulations. This is where Bhagavan’s vichara has real application. The illusion of separateness is born of the ignorance caused by karmic afflictions. The clarifying ground reveals itself when we inquire into our afflictions, rehabilitating them, and exposing the illusion. Bhagavan comments:
The mind should be made to rest in the Heart till the destruction of the ‘I’-thought born of ignorance is brought about. This is wisdom; this alone is dhyana.[11]
Of course, all separation (viyoga)[12] is an illusion, Bhagavan tells us. The distance is only an appearance—after all, the Self is all there is. But the psyche takes the apparent distance to be real and behaves as though it were real, granting it a perceived reality. All our suffering, it turns out, is born of mere phantoms and ghosts. When the exiled parts of the heart emerge through acceptance, they become integrated and whole. Bhagavan instructs us:
If one meditates ceaselessly on the Self, the darkness of ignorance in the Heart, and all the impediments born of ignorance, will be removed, and the plenary wisdom will be gained.[13]
The literalist vision appears to bear the marks of reality: it is concrete, tangible, and clearly defined. But the literal is just surface daylight consciousness projected onto the vast unseen realm that contains it. Here the ego is caught in a category error: confusing the container—the potentiality for all Being—for mere darkness and emptiness, whereas it is the root of the divine, the Ground of the Self.
The land of zero lies far beyond rationality and the literalist vision. The unconscious and all that dwells concealed within the heart lies far below the cognising mind upon which the rational ego is founded. Ego imagines that it is the way out from the ghost realm, not recognising that it is itself a ghost—indeed, the chief of all ghosts. Faced frontally, it begins to disperse under the penetrating power of Bhagavan’s upadesa. Bhagavan comments:
When the lion of Self-knowledge roars within, all thoughts, which are like timid animals, run away of their own accord.[14]
The land of zero is the place where we gain the courage to face demons and devils. Once we have broken the spell of concealment and are no longer afraid of what lurks in the depths of the heart, we will no longer see our hearts as threatening, as something to be feared or ashamed of. Once what had been hidden is brought into the light of awareness—seen and known as it is—then we discover that hidden along with it is the divine realm.
The inner divinity is part wisdom and part being. It cannot be named because it is not a thing but more like an energy or power, or better said, the vast empty space that contains everything. It is not bound by physical limits like the body or the ego but extends outward—in dream, in meditation, in imagination. It has wings and can transcend the ordinary boundaries of a literalist world.[15] The Vivekachudamani summarises:
I am that in which the whole universe, from prakriti down to gross matter, appears as a mere shadow, that which is the substratum, which illumines all, is of all forms, is all pervasive and yet distinct from all, that which is all void, which is distinct without any attributes of maya, that which is scarcely known by the gross intellect, which is ether itself, which has neither beginning nor end, which is subtle, motionless, formless, immutable, unbroken, eternal, aware.[16]
Conclusion
Ego’s literalism, born of adherence to preconceived notions, fills up the spaces. When given up, the vast expanse of a soulful realm[17] emerges, imbued with mystery—the multidimensional colour and depth of the unconscious and the imagination. Within it is the vast inexhaustible realm of intuitive wisdom, untapped and concealed in the heart already prior to our birth.[18]
The imaginal is not imaginary but the touchstone of a life well-lived and of what is really true. If we call it mystical or visionary, this would not be inaccurate—but then wherefore the need to dress up what is most natural to us? Bhagavan speaks of the realm of zero this way:
True knowledge transcends both knowledge and ignorance, for in pure knowledge there is no object to be known.[19]
The realm of zero is the already given—the starting point, the Uncreated Ground. The rational ego paints its world on a flat two-dimensional canvas—monochromatic, without depth or colour—unaware that it is the subset of a greater multidimensional domain: the vast space from which all that is seen emerges.
If the rational ego sought to fly to the heavens to be free of all that would weigh it down—not least of all, karmic afflictions. Now karmic afflictions are not a burden but just the stuff of us that need inquiring into and letting go of. When not resisted, they become manageable.
When the vast expanse of the Heart is no longer feared as the place of monsters, when we no longer deny our neuroses, then the mechanism of neurosis is dismantled. Here the upward ascent—toward Spirit—and downward descent—into the depths of the Heart—are not opposing and self-cancelling movements, but a single undertaking in the unitary realm of zero.
If the land of zero is the realm of soul, of heart, of wisdom, of the Self—till now trapped beneath the confusing morass of lifelong fears—now we enter it, no longer afraid of being nothing but recognising that in being nothing, we are Everything. —
Footnotes and References for Further Reading
[1] Talks, §426 (12th June 1937).
[2] In Talks, §609, Bhagavan says: It is neither sleep nor waking but intermediate between the two. There is the awareness of the waking state and the stillness of sleep. It is called jagrat-sushupti. Call it wakeful sleep or sleeping wakefulness or sleepless waking or wakeless sleep. It is not the same as sleep or waking separately. It is the state of perfect awareness and of perfect stillness combined.
[3] Saranagati, “Ramana Reflections: The Dream of Self”, July 2024, p. 12.
[4] Talks, §398, 14th April 1937. This edited citation begins in the original as: “Concentration is not thinking one thing…”
[5] Aksharamanamalai, v. 36-37.
[6] Spiritual Instruction, chapter 2, §4, in Collected Works, p. 56.
[7] Neurobiologists offer explanations for the incessant need to stay in motion: it is a remnant of ancient survival circuitry. Human cognition and language are recent developments, whereas the mammalian brain—about 220 million years old—evolved from the far older reptilian brain, estimated at 770 million years old. The sympathetic nervous system manages threat through two responses: fight or flight. But the reptilian brain employs a third—death-feigning—by shutting down metabolism to appear dead. Reptiles can survive this suspended state for long periods, but mammals, with higher metabolic demands, cannot. For them, the same freeze response can be fatal. Hence, the more recent mammalian and cortical systems evolved strategies to override this primitive shutdown. One such mechanism is mobilisation—the compulsion to move, act, and engage—which keeps the organism from slipping into the life-threatening dorsal-vagal collapse.
This has relevance for Ramana devotees today who find sustained vichara difficult, not from lack of sincerity but because, in the fast-paced digital era, chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system interprets stillness as threat—an echo of the ancient circuitry designed to flee danger. Our flight from silence is thus not moral weakness but a reflexive survival response. The task, then, is to “override the override”, that is, to gently retrain the nervous system to tolerate stillness and silence. Bio-hacks and neuromodulating exercises can help retune the nervous system toward calm engagement in order to access parasympathetic pathways essential for deep stillness, thus making sustained inquiry possible. (Gleaned from various books and public talks by the Indiana University neurobiologist and professor of psychiatry, Stephen W. Porges.)
[8] This phrase is from the Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hahn.
[9] Guru Vachaka Kovai, §777.
[10] Ibid., §776.
[11] Self-enquiry, §36 in Collected Works, p. 31.
[12] Freud says that when ego takes the lead and reduces everything to separate parts, this is born of Thanatos, the death drive.
[13] Self-enquiry, §29, in Collected Works, p.25.
[14] Letters from Sri Ramanasramam (9th February 1947); see also Talks, §146, (26th January 1936).
[15] This paragraph is inspired by Patrick Harpur’s Daimonic Reality where he speaks of the rational, literalising ego, see pp. 263-266.
[16] Vivekachudamani, from Collected Works, p. 263.
[17] The Nobel prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg said that soul is what is inside; ego is on the surface.
[18] The neo-cortex, that fragile newcomer in our evolutionary story, appeared only some forty millennia ago, bringing with it the power of metacognition—the mind’s ability to turn upon itself and know that it knows. Yet this shining crown of awareness rests upon a deep substratum of ancient neural life that has pulsed within the human lineage for hundreds of millions of years. If intuitive wisdom is non-verbal, wordless and immediate, it is because it arises from these archaic, pre-linguistic circuits—the quiet intelligence of the body, the animal alertness, the cellular listening that preceded speech.
[19] The Essence of Instruction, §27, from the Collected Works, p. 113.
