In the last two segments, we saw how stillness cultivated through self-inquiry (vichara) quietens thought and sensory agitation, leading to an alert, thought-free awareness. Yet entering this silence is unsettling, for we moderns are habituated to busyness, distraction, and outward activities, which mask unresolved inner conditions and give us a false sense of worth rooted in performance.
The chief resistance to stillness is the ego. Stillness threatens ego’s strategies of distraction, consumption, and craving. What is blamed on silence—the discomfort arising in vichara—is very often the surfacing of buried grief, karmic residues, and unexamined identities. Silence does not cause pain but highlights it. Through inquiry, we come to see the fabricated persona as an object—not the true Self—and this seeing gradually loosens its hold.
In the last segment, we saw how resistance to stillness may be related to ancestral and transgenerational forces. Traditional pitru dosha parallels modern ideas of inherited trauma: unresolved grief, neglect, and dissatisfaction transmitted across generations. Multigenerational wounding shapes the nervous system, our attachment patterns, and even brain chemistry, very often leading to restlessness and compulsive behaviours. Yet awareness is curative. Clear seeing and sustained inquiry act as a fire that burns karmic seeds—not only one’s own but those we carry within from the family lineage.
Consumer society is driven by the hungry ghost of constant stimulation. Ever indulging the senses, we moderns substitute a continual stream of sense input for genuine needs. Sages of old cautioned against this temptation. The Buddha warned that happiness from outside—samisa sukha—is always accompanied by a sullying aspect, namely, attachment. Sense stimulation is never permanently gratifying but leaves residues of further longing.
Attachment to longings and the fleeting respite that indulging them brings is the basis for egoic agency. Indeed, ego’s foundation is thinking and the notion of being an individual person—as apart from others, apart from the cosmos, apart from God. Born of longing, the sense of a someone within is related to the agglomeration of memories of past experiences which include not only short-term pleasures but deprivations from early life and the residues of unease they engender.
We saw last time how the developing brain depends on emotional resonance with caregivers. Warm, responsive interactions stimulate endorphins and other reward chemicals that support the growth and integration of neural circuits governing mood, motivation, and attention. When early bonding is inconsistent or anxious, these systems develop under strain. A well-documented consequence is reduced sensitivity in the brain’s reward circuitry, including fewer or less responsive dopamine receptors. The child matures with a persistent sense of inner lack and difficulty accessing a stable feeling of being “okay.”
Stimulation then becomes compensatory. Repeated sensory input—food, scrolling, work, excitement, or substances—briefly lifts the system, but at a cost. Because the brain continually seeks equilibrium, chronic overstimulation leads to further down-regulation of dopamine receptors, producing the familiar law of diminishing returns. When stimulation is withdrawn, the depleted system registers the absence as boredom, loneliness, or depression. What appears outwardly as compulsion is often an inherited and biologically reinforced attempt to regulate a nervous system shaped by early relational strain, sometimes compounded across generations. Stillness feels threatening because it removes the anaesthetic and exposes the deeper hunger beneath.[1]
Religions have long warned against activities that bring excessive elation. They advise moderation in the use of intoxicants and activities that scatter attention. Today we consider exhilarating preoccupations to be an unqualified good because they lift the spirits, but monastic orders of various traditions have historically cautioned against pastimes like dancing, singing, shows, and other such entertainment. Why? From a brain science point of view, any stimulation that produces significant endorphin release is likely to be accompanied by tolerance and withdrawal where the urge to repeat the indulgence intensifies, while satisfaction diminishes.
Inner and Outer
Tradition speaks of the purusharthas and recognises kama—pleasure and desire—as one of the legitimate aims of life.[2] If the sense realm is rejected outright, the spiritual endeavour may backfire. But in the consumer age, we have elevated kama to a universal remedy, often at the expense of moksha (transcendence). Kama manifests in daily life in seemingly innocuous ways such as repeated peeks at our cell phone, multiple cups of coffee, gratuitous internet surfing and You Tube.
Moksha is the archetype that calls us beyond the economy of compensation. As sadhakas, we are invited to err on the side of moksha and forego excessive kama, not because pleasure is a manifest evil, but because compulsive pleasure keeps us ever skating on the surfaces of life. When kama eclipses moksha, our life becomes hollow, wracked with obstacles and a pervasive sense of futility. The sastra states:
Pleasure rooted in the senses is fleeting; pleasure rooted in restraint is enduring.[3]
The Theatre of Diversion
Kama is at work in most of our diversions, designed as they are to distract us from inner discomforts. The Buddha’s exchange with the actor Talaputa makes this explicit.[4] Talaputa, the leader of a theatre troupe, believed that delighting others from the theatre stage would bring about his own karmic reconciliation and a heavenly rebirth. The Buddha disabuses him of this notion, explaining that an entertainer is karmically liable insofar as his art serves as a diversion for his audience, helping them maintain the egoic status quo. Talaputta weeps, recognising that he and his troupe have been misled.[5]
The point here is that entertainment is too good to be true. It seems to free us from our burdens, but in reality, it only diverts our attention temporarily from the discomfort within. Neglect of the Heart is the cause for our discomfort. The issue is not joy but diversion. When outward pleasure serves primarily to anesthetize inner unease, ego defences are reinforced.
Such diversions and the neglect they entail contribute to the very anguish we seek to escape. An inexorable law is at work here. Bhagavan calls our attention to it:
The more desires are fulfilled, the deeper grows the samskara.[6]
Tradition tells us that happiness coming from within—niramisa sukham—is not accompanied by withdrawal and more importantly, causes no karmic burden. In fact, such internally sourced joy is curative of our karmic legacy. Not only is inner joy dharmically acceptable, but it is recommended. Indeed, inner joy should be sought as a necessary step in the meditation process. Colloquially, such joy is called the happiness that does not depend on what happens.
Stoically suppressing the desire function drives kama deeper into the subconscious—enhancing its power. Heavy-handedness only exacerbates the distortion. Our true work is cultivating inner joy through Bhagavan’s vichara, gradually displacing the need for outward indulgences; after all, distortions related to kama are caused by exile of the Heart. If we repair the exile, kama can resume normal healthy functioning. Bhagavan comments:
[True] pleasure consists in turning and keeping the mind within; pain [born of sense indulgence is the result of] sending the mind outward. There is only pleasure. Absence of pleasure is called pain. One’s true nature is pleasure or Bliss i.e. Ananda.[7]
The Power of Reversal
Cross-cultural studies reveal the archetypal nature of mastery over the sense realm, a universal motif in the myths and legends of large- and small-scale cultures the world over. The Bhagavata Purana tells of Ajamila, a man who falls from virtue into a life dominated by sense indulgence. His life is a textbook case of egoic distraction and addiction. Yet at death, when all supports fall away, he calls out the name of his son, Narayana, unwittingly invoking the divine.
Ajamila is not redeemed because he “deserves” it, but because even a life structured around avoidance can reverse direction. When the ego is no longer able to manage things, grace enters. The Purana insists that the inward turn can occur even at the eleventh hour.
Psychologically, Ajamila represents an ego exhausted by its own strategies. Sense indulgence, diversion, and self-deception eventually fail. When they do, something deeper emerges. Stillness—forced by circumstance or embraced through the inner investigation—becomes the opening through which the Heart may recover its rightful place. An ancient text reads:
The good is one thing, the pleasant another. Both bind a person, but they lead in different directions. [8]
Anatomy of the Ego
There is another reason why internally sourced joys are preferable to those sourced from without. The ego sees what is real as outside, whereas the Heart knows the real to be inside. The outer is not what it appears; the inner is the domain of the divine.[9]
We often imagine the mind as the Heart. But the mind is outside of the Heart. It is the mano-maya kosha.
The mind is a sense door, and thoughts are its sense objects, no different from any other sense object. The ego is born of, and sustained by, sense objects, chief among them, mind objects. Bhagavan instructs:
The mind is a bundle of [mind objects that arise as] thoughts. Thoughts arise because there is a thinker. The thinker is the ego. The ego, if sought, will vanish because ego is the root-thought from which all thoughts arise.[10]
The eye loves beautiful visual objects, the ear beautiful sound objects, and the mind beautiful mind objects. The most alluring mind objects are those which affirm the ego—honour, recognition, and being seen. Yet, like any other sense object, these only bring comfort for a time.
This is why name and fame never satisfy. They rest on mind objects and self-adulation. The narcissistic wound, born of early deprivation or ancestral injury, cannot be healed by mind objects, no matter how flattering they might be. The wound can only be met within the Heart—in stillness.
Tradition tells us that the mind is the last sense door we learn to regulate, the ultimate link to the conceit of a separate self, and the one that most needs severing if we are to successfully follow the Ramana path. The Upanishad comments:
Mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation. Attached to objects, it is bound; free from objects, it is liberated.[11]
From ego’s point of view, the domain of the Heart is perilous. The ego harbours shadows, grief, and ancestral residues. Ego projects these forces outwardly,[12] imagining that the threat originates from outside—hence its love of hierarchy and control. Yet the ego is a phantom which usurps the Heart’s light. To know the Heart, ego must relinquish mastery. What feels like death is in fact release. The Upanishad continues:
When the senses are stilled, when the mind is at rest, when the intellect wavers no more—that, say the wise, is the highest state.[13]
Conclusion
Stillness is an inner resilience that enables us to greet the demands of the world. It can only arise in the absence of sense indulgence.[14] Ego does not know that it is blind, that it cannot see the realm it so casually dismisses because it only knows what is external.
Without depth we cannot meet life. Without heart we cannot receive what comes to us. Bhagavan comments:
If one feels he is the doer [an individual], he must reap the fruits of his actions… When one remains without thinking, one understands by means of the universal language of silence… When the mind is quiet, vasanas arise. This is the sign of progress.[15]
If we enter the realm of zero and remain there, the initial hurdle on the path of inquiry will have been crossed. By facing vasanas and meeting them with sincere awareness, we avoid projection and deflection.
In the land of zero, the pitru-ghosts may arise to test us—not as enemies but as unresolved story fragments seeking recognition. At such times we may feel like running away. But here we are asked to keep up our efforts to abide in the Heart, trusting that every encounter within, no matter how uncomfortable, will lead us one step closer to eventual healing. Bhagavan continues:
A struggle is kept up between [an inner] spiritual force and innate samskaras, until the latter are destroyed. [Then,] the soul is led into the Heart to rest forever in peace.[16]
We are asked to approach the realm of zero gently—through patience and care. If resistances rise up to block our way, the remedy remains the same—steady, gentle investigation into the Heart. As we learn to abide in stillness, eventually establishing a bridgehead in the realm of zero, the knots of the Heart start to loosen and the ground of the Self begins to reveal itself.
When we get our first glimpse of the long-sought peace spoken of by the ancients, we feel only an immeasurable gratitude for the path laid out by Sri Bhagavan’s simple words and enduring presence—ever there to guide us and urge us, further and further on. — (series concluded)
Footnotes and References for Further Reading
[1] In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Dr. Gabor Mate, pp. 23-27.
[2] The purusharthas are: dharma (righteous duty, ethics), artha (prosperity, material well-being), kama (pleasure, love, enjoyment), and moksha (liberation, transcendence, spiritual freedom).
[3] Manu Smriti 2.224.
[4] Samyutta Nikaya 42.2, known as the ‘Talaputa Sutta’. The Buddha then teaches Talaputa the Dharma, after which Talaputa asks for and receives ordination, eventually becoming an arahant.
[5] This subject came up in the Old Hall in September 1946 when Framji and Taleyerkan brought cinema reels from Madras for viewing in the Ashram. Nagamma and Muruganar objected on the grounds similar to those mentioned above. (See ‘Bhagavan and Cinema’ in Ramana Reflections, Saranagati June 2023, p. 11-14.)
[6] Talks, §495.
[7] Talks, §244.
[8] Katha Upanishad 1.2.2: this dialogue between Yama and Nachiketas highlights the choice between spiritual realization and worldly desires.
[9] Jung says: What comes to us from outside… can only be made our own if we are capable of inner amplitude… Real increase means consciousness of an enlargement that flows from inner sources. From C.G. Jung’s, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, vol. 9 of his Collected Works, p. 1514.
[10] Talks, §347.
[11] Amritabindu Upanishad 2–3.
[12] When ego projects outwardly, it is called blame; when it projects inwardly, it is called shame, and by shame, we mean toxic shame.
[13] Katha Upanishad 2.3.10–11.
[14] The tradition talks of nirodha sampati and “the consciousness beyond perception and non-perception”.
[15] Talks, §54, §246, §398.
[16] Talks, §247.
