Namaste 🙏  and welcome to another episode of Ulladu-Narpadu. Now, Ulladu-Narpadu, as I said last time, was not planned, it doesn’t have an intentional structure. The structure came afterwards, after all the verses were collated and collected together and put in order. Even though that’s a fact, still Ulladu-Narpadu is one of the definitive works on the philosophy and the outlook of Śrī Ramana, and the reason that’s so, or the reason that it’s possible is that a sage does not live in time; a sage lives in eternity, in consciousness, in silence. Not in an ego, but lives as the Supreme, as Brahman. In other words, he is not limited by ordinary linear time, it’s not something that conditions him the way it does an unrealized being. With that little introduction, let me read the second verse of the Preface:

“Those who have an infinite fear of death

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This highlights a very important theme in Ramana’s teaching, which is that death is a thought. See, time is a construct of our minds, and whatever exists in time has a beginning and an end. This is unavoidable. Whatever is born must also die, that is the law. And it is so because of the three phases of time: past, present, and future. These are all just thoughts, they only exist in the mind; they don’t really exist. And to the Absolute, to the Supreme, to the Lord, certainly past, present, and future are illusory. There only is what is, and what is is Him. [laughs] And what he is is awareness, as we discussed last time.

So, to awareness there is no birth, there is no time, there is no death, there are no conditions. I like the way the Ribhu-gita explains it, that Brahman, or the Self, is a solid chunk of consciousness or awareness, a solid block of awareness. If you can imagine a solid block of awareness, there is no inside, no outside, no object, no subject: the only thing to be aware of is awareness. This is the Absolute, this is the ground of being, this is the Supreme, this is the Lord, Brahman.