Ramana Maharshi - Consciousness is indivisible

From ~~~ Ramana Smrti, P. 58. (Douglas E. Harding)

WHAT I OWE TO RAMANA MAHARSHI:

I thank Ramana Maharshi
for his uncompromising attitude to people’s problems.

For him, all the troubles that afflict humans
reduce to one trouble — mistaken identity.

The answer to the problem is to see Who has it.

At its own level it is insoluble.
And it must be so.

There is no greater absurdity,
no more fundamental or damaging a madness,
than to imagine one is centrally
what one looks like at a distance.

To think one is a human being here
is a sickness so deep-seated
that it underlies and generates all one’s ills.

Only cure that one basic disease
— mistaken identity —
and all is exactly as it should be.

I know no Sage who goes more directly
to the root of the disease,
and refuses more consistently
to treat its symptoms.

WHO AM I? is the only serious question.

And, most fortunately,
it is the only question that can be answered
without hesitation or the shadow of a doubt, absolutely.

I thank Ramana Maharshi above all
for tirelessly posing this question of questions,
and for showing how simple the answer is,
and for his lifelong dedication to that simple answer.

But in the last resort
all this talk of one giving
and another taking is unreal.

The notion that there was a consciousness
associated with that body in Tiruvannamalai,

and there is another consciousness
associated with this body in Nacton, England,

and a lot of other consciousness
associated with the other bodies
comprising the universe —

this is the great error
which Maharshi never tolerated.

Consciousness is indivisible.

 Douglas E. Harding

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