Formal Ignorance

Truly there is no cause for you to be miserable and unhappy. You yourself impose limitations on your true nature of infinite being and then weep that you are a finite creature. Hence I say know that you are really the infinite pure Being, the Self absolute. You are always that Self and nothing but that Self. Therefore, you can never really be ignorant of the Self; your ignorance is merely a formal ignorance.

Sri Ramana Maharshi was a 19th century Indian Sage. He believed the purest form of teachings was silence; the silence that radiated from his presence. He only taught verbally when students could not understand his silence. He practiced non-dualism and Jnana Yoga, but he understood the value of all paths and practices.

One important message that surfaces from Sri Ramana teachings is the awareness of the inner self and what it means to be aware of that self. Our objective thoughts hinder us from associating with our subjective self. Our focused reality seems to take precedence so we create experiences using the beliefs of others. Our beliefs are elements of group beleifs. When we realize that our thoughts, emotions and imagination create our experiences, we begin to change our distorted beliefs. We realize that what we call the unconscious part of us is much more conscious than we believed.