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The stillness and the being which Ramana speaks co-exist with each other and reveal themselves in their full radiance whenever interest in one’s thought stream dries up. Thus, for Ramana, the practice of surrender is to find within oneself this feeling of beingness and surrender oneself completely to it. On this level of surrender, practice consists of giving up wrong ideas by refusing to give them attention. Ramana’s statement that “The removal of ignorance is the aim of practice and not acquisition of Realisation” (Talks, p. 322) is extremely relevant in this connection, for it is only wrong ideas that separate us from a full awareness of our natural state. This final stage of surrender is simply a giving up of attachment to ignorance by bypassing the mental processes which cause and perpetuate it. The practice is the fruit of the conviction that there is nothing to surrender, for by denying attention to the mental processes, one is finally surrendering the erroneous idea that there is an individual self to surrender. When one attempts to practice this conviction by putting attention on the feeling of being that is within us, thoughts and desires will initially continue to grow at their normal rate, but if attention is maintained over a period of time, the density of thoughts decreases, and in the space between them there emerges the clarity, the stillness and the peace of pure being. Occasionally this stillness and this peace will expand and intensify until a point is reached where no effort is needed to sustain the awareness of being, the attention merges imperceptibly with the being itself, and the occasional stray thoughts no longer have the power to distract. When this point of surrender has been reached, all the ignorant misperceptions, which constitute the illusory ego, have disappeared. But this is not the final state of Realisation, because the misconceptions are only in suspension and sooner or later, they can emerge again. Ramana has stated that the final, definite elimination of ignorance is a matter for Self. He says that effort can only take one to a certain point and then the Self takes over and takes one to the goal. In the case of surrender, the initial effort is the shifting of one’s attention from the world of thoughts to the feeling of being. When there is no attention on it, the mind subsides revealing the being from which it came, then in some mys-

terious way, the Self eliminates the residual ignorance and Realisation dawns. Ramana summed it all up very neatly when he said: “Just keep quiet and Bhagavan will do the rest.” (Ramana Maharshi and the Path of SelfKnowledge p. 147) This shifting of attention is the ultimate act of surrender. It is an acknowledgement that the mind, its concepts and desires are all ignorance, and that involvement in and attachment to the ignorance is all that prevents a full awareness of Reality. It is an aknowledgement that nothing that is understood or believed is of any use; that no belief, theory, idea or mental activity will bring one any nearer to Realisation. It is an acknowledgement and a final acceptance of the idea that all striving and all notions of attainment are futile and illusory. This simple shifting of attention constitutes the culmination of surrender because it is the final surrendering of the ignorant notion that there is an individual self to surrender. It is the final acceptance in practice of the conviction that there is only attachment to wrong ideas and that this attachment can be severed by refusing to give these ideas any attention. This final level of surrendering ignorance represents the full flowering of Ramana’s teachings on surrender, and any less absolute interpretation merely entangles one in the meshes of the ignorant ideas he was striving so hard to eliminate. It is admitted that as a concession to weakness, he occasionally permitted and approved lower levels of surrender such as devotion and worship, but for those who could comprehend and practice his more absolute teachings, he would be satisfied with notning less than the total unconditioned surrender which is implied in the practice of being and the detachment from ignorance. Bearing this in mind it will now be constructive to have a closer look at the practice of self-enquiry, and to focus attention on the large overlap that exists hetween enquiry and surrender. Ramana’s advice on self-enquiry was cIear, simple and direct, but like his advice on surrender, it has often been misunderstood and misrepresented. The easiest way to avoid errors is to remember three simple but fundamental tenets of Ramana’s teachings; firstly, that we are all Realised her e and now and that the only purpose of sadhana is to remove the idea that we are not; secondly, there is no individual self to extinguish because 4