' Pure Awareness '...

8. The knowledge that ignores the Self,

the knower,

and holds as true the field perceived,

is but illusive folly.

No matter how much one has learned,

true knowledge is the merging

of all indicative knowledge

in awareness of the Self.



9. The one true light there is,

is pure Awareness.

Other kinds of knowledge clinging to it

and claiming to be real

are ego-born conceptual clouds.

To trust them is sheer folly.



10. All other kinds of knowledge are base, trivial.

The only true and perfect knowledge
is the stillness of pure awareness.

The many differences perceived in the Self

whose nature is awareness

are wrong attributions

and not real at all.



11. What sort of knowledge

is this wretched bodily-mental knowledge of objects?

Would those who long for pure awareness

hanker after this?

To know pure awareness is true wisdom.

All other knowledge is mere folly.



12. What if one knows the subtle secret

of manifold inscrutable mysteries?

Until one knows the awareness

which reveals all other knowledge,

does one know the Truth?



13. How can any treatise thrust some wisdom

into that human-seeming heap of clay

which keenly watches things perceived

and not at all the Self, Awareness?



14. What is worth seeking and discovering
is the truth of Self.

Such knowledge comes only to

the still, clear intellect

not muddled by strenuous search without

but questing for the Truth in silence.



The above Sri Ramana Maharshi quotes are from the book
The Seven Steps to Awakening.