Ramana Maharshi on Jivanmuktas Videhamuktas characteristics

Ramana Maharshi on Jivanmuktas Videhamuktas characteristics

Question : What are the characteristics of the jivanmukta (the liberated in life) and the videhamukta (the liberated at death)?

Ramana Maharshi : ‘I am not the body. I am Brahman which is manifest as the Self. In me who am the plenary Reality, the world consisting of bodies, etc., is a mere appearance, like the blue
of the sky’. He who has realized the truth thus is a jivanmukta.

Yet, so long as his mind has not been resolved, there may arise some misery for him because of relation to objects on account of prarabdha (karma which has begun to fructify and whose result is the present body), and as the movement of mind has not ceased there will not be also the experience of bliss.

The experience of Self is possible only for the mind that has become subtle and unmoving as a result of prolonged meditation. He who is thus endowed with a mind that has become subtle, and who has the experience of the Self is called a jivanmukta.

It is the state of jivanmukti that is referred to as the attributeless Brahman and as the Turiya. When even the subtle mind gets resolved, and experience of self ceases, and when one is immersed in the ocean of bliss and has become one with it without any differentiated existence, one is called a videhamukta.

It is the state of videhamukti that is referred to as the transcendent attributeless Brahman and as the transcendent Turiya. This is the final goal. Because of the grades in misery and happiness, the released ones, the jivanmuktas and videhamuktas, may be spoken of as belonging to four categories — Brahmavid, Brahmavara, Brahmavariya
and Brahmavarishtha.

But these distinctions are from the standpoint of the others who look at them; in reality, however, there are no distinctions in release gained through jnana.