Ramana Maharshi on Life after Death

Ramana Maharshi on Life after Death

Question : What happens to a person after death?
Ramana Maharshi : Engage yourself in the living present. The future will take care of itself. Do not worry about the future. The state before creation and the process of creation are dealt with in the scriptures in order that you may know the present. Because you say you are born, therefore they say, yes, and add that God created you.

But do you see God or anything else in your sleep? If God is real, why does he not shine forth in your sleep also? You always are, you are the same now as you were in sleep. You are not different from that one in sleep. But why should there be differences in the feelings or experiences of the two states?

Did you ask, while asleep, questions regarding your birth? Did you then ask `Where do I go after death?' Why think of all these questions now in the waking state? Let what is born think of its birth and the remedy, its cause and ultimate results.

Question : What becomes of the jiva [individua ] after death?
Ramana Maharshi : The question is not appropriate for a jiva now living. A dead jiva may ask me, if he wishes to. In the meantime let the embodied jiva solve its present problem and find who he is. Then there will be an end of such doubts.

Question : Is the Buddhist view, that there is no continuous entity answering to the ideas of the individual soul, correct or not? Is this consistent with the Hindu notion of a reincarnating ego? Is the soul a continuous entity which reincarnates again and again, according to the Hindu doctrine, or is it a mere mass of mental tendencies - samskaras?
Ramana Maharshi : The real Self is continuous and unaffected. The reincarnating ego belongs to the lower plane, namely, thought. It is transcended by Self-realization. Reincarnations are due to a spurious offshoot. Therefore they are denied by the Buddhists. The present state of ignorance is due to the identification of consciousness [chit] with the insentient [jada] body.

Question : Do not we go to heaven [svarga] as the result of our actions?
Ramana Maharshi : That is as true as the present existence. But if we enquire who we are and discover the Self, what need is there to think of heaven?