If you plant a seed in the ground and water it and if it receives enough sunlight it will germinate,
It will break open with new life,
It will burst open with new life.
And the life is contained within the seed,
It is the unseen power of the seed.
And there's a blueprint for what the seed will evolve into,
Contained within the seed.
So if you plant an orange seed it will evolve into an orange tree.
If you plant a grapefruit seed it will evolve into a grapefruit,
A tomato,
A tomato plant,
Right?
The blueprint for that is stored in the genetics.
And this unseen power of life is the nature of the word kerygma.
So kerygma is an ancient Greek word that means to proclaim or herald an authorized message,
A message that is authorized by the unseen presence of the king.
So in ancient times they would have a wax tablet that the official proclamation would be written into and the job of the herald was to relay exactly that message because it contained the self-authenticating power of the king.
And everyone who heard the message did not question the message because of this unseen power.
So Christianity adopted the term kerygma to mean proclaiming the divinity of Christ or Christ as Lord and Savior.
This is the kerygma of Christianity.
The self-authenticating power of the divinity of Jesus is contained within the Christian kerygma.
And if you look at the life and teaching of the Buddha,
The kerygma of the Buddha is contained in his awakening.
His enlightenment is infused with the very first teaching he gave which was the Four Noble Truths.
Life is suffering,
Craving,
Birth,
Death,
Desire,
Attachment is the nature of suffering.
The third noble truth is there is a way out of suffering.
And the fourth noble truth is the middle way or the eightfold path is the way out of suffering.
This is the kerygma of the Buddha which contains the power of his awakening,
The power of his enlightenment.
The unseen self-authenticating power of the Buddha is contained within his words,
Within his realization.
So the nature of kerygma is that it is self-authenticating and it's often equated with evangelizing or evangelization of a particular message and Christianity in particular.
It's a countercultural message,
A message that has the authority of the unseen presence,
Right?
So in the Christian kerygma it is the divinity of Christ.
In the Buddha's kerygma it's the power of his enlightenment and awakening.
So what is the kerygma of Ramana Maharshi?
What is the core message of Ramana Maharshi?
And what makes him so different from Jesus and Buddha?
Jesus had 12 disciples that he sent out to spread the kerygma.
Buddha wandered from village to village spreading the kerygma of the four noble truths.
And then disciples gathered around him.
But with Ramana it was different.
There was no movement,
No desire to create a religion.
In fact it was the opposite of a religion.
It was not religious.
He had no intention of sending out a message.
But the kerygma of Ramana is Ramana.
It was the realization that he was the unseen formless presence of God in his own heart.
This is the kerygma of Ramana that is the living kerygma within your own heart,
The living truth.
It is an arrow that pierces you to the core,
A radical shift in consciousness from the limited perspective of your mind and the suffering that it generates to the unlimited,
Open,
Free perspective of the heart.
This is the kerygma of Ramana Maharshi.
It has the life-giving power contained within it,
Just like a seed.
The life of the teaching,
The power of the teaching is contained within Ramana and contained within you.
It is self-authenticating.
And it's not watered down.
It has the full potency and power of the awakening,
Realization and liberation of Ramana contained within it,
The self-authenticating power of Arunachala Shiva,
Which was his divine master and teacher,
The formless presence of God.
So Ramana surrendered so deeply to God that he became the radiant presence of God.
He was that.
So this kerygma is potent.
And there was no need to evangelize because it was self-authenticating inside of you.
The realization of Ramana is timeless.
It is happening inside of you right now,
Just like the enlightenment of the Buddha is happening inside of you right now.
And the living truth of the words of Christ are alive within you right now.
The way,
The truth and the life is within your own heart as your eternal nature.
This is the omniscient power of God that is unseen.
It's a living truth.
So Ramana was radical because he broke from tradition.
In India,
The tradition holds that if you want to become liberated,
You must become a renunciate,
A monk or a sadhu.
You must completely and totally renounce the world.
And Ramana was totally different.
He broke from tradition and said that anyone could be free,
A housewife,
A student,
A lawyer,
A doctor,
A CEO,
Anyone who applied the core teaching of meditation,
Silence,
Satsang or self-inquiry and sound or the mantra and all of that as self-inquiry to see through the reflective nature of ego.
This was the self-authenticating power of Ramana's realization that is alive within you.
And it's spreading around the world not because of the man known as Ramana Maharshi,
But because it has this self-authenticating power.
So Ramana left his body in 1950 and the teaching continued to spread even though he broke from tradition and said anyone could be awake,
Anyone could be liberated and there was no lineage.
So traditionally in India if a master dies and leaves his body,
He assigns a student who will carry on the lineage.
But Ramana said no,
There is no human chain.
The mountain is the lineage because of its self-authenticating power.
The mountain is the formless presence of God within you.
This is the self-authenticating karigma alive inside your heart.
And he was radical because the emphasis was on your own direct realization,
Not conceptual ideas of truth contained in scripture or dogmatic ideas of what his teaching means,
But the actual direct visceral experience of this omniscient presence alive in your own heart.
This is the karigma of Ramana.
He is the karigma.
It's transcendent of the man known as Ramana Maharshi.
And it pierces your heart with its power,
With its potency.
When you hear these words you know that it's true.
It resonates with your heart because it is a living truth,
Transcendent of time.
So the awakening of Ramana is happening within your heart right now.
The awakening of the Buddha is happening in your heart right now.
And the awakening,
The resurrection of Christ is happening in your heart right now.
It's timeless,
Potent,
Not watered down.
It is this power to awaken in you the life,
The eternal life.
So an aspect of Ramana's teaching that is either forgotten or overlooked or rarely discussed is the power of the mantra to cut through the reflective nature of ego.
Ego is reflective consciousness.
And what that means is that it reflects your five senses on one side.
It's like a double-sided mirror.
It reflects your five senses on one side and what you're thinking,
What you're perceiving,
What you're feeling.
On the other side it is reflecting this omniscience,
The karigma,
The self-authenticating power of the formless presence of God.
So this combination,
The reflective nature of ego,
Makes the feeling of me inside of you extremely powerful.
Because on one side you have the omniscience,
On the other side you have everything that you are perceiving,
Everything that you are experiencing and everything that you are thinking and feeling.
This is what makes the me inside of you so incredibly powerful.
It is a powerful illusion.
It is like a giant mirage that makes you feel as though the me is real.
And so Ramana surrendered so deeply he fell through the mirage of the ego.
And he recognized that the mantra itself was the sound of silence.
It was the sound of Arunachala.
And the sound of the seed letters of the AUM sound are A-U-M.
And those three letters correlate to the waking state,
The dream state and the deep sleep state within the human body.
These are the three primary states of consciousness.
And when you sing all three seed letters together and the sound is AUM,
That is the stateless terreous state of your heart.
The sound AUM is the formless presence of God in the heart.
If you sing the seed letters either out loud or silently inside,
It directs your attention naturally to the source.
It guides your attention through the mirage of the reflective consciousness or ego inside of you,
Revealing the source or the omniscient presence of God.
This is the power of Ramana's teaching that is often overlooked,
The sound of AUM,
The seed letters of AUM,
Correlating to the three primary states of consciousness.
And the sound of every mantra transcends the mind.
It quiets the mind and redirects your attention.
It is a vibration or a yantra that focuses your attention on the source.
It is very,
Very powerful.
And it is an inquiry.
It's not just singing a song or singing a hymn.
It is a powerful,
Potent inquiry into the source of the sound.
This is the nature of the mantra in the context of Ramana's teaching.
Meditation is also an inquiry.
So silence was an inquiry into the source of silence,
Which is this formless presence of God,
The self-authenticating power.
And the question,
Who am I,
Contains the same power,
Just like the life in the seed.
The question,
Who am I,
Contains the power of God to redirect your attention to the source.
It is an annihilating force that cuts through this illusion of you revealing the truth of you,
The karigma that's alive within you.
This is the power of the question,
Who am I.
But this question has been around for centuries.
It predates the Buddha,
The question,
Who am I?
So it's ancient.
So what makes Ramana's perspective of this practice so unique is that he became that.
He was the karigma,
Is the karigma,
Will always be the karigma,
The omniscient formless presence of God within you.
So he could articulate this in a way so anyone could understand it.
And this is why it was so radical.
You do not have to be a renunciate to become fully liberated from the karmic wheel of suffering.
This is the gospel of Ramana.
It is your direct experience that sets you free from the suffering nature of mind.
And it's learning to trust the omniscience in the heart,
The unseen omniscience in your heart over the very limited perspective of your mind.
So Ramana was the embodiment of God,
Is the embodiment of God.
And the power of his realization is contained within his teaching.
It is self-authenticating.
It is self-authenticating within you.
And this is why it is naturally spreading around the world without any formal effort to evangelize or to create a religion.
In fact,
Ramana said you do not have to leave your religion.
His teaching was not about religion.
You could say it was the foundation of all religion,
But it was not a religion.
If you actually apply the three basic aspects of his teaching,
Which is self-inquiry,
Silence,
And sound,
All of it as an inquiry,
You will realize this for yourself instantly.
You can realize that you are the eternal omniscience in the heart.
It is alive within you,
The living truth.
And all that's required is to turn your attention inward and inquire,
Who are you really?
What is this me?
So the question,
Who am I,
Is meant to question the me inside of you,
Right?
What is this me?
Where does it come from?
What is the source of the me?
And then if you turn inward to look,
You can discover for yourself this eternal omniscient presence that was never born and will never die,
The eternal one within you,
As you,
Deeper than the me you think you are.
This is the Kurygma of Ramana Maharshi.
So it is the seed of salvation that is already living in your heart.
And Ramana is like the brilliant sun in the eternal water of life that awakens the seed,
Germanates the seed to generate within you the evolutionary consciousness of the omniscience that's free of the mind and ego,
The living eternal presence that you are and always will be.
Om Shanti,
Shanti,
Shanti He.
Shanti.
Shanti.
