AMASTER IS ONE WHO HAS MEDITATED solely on God, has flung his whole personality into the sea of God, and drowned and forgotten it there till he becomes simply the instrument of God, and when his mouth opens it speaks God’s words without effort or forethought, and when he raises a hand God flows again through that to work a miracle.
Do not think too much of psychical phenomena and such things. Their number is legion — utterly indefinite; and once a faith in the psychical things is established in the heart of a seeker, such phenomena have done their work. Clairvoyance, clairaudience, and such things are not worth having when such far greater illumination and peace are possible without them than with them. The Masters take on these powers as a form of Self-Sacrifice! I know the Masters, two of the greatest, and I tell you that the idea that a Master is simply one who has attained power over the various occult senses by long practice and prayer or anything else is utterly and absolutely false. No Master ever cared a rap for occult powers for he has no need of them for his daily life.
The phenomena we see are curious and surprising — but the most marvellous thing of it all we do not realise and that is that one, and only one, illimitable force is responsible for:
(a) All the phenomena we see,
(b) The act of our seeing them.
Do not fix your attention on all these changing things of life, death, and phenomena. Do not think of even the actual act of seeing them or perceiving them but only of that which sees all these things. That which is responsible for it all. This will seem nearly impossible at first, but by degrees the result will be felt. It takes years of steady, daily practice, but that is how a Master is made. Give yourself a quarter of an hour a day. Keep your eyes open, and try to keep the mind unshakenly fixed on That Which Sees. It is inside yourself. Do not expect to find that “That” is something definite on which the mind can be fixed easily; it will not be so. Though it takes years to find that “That” the results of this concentration will soon show themselves — in four or five months’ time — in all sorts of unconscious clairvoyance, in peace of mind, in power to deal with troubles, in power all round — always unconscious power. I have given you this teaching in the same words as the Masters give it to their intimate chelas. From now onwards let your whole thought in meditation be not on the act of seeing nor on what you see, but immovably on That Which Sees.
Text copyright © Frank Humphreys. Reprinted from Glimpses of the Life and Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
Frank H. Humphreys was an Englishman who came to India in 1911 to serve as assistant superintendent of police in Madras (Chennai). He was the first Western devotee of Ramana Maharshi.
Chapter on Frank Humphreys in Ramana Periya Puranam by V. Ganesan, page 64.
This page was first published on May 14, 2017 and last revised on September 18, 2024.