Self-enquiry and freedom from sin || On Vivekachudamani (2018)

Questioner (Q): You always mention how qualifications like dispassion and abandonment of action are necessary for enquiry to take place, while Ramana Maharshi says, “Even a great sinner can do enquiry.” How can this be reconciled? Also, you speak about renunciation, but Ramana Maharshi says, “All events in our lives are predetermined and the only freedom we have is to turn inwards.” Please clarify.

Acharya Prashant (AP): I do not know whether I say what you have said I say, so I would limit myself to speaking on what Ramana Maharshi says.

You have said Ramana Maharshi says, “Even a great sinner can do the enquiry.” Let’s go into this. Let’s try to appreciate.

If one is a sinner, why would one want to do the enquiry? Is not the absence of enquiry itself the sin? The absence of enquiry is itself the sin. So, effectively, how you are interpreting this statement is that even the one not wanting to enquire, even the one extremely determined not to enquire, can enquire. Now, how useful is this interpretation of yours?

This is not what Ramana Maharshi is saying. “Even a great sinner can do the enquiry” means that it is possible for you to drop the idea that you cannot break free of your situations. Are you a sinner when you are asleep? When does identification with sin arise in you? When does anything arise in you? It arises in your waking state of consciousness, which means sin and other such identities are thoughts, ideas that you hold about yourself. The idea that you are a sinner arises, and then you get carried away by the idea because the idea that you are a sinner is accompanied by another idea that says that now you are confined, now you are helpless. Together these two say, “I am a sinner, and I am destined to remain the sinner.” Without the second idea, the first idea has no weight; it cannot survive. It will have no life in the future.