That which is not present in deep, dreamless sleep is not real .
Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) is widely acknowledged as one of the outstanding Indian gurus of modern times.Ramana's teachings on Self-enquiry originated in his own awakening at age 16, when he became firmly aware of death. It made him aware of the Self.
Ramana Maharishi taught that every conscious activity of the mind or body, for example 'I think', 'I remember', 'I feel' 'I am acting', etc., revolves around the tacit assumption that there is an individual 'I' who is doing something, a common factor and mental fiction termed the 'I'-thought (a translation of Aham-Vritti, which literally means 'mental modification of 'I'). The individual "I" from which all thoughts arise is the ego/mind itself.
Sri Ramana equated individuality with the mind and the mind with the 'I'-thought which is dependent upon identification with an object, and said that after Self-realization there is no thinker of thoughts, no performer of actions and no awareness of individual existence. When the thoughts arise, he said, the 'I'-thought claims ownership of them — 'I think', 'I believe', 'I want', 'I am acting'. The individual "I' is the ego mind itself.
In reality, truth, there is no separate 'I' that exists independently of the objects that it is identifying with, rather, an incessant flow of misidentifications based on an initial assumption that the 'I' is individual and associated with the bodily form. He considered this 'I am the body' idea as the primary source of all subsequent wrong identifications and its dissolution as the principal aim of self-enquiry.
