Advaita, in the sense clarified by Ramana Maharshi, is the vision that reality is “not two”: the individual self is not a separate entity but in truth identical with the absolute, undivided consciousness often named Brahman. What is ordinarily taken to be “I” – body, mind, personality, and their stories – is seen as an object appearing in awareness, not the awareness itself. The sense of multiplicity and separation arises through ignorance, which makes one identify with this limited “I-thought” and thereby experience bondage and suffering. Liberation is not the acquisition of something new, but the clear recognition that one’s real nature has always been this pure, ever-free awareness. In that light, the world and God are not denied, but their status as independently existing “others” is questioned; they are understood as appearances in the one consciousness that is the Self.

Ramana’s distinctive contribution lay less in philosophical elaboration and more in a radical simplification of the path to this non-dual recognition. He consistently de-emphasized scriptural study and complex metaphysics, preferring direct pointing to immediate experience. His central method was Self-enquiry (ātma-vicāra), focused on the living question “Who am I?”. Instead of following thoughts outward into their contents, he advised turning attention back toward the very sense of “I” that claims those thoughts. Whenever any thought arose, he suggested tracing it to the “I” to whom it appears, and then questioning that “I” itself. By persistently seeking the source of the “I-thought,” the ego-sense subsides, and what remains is the non-dual awareness that was present all along.

Silence, for Ramana, was not merely the absence of words but the highest and most direct form of teaching. Many felt that simply abiding in his silent presence communicated more than any verbal instruction could, and he himself regarded spoken teachings as a concession for those not yet able to receive that silent transmission. At the same time, he acknowledged that not everyone could immediately take up pure Self-enquiry. For such seekers, he affirmed devotion and surrender as fully valid approaches: placing all burdens on God or the Self, allowing the sense of doership to dissolve. In this way, enquiry and surrender converge, as both culminate in the disappearance of the separate ego and the abiding as the one, non-dual Self.