In the presentation of Ramana Maharshi’s teaching found in *Be As You Are*, “being present” is portrayed as central because it is identical with abiding in the natural state of the Self. The Self, as described there, is not something located in the past or anticipated in the future; it is the pure awareness that is always here, in the immediate “I am.” When attention is allowed to rest in this present awareness, without mental elaboration, the mind’s usual movement through time-bound memories and projections begins to subside. In that subsiding, the underlying, unchanging consciousness that is one’s true nature is no longer obscured.

The text also emphasizes that thoughts of past and future are the very fuel of the ego-mind. The sense of a separate “I” is maintained by constant identification with these thoughts—stories, judgments, and images that the mind spins around experience. By remaining present, that chain of identification is weakened, and the ego’s habitual patterns of seeking, becoming, and narrating itself lose their grip. Presence, in this light, is not a psychological technique but a way of no longer lending reality to the ego’s time-bound activity.

Within this framework, being present is inseparable from the practice of Self-enquiry. The investigation “Who am I?” can only be carried out in the immediacy of awareness, as thoughts and experiences arise now. When attention is firmly rooted in the present, it becomes possible to trace the “I”-thought back to its source rather than following its proliferating associations. In such present-moment enquiry, the distinction between observer and observed can fall away, revealing the non-dual awareness that is already there.

Finally, the importance of being present lies in its simplicity and immediacy. It is not presented as a special state to be laboriously attained, nor as a complex discipline requiring elaborate preparation. Rather, it is the effortless recognition of what is always the case: the Self as pure, present awareness. Liberation, from this standpoint, is not a future achievement but the clear seeing, here and now, of that ever-present reality behind all experience.