[Advaita-l] Realized sages

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

As per the advaita "saastras, it is impossible to *know* who is a
j~naani and who is not. It is certainly *believed* by a good number of
people that Ramana was a j~naani, including myself. I find that some
things peculiar to "sa.mkara, like using pratyak.sa in a very unique
way, only in Ramana. Still that's only a belief.

The "saastras are always present and never wrong. So, the best bet is
to find teachers teaching from the "saastras.  My personal suggestion
is Sri Bharathi Tirtha of the Sringeri Mutt.

There are many self proclaimed "realized sages" floating around.
Usually they attained "realization" in a "flash" and give discourses
which seem supiciously like a collage of material from "Talks with
Ramana Maharshi" and such sources. All this is fairly irrelevant to
people who really interested in advaita - the topic of this list. For
people who are interested in "advaita", a quick search of the internet
will reveal many such fellows.

We try to concentrate on advaita *texts* since this is based on the
timeless teachings of the .r.shis. It is impossible to identify
realized sages in any case.

Rama

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 13:01:22 -0700 (PDT), tatha gat
<tathagat79 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Namaste.
> 
> In recent times, Ramana Maharshi was universally acknowledged as a person who has realized the ultimate truth. (I am sure there were others also, but please excuse my ignorance) In similar vein, I would like to know about a living person  who is widely believed to be self realized.