“I Have Not Read the Gita”: Ramana Maharshi on Living Scripture

 

Ramana Maharshi in deep stillness, the living commentary on the scriptures.

Asked if Sri Bhagavan had read Kamba Ramayana, Sri Bhagavan said:
“No. I have not read anything. All my learning is limited to what I learnt before my 14th year.
Since then I have had no inclination to read or learn. People wonder how I speak of Bhagavad Gita, etc. It is due to hearsay. I have not read Gita nor waded through commentaries for its meaning. When I hear a śloka I think that its meaning is clear and I say it. That is all and nothing more.
Similarly with my other quotations. They come out naturally. I realise that the Truth is beyond speech and intellect. Why then should I project the mind to read, understand and repeat stanzas, etc.? Their purpose is to know the Truth. The purpose having been gained, there is no use engaging in studies.”

Someone remarked: “If Sri Bhagavan had been inclined to study there would not be a saint today.”

M.: “Probably all my studies were finished in past births and I was surfeit. There is therefore no saṁskāra operating now in that direction.”
— Talk 418, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

 

This is one of the most revealing statements Ramana Maharshi ever made — not because of what it says about books, but because of what it says about the state of a jñāni.

Read slowly.
You can almost feel the quiet cave-like atmosphere in which these words were spoken.

“No. I have not read anything.”
He is not being dramatic, he is not making a point — he is simply stating a fact, as if someone asked whether he had taken tea that morning.

“All my learning is limited to what I learnt before my 14th year.”
And yet, this is the same man who could quote Upanishads, Gita, Yoga Vasiṣṭha, and Tamil devotional hymns with uncanny precision.

The secret is hidden in the next lines:

“When I hear a śloka I think that its meaning is clear and I say it. That is all and nothing more.”

This is not the voice of a man who is dismissive of scripture.
This is the voice of a man for whom scripture has done its work so completely that it no longer needs to be sought — it simply blooms when needed.

He even explains why:

“Their purpose is to know the Truth. The purpose having been gained, there is no use engaging in studies.”

Scripture is like a map. Once you have arrived, there is no longer any need to stare at the map — unless, perhaps, to help someone else find their way.

And finally, the most tender part:

“Probably all my studies were finished in past births and I was surfeit. There is therefore no saṁskāra operating now in that direction.”

Here there is no arrogance, no pride in being “beyond books.”
There is almost a smile in these words — a childlike shrug.
He is not condemning study; he is saying gently, “That chapter of the story seems to have been completed long ago.”

The Boy Who Knew Nothing — and Knew Everything

Talk 418 leaves us with a sense of wonder.
How could someone speak so fluently of the Bhagavad Gita and yet say, without a trace of irony, “I have not read the Gita”?

To understand this, we have to go back to a quiet afternoon in Madurai, when Venkataraman — as he was then called — was just sixteen years old. He had no taste for study, no interest in philosophy. His schoolbooks lay mostly unattended. He spent his days playing, wrestling with friends, daydreaming.

And then, one day, everything changed. A sudden, overwhelming fear of death seized him. It felt so real, so final, that he lay down on the floor and let the experience take hold. What happened next he described later in his own words:

“This body is going to die,” I said to myself.
“But this body is not myself. I am the spirit transcending the body.
I am beyond the reach of death.
The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death.
I am therefore the deathless Spirit.”
— The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words

When he rose from that floor, the fear was gone — but so too was the sense of being a separate person. The ego had been burnt out like a moth in a flame. From that moment, he abided as the Self without effort.

Years later, looking back, he would add:

“I had read no books except Periapuranam, the Bible and some Tamil devotional hymns.
I had never even heard of terms like Brahman or samsara.
I did not know that there was an impersonal Reality underlying all things, or that there was a goal called moksha.
When I realized the Self, I did not know that it was what was called moksha.”
— The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words

And then, with a smile, he explained how the scriptures later came to him:

“At Tiruvannamalai, as I listened to the Ribhu Gita and other sacred books,
I learned all this and found that the books were analyzing and naming what I had felt intuitively without analysis or name.”
— The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words

This is the key:
Venkataraman did not become a jñāni by study.
He discovered the Self directly, and only later found that the shastras were speaking of the same Reality.

It was as though the scriptures were waiting for him, quietly saying:
“We have been speaking of this for millennia — and now you are living it.”

The First Books in Virupaksha Cave

After the death-experience, Venkataraman left Madurai and walked to Arunachala, where he spent the next years in silence — first in temple shrines, later in caves on the hill. One of these caves, Virupaksha Cave, would become the setting for a quiet miracle: the meeting of a Self-realized boy with the great shastras of India.

At first he had no language for what had happened. He sat in silence, absorbed, while the stream of pilgrims and seekers grew. But as devotees began to gather, they brought him books — Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Vasiṣṭha, Vivekachūḍāmaṇi, Ribhu Gita. When they asked him questions, he would sometimes open the text, read a verse, and then explain it.

Arthur Osborne describes it this way:

“Devotees brought him books to read and expound, and he thus became learned almost by accident, neither seeking nor valuing learning.
The ancient non-dual teachings he acquired merely formalized what he had already realized.”
— The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words

In other words, this was not study as most of us know it — no long hours of commentary, no discipline of memorization. When a verse was read aloud, its meaning was immediately clear to him because he was living in the state it described.

Years later, he would recall:

“At Tiruvannamalai, as I listened to the Ribhu Gita and other sacred books, I learned all this and found that the books were analyzing and naming what I had felt intuitively without analysis or name.”
— The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words

Little by little, these books gave him a vocabulary — Māyā, Īśvara, Brahman, turiya, aham-sphuraṇa — not as concepts to be believed but as precise words for what was already present in his experience. Soon he could speak with pundits and scholars in their own language, not because he had studied like a student, but because he had recognized himself in the pages of their tradition.

Ramana’s Way of Engaging Śāstra

By the time the small community around Virupaksha Cave had formed, Bhagavan had become a living reference point for seekers and scholars alike. Learned pundits came with armfuls of books, quoting the Upanishads and the Gita. Others came with tears and simple questions. In every case, Bhagavan responded in the same way: quietly, directly, using words only when necessary.

His engagement with scripture followed a very natural rhythm:

• A Verse is Brought: A visitor would recite a śloka or open a book before him.

• Immediate Recognition: Bhagavan would listen or glance at the verse. If it resonated, he would say, “Yes — this is true,” and sometimes translate it or explain its essence.

• Contextual Reading: If needed, he might scan the surrounding verses to see how the text built its point.

• Living Assimilation: Once confirmed, the verse was no longer “external.” It became part of his living vocabulary, ready to flow again when needed.

One of the most beautiful glimpses of this process is preserved by G.V. Subbaramayya in My Reminiscences. He recalls a day when a devotee recited a verse from the Eleventh Canto of the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam comparing the Self-realized sage to a drunken man:

“Just as a man blinded with drunkenness sees not the cloth on his body,
so the Self-realised siddha knows not whether the perishable body is existent or not,
whether by force of karma it has gone from him or come to him.”

Bhagavan translated the verse on the spot and smiled, as if to say, Yes, this is exactly it.

This was typical of him. When a verse described the state of the jñāni with precision, he would sometimes ask for it to be copied, or write it out himself — as he once did for Annamalai Swami — so that others might ponder it deeply.

In these moments, scripture was not an authority to be quoted but a mirror being held up to the Truth that was already shining there in the hall.

This is what Talk 418 really means when Bhagavan says, “My quotations come out naturally.”
They were not the result of long hours of memorization, not a storehouse of accumulated erudition, but the flowering of recognition.
When a śloka touched the truth of his experience, it entered his being like a seed. From then on, it could bloom again at any moment — not because he “remembered” it, but because he was living in the state from which it had arisen.

In this way, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Ribhu Gita, and even the Bhāgavatam did not remain books for him.
They became part of the atmosphere of the Self he radiated — alive, effortless, and spontaneous.

When Bhagavan said, “I have not read Gita,” he was not making a statement of pride, nor was he dismissing the text.
He was pointing to the difference between scholarly study and living realization.

For most seekers, “reading the Gita” means taking up the book, verse by verse, with commentary — perhaps in a class, perhaps memorizing chapters — and slowly building an intellectual framework. Bhagavan had no need for such a framework.

When he says, “I have not read,” what he really means is:

• he has not waded through commentaries.

• he has not done scholastic study or systematic memorization.

• he has not approached the Gita as something to be mastered by the mind.

Instead, when a verse was spoken in his presence, he would simply recognize it — like meeting an old friend. If necessary, he would read the whole chapter, but there was no sense of learning something new.

This is why he could add, with complete naturalness:

“When I hear a śloka I think that its meaning is clear and I say it. That is all and nothing more.”
— Talk 418, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

To “not read” in this sense means that the words of scripture did not have to be acquired and digested — they simply found their place in him because he was already living their essence.

This is why Ramana’s words never feel second-hand.
There is no echo of effort, no weight of scholarship straining to recall a verse.
When he spoke of Brahman or Māyā, it was not to demonstrate learning — it was simply what was true in that moment.

Because he had “not read” in the usual way, there was nothing standing between him and the scripture — no intellectual scaffolding, no accumulated pride of knowledge.
The Gita could speak through him freshly, as though for the first time.
In this sense, he did not so much interpret the scripture as embody it.

Living Śāstra

Those who sat with Bhagavan often said that simply being in his presence was like sitting with the Upanishadic rishis. Muruganar once remarked that Bhagavan’s silence was itself the ultimate commentary on all scripture.

When we look at his life through the lens of Talk 418, a pattern emerges:

• He did not reject scripture, but he did not cling to it either.

• He let the verses come, recognized them, and allowed them to live through him.

• For him, scripture had done its job — it had become transparent, like a finger pointing to the moon that no longer needs to be stared at once the moon is seen.

And what does this mean for us as sādhakas?

It means we are free to love the scriptures deeply — to read them, study them, even memorize them — but to remember that their purpose is not mere accumulation of knowledge.
Their purpose is to take us where Bhagavan stood when he said, “That is all and nothing more.”

The Gita, the Upanishads, the Bhāgavatam are not just texts to master; they are maps to dissolve in once the destination is reached.
Bhagavan shows us that the highest way to “know” scripture is to live in the Truth it points to — so that when a verse arises, it arises like a flower from our own soil, not as a borrowed line.

Our task, then, is twofold:

• To study enough that the mind becomes still and transparent.

• And then to let go enough that the Truth can speak by itself, without effort, just as it did through him.

This is the invitation of Talk 418 — not to neglect scripture, not to pride ourselves on “knowing nothing,” but to move beyond merely reading into being.

When that happens, as Bhagavan shows, the Gita itself seems to smile and say:
“You have read me truly — now let me read through you.”