Verse 1: Action giving fruit is by the ordainment of God. Since action is non-aware, is action God?
Verse 2: The fruit of action having perished, as seed it causes to fall in the ocean of action. It is not giving liberation.
Verse 3: Desireless action done for God, purifying the mind, it will show the path to liberation.
Verse 4: This is certain: pūjā, japa and dhyāna are actions of body, speech and mind. One than one is superior.
Verse 5: Worshipping thinking that all eight forms are forms of God is good pūjā of God.
Verse 6: Rather than praising; in a loud voice; rather than japa within the mouth, what is done by mind is beneficial. This is called dhyāna.
Verse 7: Rather than meditating leavingly, certainly meditating unleavingly, like a river or the falling of ghee, is superior to meditate.
Verse 8: Rather than anya-bhāva, certainly ananya-bhāva, in which he is I, is the best among all.
Verse 9: By the strength of meditation, being in sat-bhāva, which transcends bhāvana, alone is para-bhakti tattva.
Verse 10: Subsidingly being in the place from which one rose: that is karma and bhakti; that is yōga and jñāna.
Verse 11: When one restrains the breath within, like a bird caught in a net the mind also will be restrained. This is a means to restrain.
Verse 12: Mind and breath are two branches, which have knowing and doing. Their root is one.
Verse 13: Dissolution is two: laya and nāśa. What is lying down will rise. If form dies, it will not rise.
Verse 14: Only when one sends the mind, which will become calm when one restrains the breath, on the investigating path will its form perish.
Verse 15: When the form of the mind is annihilated, for the great yōgi who remains permanently as the reality, there is not a single doing. He has attained his nature.
Verse 16: Leaving external phenomena, the mind knowing its own form of light is alone real awareness.
Verse 17: When one investigates the form of the mind without forgetting, there is not anything called ‘mind’. This is the direct path for everyone whomsoever.
Verse 18: Thoughts alone are mind. Of all, the thought called ‘I’ alone is the root. What is called mind is ‘I’.
Verse 19: When one investigates within what the place is from which one rises as ‘I’, ‘I’ will die. This is awareness-investigation.
Verse 20: In the place where ‘I’ merges, that, the one, appears spontaneously as ‘I am I’. That itself is the whole.
Verse 21: That is at all times the substance of the word called ‘I’, because of the exclusion of our non-existence even in sleep, which is devoid of ‘I’.
Verse 22: Since body, mind, intellect, life and darkness are all jaḍa and asat, they are not ‘I’, which is sat.
Verse 23: Because of the non-existence of other awareness to be aware of what exists, what exists is awareness. Awareness alone exists as we.
Verse 24: By existing nature, God and soul are just one substance. Only adjunct-awareness is different.
Verse 25: Knowing oneself leaving aside adjuncts is itself knowing God, because of shining as oneself.
Verse 26: Being oneself alone is knowing oneself, because oneself is devoid of two. This is tanmaya-niṣṭhā.
Verse 27: Only knowledge that is devoid of knowledge and ignorance is knowledge. This is real. There is not anything for knowing.
Verse 28: If one knows what the nature of oneself is, then beginningless, endless and unbroken existence-awareness-happiness.
Verse 29: Standing in the state, thereby experiencing supreme bliss devoid of bondage and liberation, is standing in the service of God.
Verse 30: ‘I ceasing, if one knows what remains, what, that alone is good tapas’: thus said Lord Ramana, who is oneself.