I didn't realize at the time that I was being given this heavy workload for my own good, to keep me near Bhagavan. After living like this for some time, I began to feel that I had too much to do and that my life was being wasted.

One day Bhagavan Ramanar looked at me intently and said, 'It looks as if you are still hankering after meditation'. I replied, 'I have no time. All I have is endless work in the kitchen.'

Bhagavan responded, with deep feeling, 'Your hands may do the work but your mind can remain still. You are that which never moves. Realize that and you will find work is not a strain.

But as long as you think that you are the body and that the work is done by you, you will feel your life to be an endless toil. In fact, it is the mind that toils, not the body. Even if your body
keeps quiet, will your mind keep quiet too? Even in sleep the mind is busy with its dreams.'

'Yes, Swami,' I replied, 'It is as natural for you to know that you are not your body as it is for us to think that we are the body. I had a dream recently in which you were explaining this very point. I was dreaming that I was working in the kitchen and that you were having your bath in your usual place behind the bamboo-mat partition. ‘You asked, "Who is it?" and I replied, "Who shall I say I am?"

Then you answered, "Exactly so. You are nothing of which something can be said."

That was my dream, and it was all quite clear. Why can't I continuously remember while I am awake that I am not the body?'

'Because you haven't yet had enough of it,' he replied with a smile.

- Subbalakshmi Ammal, The Power of the Presence on Ramana Maharishi