From Ramana Maharshi
Becoming keenly aware that worldly life is full of misery, because it is infested with desire and fear, one should approach a Guru, a sage who is free from those bad forces, and after doing reverence to his holy feet should question him about how to become free.
V.3
The sage will give out in reply the supreme secret, confirmed by the [uniform] experience of all sages: ‘If you know yourself, there is no suffering for you. If you suffer [it only means that] you do not know yourself.’
V.4
‘Since you have no suffering in deep sleep, this suffering is only falsely ascribed to your Self. Realise the truth of yourself by the resolve to know it, and thereafter remain in your own true nature, which is bliss.’
V.5
The sage who has attained the supreme state is free, even though his body survives, [because] he does not look upon it as himself nor as belonging to himself. Therefore, that sage is really bodiless.
V.20
The aspirant to deliverance must resort to a sage as his Guru, that is, one who has awakened from the sleep of ignorance of the Self and is therefore free from delusion. How can one who has not awakened from that sleep awaken others who are in the same state?
V.24
Only that devotion to the Guru is good which is rendered to a sage-Guru, and which regards him as identical with God. Only by such devotion does one attain freedom from delusion. Truly the sage is not other than God.
V.25
Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad, (The Supreme Science of the Self as Taught by Bhagwan Sri Ramana)
Bhavin