Tag: Self Inquiry

Sri Ramana maintained that a powerful silence radiating from his presence that quieted the minds of those attuned to this was the purest form of his teachings, that he gave verbal teachings only for the benefit of those who could not understand his silence. According to David Godman, Sri Ramana's "verbal teachings flowed authoritatively from his direct knowledge that Consciousness was the only existing reality".

When asked for advice, he recommended self-enquiry as the fastest path to Moksha. Though his primary teaching is associated with Non-dualism, Advaita Vedanta, and Jnana yoga, he highly recommended Bhakti, and gave his approval to a variety of paths and practices , saying: "To each person that way is the best which appears easiest or appeals most. All the ways are equally good as they lead to the same goal, which is the merging of the ego in the Self. What the Bhakta (devotee) calls surrender, the man who does Vichara (self-enquiry) calls Jnana (knowledge). Both are trying only to take the ego back to the source from which it sprang and make it merge there".

Self Enquiry

Self-enquiry (Sanskrit ātma-vicāra) is a practice of meditation designed to rapidly bring about Self-realization, Self awareness, spiritual liberation or enlightenment, and is most commonly associated with Sri Ramana Maharshi. While Sri Ramana said that Self-realisation could be brought about, as it was for him, merely by giving up the idea that there is an individual self which functions through the body and the mind, few could readily do so. When asked for the most effective practice to facilitate Self-awareness, he commonly recommended forms of self-enquiry, along with recommending Satsang, (literally association with Sat or Being), in the form of mental contact with a realized Guru, or more properly the One Guru "within".

Sri Ramana Maharshi taught that every conscious activity of the mind or body, for example ‘I think’, ‘I remember’, 'I feel' ‘I am acting’, etc., revolves around the tacit assumption that there is an individual ‘I’ who is doing something, a common factor and mental fiction termed the ‘I’-thought (a translation of Aham-Vritti, which literally means ‘mental modification of ‘I’). He equated individuality with the mind and the mind with the ‘I’-thought which is dependent on identification with an object, and said that after Self-realization there is no thinker of thoughts, no performer of actions and no awareness of individual existence. When the thoughts arise, he said, the ‘I’-thought claims ownership of them- ‘I think’, ‘I believe’, ‘I want’, ‘I am acting’, but there really is no separate ‘I’-thought that exists independently of the objects that it is identifying with, only an incessant flow of mis-identifications, based on an initial assumption that the ‘I’ is individual and associated with the bodily form. He considered this ‘I am the body’ idea as the primary source of all subsequent wrong identifications and its dissolution as the principal aim of self-enquiry.

Sri Ramana taught that since the individual ‘I’-thought cannot exist without an object, if attention is focused on the subjective feeling of ‘I’ or ‘I am’ with such intensity that the thoughts ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’ do not arise, then the individual ‘I’ will be unable to connect with objects. If this awareness of ‘I’ is sustained, the individual ‘I’ (the ‘I’-thought) will disappear and in its place there will be a direct experience of the Self. This constant attention to the inner awareness of ‘I’ or ‘I am’ was called self-enquiry (atma vichara) by Sri Ramana Maharshi and he constantly recommended it as the most efficient and direct way of discovering the unreality of the ‘I’-thought. He taught that the ‘I’-thought only finally disappears when the perception of all objects, both physical and mental, ceases and only Self Awareness exists. This is not brought about by being aware of an ‘I’, but only by BEING the ‘I’. This stage of experiencing the subject rather than being aware of an object is the culminating phase of self-enquiry.

On Emptiness:

This emptiness is not a trivial thing. It's the most supreme state. But in the consciousness there is this itching, and I use this term: the athlete's foot mind. In the mind the thought is coming, there is this itching, and it feels it needs a scratch, you know. Like a question arising, something more to be solved, or resolved. But I say: only stay as this, and that itchiness will subside. When this itchiness is there, there is the temptation to start to scratch it, but it just makes it more bloody and awful. So just take note of that for the moment. But stay as you are. Because you cannot improve this emptiness. So many of the beings are longing to be this emptiness, to return to this emptiness, you see, consciously. When you go to sleep, you leave all your cares and your concerns about yourself and your life. And you love to be without these concerns. How much money we spend on the bed, on the bedroom, to get the best sleep so you can forget everything ! And when the waking arises there is refreshment in the being, you see, because it puts away all these concerns. This emptiness that you speak of now seemed eclipsed by your concerns and where you put your attention, and while you're attending to your concerns and activities and affairs of life, then you're being disturbed actually. So a little bit of meditation or self-enquiry returns you to this affirmation in yourself, this recognition: all there is is just a sort of emptiness, beyond the concept of empty even.

On Enlightenment:

In truth it is not possible to become enlightened as you put it because no one is there as such to become enlightened in the first place. The firm recognition or realisation that there isn't a 'somebody' in reality to gain enlightenment, and that there can never be an entity at any time, either now or in the future, to gain any such state, is what amounts to enlightenment. This direct realisation occur and become revealed, confirmed and convincing truth through the process of self enquiring. 'Self-enquiry', also called atma-vichara, is one effective means of exposing the unreality of the 'I-concept', or ego, ordinarily felt to be the fact of oneself, leaving the pure immutable Self as the single an perfect reality. This is the ultimate truth.

On "Whatever you can perceive cannot be you":

You are total unicity beyond duality. That you are. You are so one with yourself that you cannot perceive yourself. You can only imagine that you are other than that. It is like a knife that can cut so many vegetables but cannot cut itself because it is one with itself, or the scale which can weigh so many objects but cannot weigh itself. It is the same with the one supreme Self- the sole Reality, being ever One with itself, it cannot perceive that which it Is; it can only perceive what it is not.