Self-enquiry

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Self-enquiry (also spelled self-inquiry) (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 its most famous modern advocate, 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, [2], 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". [3].

Nisargadatta Maharaj also recommended the practice of self- enquiry.

Contents

[edit] Theory

[edit] From Be As You Are

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-realisation 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 misidentifications, 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.

This important distinction distinguishes self-enquiry from most all other spiritual practices and it explains why Sri Ramana consistently maintained that most other practices were ineffective. He often pointed out that traditional meditations and yoga practices necessitated the existence of a subject who meditates on an object and he would usually add that such a relationship sustained the ‘I’-thought instead of eliminating it. In his view such practices may effectively quieten the mind, and they may even produce blissful experiences, but they will never culminate in Self-realisation because the ‘I’-thought is not being isolated and seen to have no identity. [1]

When one turns within and searches
Whence this `I' thought arises,
The shamed `I' vanishes
And wisdom's quest begins.

Upadesha Saram, v 19, Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi

[edit] From Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

Arranging thoughts in the order of value, the `I' thought is the all-important thought. Personality-idea or thought is also the root or the stem of all other thoughts, since each idea or thought arises only as someone's thought and is not known to exist independently of the ego. The ego therefore exhibits thought-activity. The second and the third persons do not appear except to the first person. Therefore they arise only after the first person appears, so all the three persons seem to rise and sink together. Trace, then, the ultimate cause of `I' or personality. The `I' idea arises to an embodied ego and should be related to a body or organism. Has it a location in the body or a special relation to any particular spot, as speech which has its centre in the brain or amativeness in the brain? Similarly, has `I' got any centre in the brain, blood, or viscera? Thought-life is seen to centre round the brain and the spinal-cord which in turn are fed by the blood circulating in them, carrying food and air duly mixed up which are transformed into nerve matter. Thus, vegetative life - including circulation, respiration, alimentation, etc. - or vital force, is said to be (or reside in) the core or essence of the organism. Thus the mind may be regarded as the manifestation of vital force which again may be conceived as residing the Heart. [2]

[edit] From The Path of Sri Ramana, Part One, by Sri Sadhu Om

Sri Ramana Maharshi named Self-enquiry as ‘Who Am I?’, thus drawing our attention directly to the first person. In this question, 'Who Am I?', 'I am' denotes Self and 'who' stands for the enquiry. It does not mean enquiring into a second or third person object. Also, Self (atman) does not exist as an object to be known by us who seek to know it!

Self-enquiry is unnecessary for the Self, and Self-knowledge is impossible for the ego. The enquiry 'Who Am I?' taught by Sri Ramana should be taken to mean Self-attention (that is, attention merely to the first person, the feeling 'I').

While practising Self-enquiry, instead of taking any one of the five sheaths as the object of our attention, we should fix our attention only on the 'I'-consciousness, which exists and shines as oneself, as the singular, and as a witness to and aloof from these five sheaths.

Sri Ramana has advised that Self-enquiry can either be done in the form 'Who am I?' or in the form 'Whence am I?'. 'Who is this I?' may rather be called 'I-attention', 'Self-attention' or 'Self-abidance'. Enquiring 'Whence am I?' is enquiring 'Whence is the ego?', meaning ‘From what?’. When taken in this sense, instead of a place or time coming forth as a reply, Self-existence, 'we', the Thing (vastu), alone is experienced as the reply.

When sought within 'What is the place from which it rises as 'I'?, 'I' (the ego) will die! This is Self-enquiry (jnana-vichara)

– Ramana Maharshi, Upadesha Undiyar, verse 19

He who seeks 'Whence am I?' is following the ego, the form of which is 'I am so-and-so', and while doing so, the adjunct so-and-so, having no real existence, dies on the way, and thus he remains established in the Self, the surviving 'I am'.[3]

On the other hand, he who seeks 'Who am I?' drowns effortlessly in his real natural 'being' (Self), which ever shines as 'I am that I am'. Therefore, what is absolutely necessary is that Self-attention should be pursued till the very end.

[edit] From Reality in Forty Verses

14. `You' and `he' -- these appear only when `I' does. But when the nature of the `I' is sought and the ego is destroyed, `you' and `he' are at an end. What shines then as the One alone is the true Self.

23. The body says not it is `I'. And no one says, "In sleep there is no `I'." When `I' arises all (other) things arise. Whence this `I' arises, search with a keen mind.

26. When the ego rises all things rise with it. When the ego is not, there is nothing else. Since the ego thus is everything, to question `What is this thing?' is the extinction of all things.

29. Cease all talk of `I' and search with inward diving mind whence the thought of `I' springs up. This is the way of wisdom. To think, instead, `I am not this, but That I am,' is helpful in the search, but it is not the search itself.

30. When the mind turns inward seeking `Who am I??' and merges in the Heart, then the `I' hangs down his head in shame and the One `I' appears as Itself. Though it appears as `I-I', it is not the ego. It is Reality, Perfection, the Substance of the Self. [4]

[edit] From Miscellaneous Scriptures

Enquiry should be made this wise: With the kind help of the Sat Guru one should enquire ‘Who am I? what is this world? what is the reality behind all these?’

—Sage Ribhu, Ribhu Gita [5] Ch.32, v21

Only by those strong willed persons who make earnest and persistent Self-enquiry will the turbulent mind be controlled and fixed still in the practice of firm bhavana. In due course all thoughts and nescience will disappear, yielding place to the effulgent Awareness-Self of mukti.

—Sage Ribhu, Ribhu Gita, Ch.32, v26

You are unconditioned and changeless, formless and immovable, unfathomable awareness, unperturbable: so hold to nothing but consciousness.

—Sage Ashtavakra, Ashtavakra Gita [6], Ch.1, v.17

The great remedy for the long lasting disease of samsara is the enquiry, 'Who am I?, to whom does this samsara belong,' which entirely cures it.

—Sage Valmiki,  Yoga Vasista Sara [7], Ch.1, v.5

O Rama, this enquiry into the Self of the nature or 'Who Am I?' is the fire which burns up the seeds of the evil tree which is the mind.

—Sage Valmiki,  Yoga Vasista Sara, Ch.1, v.5

This wisdom (realising the Self) can be gained by a long course of practice of unceasing enquiry in to the Self.
Disciple: 'What is this enquiry?'
Master: 'Enquiry consists in pondering over the questions: Who is this 'I' in the body, including mind, senses, etc.? What is sentience? What is insentience? What is their combination, called bondage? What is Release?'

—Tandavaraya Swami , Kaivalya Navaneetha (The Cream of Emancipation), Section II, v.63

[edit] Enquiry: Practice and Misconceptions

[edit] Practice ('Who am I')

As author and long-time devotee David Godman explains,"Beginners in self-enquiry were advised by Sri Ramana to put their attention on the inner feeling of ‘I’ and to hold that feeling as long as possible. They would be told that if their attention was distracted by other thoughts they should revert to awareness of the ‘I’-thought whenever they became aware that their attention had wandered. He suggested various aids to assist this process- one could ask oneself ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Where does this I come from?’- but the ultimate aim was to be continuously aware of the ‘I’ which assumes that it is responsible for all the activities of the body and the mind.

In the early stages of practice attention to the feeling ‘I’ is a mental activity which takes the form of a thought or a perception. As the practice develops, the thought ‘I’ gives way to a subjectively experienced feeling of ‘I’, and when this feeling ceases to connect and identify with thoughts and objects, it completely vanishes. What remains is an experience of being in which the sense of individuality has temporarily ceased to operate. The experience may be intermittent at first but with repeated practice it becomes easier and easier to reach and maintain. When self-enquiry reaches this level there is an effortless awareness of being in which individual effort is no longer possible since the ‘I’ who makes the effort has temporarily ceased to exist. It is not Self-realisation since the ‘I’-thought periodically reasserts itself but it is the highest level of practice. Repeated experience of this state of being weakens and destroys the vasanas (mental tendencies) which cause the '‘I’-thought to rise, and, when their hold has been sufficiently weakened, the power of the Self destroys the residual tendencies so completely that the ‘I’-thought never rises again. This is the final and irreversible state of Self-realisation.

This practice of Self-attention or awareness of the ‘I’-thought is a gentle technique, which bypasses the usual repressive methods of controlling the mind. It is not an exercise in concentration, nor does it aim at suppressing thoughts; it merely invokes awareness of the source from which the mind springs. The method and goal of self-enquiry is to abide in the source of the mind and to be aware of what one really is by withdrawing attention and interest from what one is not. In the early stages effort in the form of transferring attention from the thoughts to the thinker is essential, but once awareness of the ‘I’-feeling has been firmly established, further effort is counter-productive. From then on it is more a process of being than doing, of effortless being rather than an effort to be.

Being what one already is is effortless since beingness is always present and always experienced. On the other hand, pretending to be what one is not (i.e. the body and the mind) requires continuous mental effort even though the effort is nearly always at a subconscious level. It therefore follows that in the higher stages of self-enquiry effort takes attention away from the experience of being while the cessation of mental effort reveals it. Ultimately, the Self is not discovered as a result of doing anything, but only by being. As Sri Ramana Maharshi himself once remarked:

Do not meditate – be!
Do not think that you are – be!
Don’t think about being – you are!

Self-enquiry should not be regarded as a meditation practice that takes place at certain hours and in certain positions; it should continue throughout one's waking hours, irrespective of what one is doing. Sri Ramana Maharshi saw no conflict between working and self-enquiry and he maintained that with a little practice it could be done under any circumstances. He did sometimes say that regular periods of formal practice were good for beginners, but he never advocated long periods of sitting meditation and he always showed his disapproval when any of his devotees expressed a desire to give up their mundane activities in favour of a meditative life." [8]

Sri Ramana stated that: "The Truth is that Self is constant and unintermittent Awareness. The object of enquiry is to find the true nature of the Self as Awareness. Let one practise enquiry so long as separateness is perceived." And that: "You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self." [9].

[edit] Misconceptions

As David Godman explains, "Sri Ramana Maharshi’s philosophical pronouncements were very similar to those upheld by the followers of Advaita (non-dualistic) Vedanta, an Indian philosophical school which has flourished for well over a thousand years. Sri Ramana Maharshi and the Advaitins agree on most theoretical matters but their attitudes to practice are radically different. While Sri Ramana Maharshi advocated self-enquiry, most advaitic teachers recommended a system of meditation which mentally affirmed that the Self was the only reality. These affirmations such as ‘I am Brahman’ or ‘I am He’, are usually used as mantras, or, more rarely, one meditates on their meaning and tries to experience the implications of the statement.

Not ‘I am Brahman’

Because self-enquiry often starts with the question ‘Who am I?’, many of the traditional followers of Advaita assumed that the answer to the question was ‘I am Brahman’ and they occupied their minds with repetitions of this mental solution. Sri Ramana Maharshi criticised this approach by saying that while the mind was constantly engaged in finding or repeating solutions to the question it would never sink into its source and disappear. (See I am Brahman)

Not a mantra

He was equally critical, for the same reason, of those who tried to use ‘Who am I?’ as a mantra, saying that both approaches missed the point of self-enquiry. The question ‘Who am I?’, he said, is not an invitation to analyse the mind and to come to conclusions about its nature, nor is it a mantric formula, it is simply a tool which facilitates redirecting attention from the objects of thought and perception to the thinker and perceiver of them. In Sri Ramana Maharshi’s opinion, the solution to the question ‘Who am I?’ is not to be found in or by the mind since the only real answer is the experience of the absence of mind.

Not neti-neti

Another widespread misunderstanding arose from the belief that the Self could be discovered by mentally rejecting all the objects of thought and perception as not-self. Traditionally this is called the Neti neti approach (not this, not this). The practitioner of this system verbally rejects all the objects that the ‘I’ identifies with –‘I am not the mind’, ‘ I am not the body’, etc.-in the expectation that the real ‘I’ will eventually be experienced in the pure uncontaminated form. Hinduism calls this practice ‘self-enquiry’ and, because the names are identical, it was often confused with Sri Ramana Maharshi’s method. Sri Ramana Maharshi’s attitude to this traditional system of self-analysis was wholly negative and he discouraged his own followers from practising it by telling them that it was an intellectual activity which could not take them beyond the mind. In his standard reply to questions about the effectiveness of this practice he would say that the ‘I’-thought is sustained by such acts of discrimination and that the ‘I’ which eliminates the body and the mind as ‘not I’ can never eliminate itself.

The followers of the ‘I am Brahman’ and ‘Neti-Neti’ schools share a common belief that the Self can be discovered by the mind, either through affirmation or negation. This belief that the mind can, by its own activities, reach the Self is the root of most of the misconceptions about the practice of self-enquiry. A classic example of this is the belief that self-enquiry involves concentrating on a particular centre in the body called the Heart-centre. This widely held view results from a misinterpretation of some of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s statements on the Heart, and to understand how this belief has come about it will be necessary to take a closer look at some of his ideas on the subject.

Self/Heart not located in body

In describing the origin of the ‘I’-thought he sometimes said that it arose to the brain through a channel which started from a centre in the right hand side of the chest. He called this centre the Heart centre and said that when the ‘I’-thought subsided into the Self it went back into the centre and disappeared. He also said that when the Self is consciously experienced, there is a tangible awareness that this centre is the source of both the mind and the world. However, these statements are not strictly true and Sri Ramana Maharshi sometimes qualified them by saying that they were only schematic representations which were given to those people who persisted in identifying with their bodies. He said that the Heart is not really located in the body and that from the highest standpoint it is equally untrue to say that the ‘I’-thought arises and subsides into this centre on the right of the chest.

Because Sri Ramana Maharshi often said ‘Find the place where the "I" arises’ or ‘Find the source of the mind’, many people interpreted these statements to mean that they should concentrate in this particular centre while doing self-enquiry. Sri Ramana Maharshi rejected this interpretation many times by saying that the source of the mind or the ‘I’ could only be discovered through attention to the ‘I’-thought and not through concentration on a particular part of the body. He did sometimes say that putting attention on this centre is a good concentration practice, but he never associated it with self-enquiry. He also occasionally said that meditation on the Heart was an effective way of reaching the Self, but again, he never said that this should be done by concentrating on the Heart-centre. Instead he said that one should meditate on the Heart ‘as it is’. The Heart ‘as it is’ is not a location, it is the immanent Self and one can only be aware of its real nature by being it. It cannot be reached by concentration.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Edited by David Godman, Chapter 4. (ISBN 0-14-019062-7)
  2. ^ Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, page 25, Talk 26. By Munagal Venkataramiah (ISBN 81-88018-07-4)
  3. ^ Upadesa Undiyar, Ramana Maharshi, translated by Sadhu Om and Michael James, PDF [1]
  4. ^ Ulladu Narpadu (Reality in Forty Verses), Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi. (ISBN 81-88018-06-6)
  5. ^ The Essence of Ribhu Gita
  6. ^ Ashtavakra Gita
  7. ^ Yoga Vasishta Sara
  8. ^ Self-Enquiry - Theory, by David Godman
  9. ^ The Nature of the Self by David Godman

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

  • Guru Vachaka Kovai, by Sri Murugunar, Translation by Sadhu Om and Michael James free e-book
  • Self-enquiry, from Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Edited by David Godman online
  • 'Who Am I? - Nan Yar?', question and answer version online
  • 'Who Am I? - Nan Yar?', prose version online
  • Self-Enquiry online
  • Spiritual Instruction online
  • Reality in Forty Verses - Ulladu Narpadu online
  • The Path of Sri Ramana - Part One, by Sri Sadhu Om (ASIN B000KMKFX0) free e-book
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