Who asked you to think about all that?

[Guest guest]

3rd July, 1946

A visitor said: I am told that according to your school I must find out the

source of my thoughts. How am I to do it?’

Bhagavan: I have no school; however, it is true that one should trace the source of all thoughts.

Visitor: Suppose I have the thought ‘horse’ and try to trace its source; I find

that it is due to memory and the memory in its turn is due to prior perception

of the object ‘horse’, but that is all.

Bhagavan: Who asked you to think about all that? All those are also thoughts.

What good will it do you to go on thinking about memory and perception? It will

be endless, like the old dispute, which came first, the tree or the seed. Ask

who has this perception and memory.

That ‘I’ that has the perception and memory, whence does it arise? Find out

that. Because perception or memory or any other experience only comes to that

‘I’. You don’t have such experiences during sleep, and yet you say that you

existed during sleep. And you exist now too.

That shows that the ‘I’ continues while other things come and go.

Visitor: I am asked to find out the source of ‘I’, and in fact that is what I

want to find out, but how can I? What is the source from which I came?

Bhagavan: You came from the same source in which you were during sleep. Only

during sleep you couldn’t know where you entered; that is why you must make the

enquiry while waking.

(Some of us advised the visitor to read Who am I? and Ramana Gita and Bhagavan

also told him he might do so. He did so during the day and in the evening he

said to Bhagavan:

“Those books prescribe Self-enquiry, but how is one to do it?”

Bhagavan: That also must be described in the books.

Visitor: Am I to concentrate on the thought ‘Who am I?’

Bhagavan: It means you must concentrate to see where the I-thought arises.

Instead of looking outwards, look inwards and see where the I-thought arises.

 

>From "Day by Day with Bhagavan"