Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-80

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Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-80

 

Aham-Vritti

 

Sanskrit: Aham: I. Vritti: Thought. Aham–vritti: `I thought', the

thought that `I am an individual limited to my body-mind', the sense

of ego or simply the `I'.

 

Our life experiences rotate through the relentless cycle of three

states – waking, dream and deep sleep. We feel that we are an

individual, `I', limited to our body-mind complex, in waking and

dream states. Bhagavan calls this sense of ego as `I thought'.

This `I thought' is absent in deep sleep.

 

Bhagavan defines mind as thoughts. Of all thoughts, the `I thought'

is the root thought. Hence mind is nothing but this `I'." The world

appears in waking and dream along with the mind and disappears in

deep sleep when the mind disappears. Thus we can conclude the world

is a projection of the mind.

 

Diverse thoughts appear and disappear sequentially in our mind. All

these thoughts are known by `I'. There can be no thought without

this `I thought' since they are known by `I'. But `I thought' can be

there in the absence of other thoughts and knows that there are no

thoughts.2 This is the basic and vital difference between `I

thought' and other thoughts. Bhagavan therefore compares this `I

thought' to the thread passing through all pearls in a chain.

 

A ball of iron in its intrinsic nature is not radiant.3 When heated

in fire, the iron ball becomes hot and glows giving a false notion

of radiant iron ball. It takes on the nature of fire within the

narrow limits of the iron ball's size. Similarly `I' is a spurious

entity, Bhagavan says, having the nature of awareness `I' `I', but

limited to the size of the body. `I' is therefore the limited

reflection of unlimited `I' `I', our Self-nature, the reality.

 

`I thought' has the vital clue for breaking the inexorable cycle of

waking, dream and sleep. So long our attention is on objects, the

subject `I' expands and hides as it were, its source `I' `I'. When

we turn our attention to `I', the subject, it wanes and subsides

into `I' `I'. Bhagavan says that like a dog which tracks his master

by tracing his scent, ignoring everything else, we should

trace `I' `I', our real nature, by turning our attention away from

the objects and focus it on the subject `I'. "So then, the search

for the source of the aham-vritti is not merely the search for the

basis of one of the forms of the ego but for the very Source itself

from which arises the `I-am'-ness. In other words, the quest for and

the realization of the source of the ego in the form of aham-vritti

necessarily implies the transcendence of the ego in every one of its

possible forms."4

 

Aham-vritti creates the world and associated problems; but it has

the solution by leading us to our Self-nature, immortality, freedom

and bliss. The solution is in the very problem of who we think we

are. "This is the sum and substance of all that an aspirant needs to

know. What is imperatively required of him is an earnest and one-

pointed enquiry into the source of aham-vritti", says Bhagavan.5

 

_

1. The Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi, The Essence of

Instructions, v.18.

2. Maharshi's Gospel, Book II, Chapter 6, Aham and Aham-vritti.

3. Sri Maharshi's Words of Grace, Self Enquiry, Chapter-IV, The Ego.

4. Maharshi's Gospel. Op. Cit.

5. Ibid.

 

Mountain Path, September, 2004