Self-enquiry

January 5, 2007

Bhaghavan Ramana while explaining self-enquiry in his very first explanation to the earliest devotee, in his work Nanyar, says as follows.

"That which rises as 'I' in this body is the mind.

If one inquires as to where in the body the thought 'I' rises first,

one would discover that it rises in the heart.

That is the place of the mind's origin.

Even if one thinks constantly 'I' 'I',

one will be led to that place.

Of all the thoughts that arise in the mind,

the 'I' thought is the first.

It is only after the rise of this that the other thoughts arise.

It is after the appearance of the first personal pronoun

that the second and third personal pronouns appear;

without the first personal pronoun there will not be the second and third.

By the inquiry 'Who am I?'.

The thought 'who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts,

and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre,

it will itself in the end get destroyed."

In this connection, may I ask the learned members what they understand by the term the first person or the I thought, and the idea that that which arises as the I in the body is the mind. If we seriously meditate on this truth, we can know that all our traffickings in the world involve the I thought. If we did not have the I thought, we could not do anything; we could only be. Since all thoughts arise only after the I thought, does what Bhaghavan demand in his advise that one should hold on to the I, presuppose the idea of an "I" not admitting of an attachment to objects as against its timeless lapse into the form of thoughts, the I being identified with the object. Even in our tenacious attempts to locate the unassociated, 'I' we are tantalized and tormented by our confronting it only as an object. From what Bhaghavan says can we not infer that anything other than abiding as our true self through self-attention, or being aware of only awareness and not objects,

constitutes the involvement in the non-self? Since we are so trenchant and obstinate in our self-identification-and not self-attention- where and how do we miss cognition of our true self? Strictly, we cannot see that there is non-cognition of the Self at any point, since that is also cognised only by the Self. Is the I thought referred to by Bhaghavan a pointer towards a natural pause of thought available as an interval between two thoughts, a sushupti existing even in the jagrat, which we are not aware of? Is it an interval between two thoughts, talked about very much in Tripura Rahasya, Pancadasi, Yogavasishta, all these things being very much referred to by Bhaghavan, very much highlighted by J.Krishnamurthy in his notebooks and the journal, this being referred to by the term, 'Bardo,' in Tibetan Buddhism? Since we cannot be aware of the Self as an act since it involves a duality, a swerving from the natural state of poise of our being, but since this is demanded of

us in view of our being a sad mixture of the true and the false, does self-enquiry presuppose the idea of always falling back upon our natural state as one of Being-Awareness by through this natural pause in thought as an interval, being available to us? I request the meditatve people to answer this question without being very scholarly. I feel that to understand our natural state no intellectual scholarship is required.

yours ever in Bhaghavan

Sankarraman