self-enquiry - #3

[Guest guest]

Q: Yes, but when I take to the 'I'-thought, other thoughts arise and

disturb me.

 

A: See whose thoughts they are. They will vanish. They have their

root in the single 'I'-thought. Hold it and they will disappear.

 

Q: How can any enquiry initiated by the ego reveal its own unreality?

 

A: The ego's phenomenal existence is transcended when you dive into

the source from where the 'I'-thought rises.

 

Q: But is not the aham-vritti [modifications of the mind], only one

of the three forms in which the ego manifests itself? Yoga Vasishtha

and other ancient texts describe the ego as having a threefold form.

 

A: It is so. The ego is described as having three bodies, the gross,

the subtle and the causal, but that is only for the purpose of

analytical exposition. If the method of enquiry were to depend on

the ego's form, you may take it that enquiry would become

altogether impossible, because the forms the ego may assume are

legion. Therefore, for the purpose of self-enquiry you have to

proceed on the basis that the ego has but one form, namely that of

aham-vritti.

 

 

Q: But it may prove inadequate for realising jnana (knowledge).

 

A: Self-enquiry by following the clue of aham-vritti is just like

the dog

tracing his master by the scent. The master may be at some

distant unknown

place, but that does not stand in the way of the dog tracing him.

The master's scent is an infallible clue for the animal and

nothing else,

such as the dress he wears, or his build and stature, etc.,

counts.

To that scent the dog holds on undistractedly while searching

for him,

and finally it succeeds in tracing him.

 

Q: The question still remains why the quest for the source of aham-

vritti,

as distinguished from other vrittis [modifications of the mind],

should be considered the direct means to Self-realisation.

 

A: Although the concept of 'I'-ness or 'I am'-ness is by usage known

as aham-vritti it is not really a vritti [modification] like

other

vrittis of the mind. Because unlike the other vrittis which have

no

essential interrelation, the aham-vritti is equally and

essentially

related to each and every vritti of the mind. Without the aham-

vritti

there can be no other vritti, but the aham-vritti can subsist by

itself

without depending on any other vritti of the mind.

The aham-vritti is therefore fundamentally different from other

vrittis.

 

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 realisation 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.