self-enquiry - #26

[Guest guest]

Question: Is Soham (the affirmation ‘I am He’) the same as ‘Who am I?’

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Aham (‘I’) alone is common to them. One is Soham. The other is Koham (Who am I?). They are different. Why should we go on saying soham? One must find out the real ‘I’. In the question ‘Who am I?’, ‘I’ refers to the ego. Trying to trace it and find its source, we see it has no separate existence but merges in the real ‘I’.

You see the difficulty. Vichara (enquiry) is different in method from the meditation Sivoham or Soham (‘I am Siva’ or ‘I am He’). I rather lay stress upon Self-knowledge, for you are first concerned with yourself before you proceed to know the world and its Lord. The soham meditation or ‘I am Brahman’ meditation is more or less a mental thought. But the quest for the Self I speak of is a direct method, indeed superior to the other meditation. The moment you start looking for the self and go deeper and deeper, the real Self is waiting there to take you in. Then whatever is done is done by something else and you have no hand in it. In this process, all doubts and discussions are automatically given up just as one who sleeps forgets, for the time being, all his cares.

Question: What certainty is there that something else waits there to welcome me?

Sri Ramana Maharshi: When one is a sufficiently developed soul (pakvi) one becomes naturally convinced.

Question: How is this development possible?

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Various answers are given. But whatever the previous development, Vichara quickens the development.

Questioner: That is arguing in a circle. I am developed and so I am suitable for the quest but the quest itself causes me to develop.

Sri Ramana Maharshi: The mind has always this sort of difficulty. It wants a certain theory to satisfy itself. Really, no theory is necessary for the man who seriously desires to approach God or to realise his own true being.