THE MOUNTAIN PATH April 1964

[Guest guest]

Self-Enquiry: Some Objections Answered

By D. E. Harding

 

Our self-knowledge is our beauty: in self-ignorance we are ugly - PLOTINUS.

You know the value of everything-except yourself! - RUMI.

All Christian religion wholly consists in this, to learn to know ourselves, whence we come and what we are - BOEHME.

Who is it that repeats the Buddha's name ? We should try to find out where this 'Who' comes from and what it looks like - HSU YUN.

Forgetfulness of the Self is the source of all misery - RAMANA MAHARSHI.

How is it that we need all this prodding, all these warnings and earnest invitations and promises of immense rewards, to persuade us to fake a close look at ourselves? Why don't all intelligent and serious people make it their chief business in life - to find out what they really are?

Surely, if such comparatively, trivial questions as whether one is good-looking or not, popular or not, a success or not, excite the keenest interest in us, the rather more important questions whether one is mortal or immortal, a body or spirit, created or Creator, should be that much more fascinating. Or so one would have supposed. To exist at all, somehow to have arrived on the scene - what astounding luck! - an intelligent something-or-other, and yet to remain uninterested in the nature of that something-or-other! It's incredible. Letting slip such an opportunity, foregoing (whether out of fear, laziness, or just negligence) the supreme privilege of discovering oneself, is more than unenterprising: it's a kind of madness, and none the less pitiful for being almost universal.

Thoughtful people, when challenged on this subject, are apt to excuse themselves by raising a number of objections to this inward search: they aren't at all sure it's a good thing. Of course (all agree) we need a working knowledge of our nature in order to make the best of ourselves and get on with others, but the probing can thrust too deep and go on too long. 'Know thyself' is all right up to a point, but shouldn't become an obsession, an end in itself, and certainly not our life's work: such introspection (they say) is likely to do more harm than good. And so: it's a selfish diversion of our energies from the service of others to preoccupation with ourselves; or it's a morbid introversion resulting in self-consciousness (in the bad sense), if not actually in mental illness; or it's time-consuming and unpractical, unfitting us, for our jobs and even for family life; or it's depressing and dull, a dreadful bore, a dead-end terminating in a mental blank; or it kills spontaneity and all natural, gay, out-going enjoyment; or it's a wonderful excuse for idleness and sponging; or it's coldly indifferent to art and to nature, to the beauty and wonder of the universe and the rich variety of the human scene, or it's a stupefying drug which reduces words to gibberish, stops thought, numbs the mind itself, exchanging our most highly-evolved human function for the non-human or sub-human Inane. More briefly, it's suspected that habitual, looking within becomes selfish, unhealthy, futile, unnatural, idle, world-despising, retrogressive. In short, an escape. And the alternative? Apparently, it's that we should plunge right into the thick of things and find out what we are by living as fully as possible, becoming thoroughly involved in the turbulent and dangerous life-stream instead of sitting down quietly and letting it flow by.

Of course these doubts and criticisms aren't the whole story: underlying them lurk deeper fears and less conscious obstacles. All the same, there's something in them: they deserve to be taken seriously, and that is the purpose of this article. Its aim is to show that, in fact, the seeming weaknesses of this prolonged looking at oneself are its strength, and so far from being a retreat from Reality it renounces that retreat. It's turning round and facing the central Fact at last instead of running in all directions away from it. Indeed it's the true Panacea, and ultimately the only way to full life, happiness, sanity, and even the effective service of others. Not that these statements are to be accepted on trust. The didactic tone of this article is merely for the sake of brevity: the fruits of true discovery are for tasting and not for dogmatising about. In this field, nothing's valid that we haven't tried out for ourselves.

First, then, take the accusation of selfishness. The typical Christian view is that we're not here to discover ourselves but to forget ourselves, concentrating on others and exchanging our natural self-centredness for the other-centredness of loving service.

But how can we really do very much good to others till we know ourselves profoundly? How much of our so-called help is in fact working off our guilt-feelings on the world, trying to resolve our conscious conflicts regardless of the real need and how often our short-term help ends in long-term hindrance. It's notorious that material and even psychological aid, in solving one problem, is apt to create two more. Only the highest spiritual aid, given by one who really knows himself, and others through himself, can be guaranteed altogether beneficent and free from those unfortunate side-effects which go on and on so incalculably; and then the gift is probably a secret one, unexpressed and inexpressible. The truth is that helping oneself (which means finding oneself) is helping others, though the influence may be altogether subterranean. It goes without saying that we must be as kind as we can, but until we see clearly Who is being kind we're working in the dark, with the hit-or-miss consequences that might be expected.

One of the troubles with this would-be forgetfulness of self in the service of others is that it's practically impossible: deliberate virtue rarely forgets to pat itself on the back a little. Goodness aimed at directly cannot avoid self-congratulation, and then its odour becomes unpleasant. But if, on the other hand, it's a mere by-product, arising naturally out of true knowledge of oneself, then it's quite indifferent to itself and any incidental merit or demerit, and so continues to smell sweet. Unfortunately, wrong effort to become a saint,, or even a Sage, is a self-defeating (or rather, Self-defeating) enterprise ending in its opposite - an inflated ego. Whenever it's not a question of discovering the present facts but of somehow altering them, of achieving something in the future, then the ego is at work. The ego can't be defeated on its own ground. The only way to get rid of it is to turn from the time-ridden, ever-changing outer scene where it thrives to the changeless Centre where it can never penetrate: in other words, the ego vanishes when one is oneself quite simply. Not only does the inward search promise to restrain or reduce our egotism: in the end, it's the only way of abolishing it. Truly speaking, there's nothing whatever to do -except clearly to realise that wonderful fact. All that's necessary is to examine the spot one occupies; here, always, lies Perfection. Here, the egoless, universal Self shines with utmost brilliance, alone. Only disinterested Self-enquiry succeeds, and then quite incidentally, in rectifying our attitude to others, because it alone unites us to them, demonstrating that in truth there are no others.

To call this enquiry selfish is to confuse the self or ego with our true Self. The genuine, liberating Self-enquiry is concerned with our essence, not our accidents or peculiarities. Unlike the ordinary man, the one who's engaged in this enquiry isn't at all interested in what marks him off from ether men (his personal characteristics, history, destiny, merits, faults) but only in what he shares with all. Therefore his researches can never be for himself as an individual human: they're a universal enterprise on behalf of all creatures. No-one and nothing's left out. This way works, but the merely human way of laboriously overcoming self-centredness, by trying to centre oneself on other people (feeling for them, seeing things from their viewpoint, etc.) doesn't work in the end. The total and permanent cure is to find one's true Centre within, to become altogether present and Self-contained.

Can such an enquiry be morbid, nevertheless? What is mental illness, in the last resort, but alienation from others and therefore from oneself? It's the shame and misery of the part trying to be a whole (which it can never be) instead of the Whole (which it always is). We are all insane, more or less, till we find by Self-enquiry our absolute identity with everyone else.

Self-enquiry is also suspected of being, if not actually unhealthy, at least unpractical. Some colour is given to this objection by the fact (painfully evident to anyone who gets mixed up with religious movements) that 'spiritual' people are quite often cranks, misfits, or inclined to be neurotic. Actually, this isn't surprising. Contented (not to say self-satisfied) people, fairly 'normal' and well adjusted and good at being human, aren't driven to finding out what else they may be. It's those who need to find out Who they are, the fortunately desperate ones, who are at all likely to take up the enterprise of Self-discovery. A sound instinct tells them where their Cure lies, though few find it.

So it is that the worldling may appear (and often actually be) a far better man than the spiritually inclined. Looking within doesn't transform the personality overnight. All the same, it's a sign of success in this supreme enterprise that it altogether 'normalises' a man, fitting him at last for life and correcting awkwardnesses and weaknesses and uglinesses. Now he's truly adjusted: he knows how to live, prosper and be happy. Paradoxically, it's by discovering that he isn't a man at all that he becomes a wholly satisfactory man. Naturally so: once he sees Who he really is, his needs, and his demands on others, rapidly dwindle; his ability to concentrate on any chosen task is remarkable; his detachment provides the cool objectivity necessary for practical wisdom: for the first time he sees people as they are; he takes in everything and is not himself taken in. At the start, Self-enquiry may not be the best recipe for making friends and influencing people, but in the end it's the only way to be at home in the world. Nothing else is quite practical. Sages are immensely effectual men, not a lot of dreamy incompetents.

Ah (say those who don't know), but their life is so dull, so monotonous. How is it, possible, attending for months and years on end to what is admittedly featureless, without any content whatever, mere Clarity, to avoid a terrible boredom? Discovering our North Pole may be fine, but do we then have to live there in the icy darkness where nothing ever happens?

Now the extraordinary truth is that, contrary to all expectation, this seemingly bleak and dreary Centre of our being is in fact endlessly satisfying, sheer joy, absolutely fascinating: there's not a dull moment here. It's our periphery, the world where things happen, which bores and depresses. Why should the colourless, shapeless, unchanging, empty, nameless Source prove (in actual practice not theory) so astonishingly interesting, while all its products, in spite of their inexhaustible richness, prove a great weariness in the end? Well, this curious fact just has to be accepted - thankfully. It can hardly be a matter of serious complaint that everything lets us down till we find out Who's being let down. If we would only allow them, all things push us Selfwards.

They do so naturally. In fact, the whole business of Self-discovery (though so rarely concluded) is our normal function, our natural development, failing which we remain stunted, if not perverse or freakish. Again, this is a surprising discovery. One would have imagined that any protracted inward gaze would have made a man rather less human, probably giving him a withdrawn look, an odd, self-occupied, and maybe forbidding manner. Actually, the reverse is true: only the Self-seeing man has the grace, and charm of one who is perfectly free. To find the Source is to tap it. Take the case of the man who is morbidly self-conscious: there are two things he can do about it, the one a mere amelioration (if that) the other a true cure. The false cure for his shyness is to lose himself by moving out towards the world; the true cure is to find himself by moving in, till one day his self-consciousness becomes Self-consciousness, and therefore perfectly at ease everywhere. Nobody can, by any technique of self-forgetting, regain the naturalness, the simple spontaneity of the small child or the animal; but, by the opposite process of Self-recollection he can gain something like that blessed state, though at a much higher level. Then he will know, as if by superior instinct, what to do and how to do it; and, rather more often, what not to do. Short of this goal, we are all more or less awkward and artificial, more or less bogus.

Is this an easy way out - out of the hell of responsibility and involvement and constant danger into a safe and unstrenuous heaven? To look at the enquirer you might think so; but you couldn't be more mistaken. In a sense, admittedly, it's the easiest thing in the world to see what nobody else can see, namely what it's like to be oneself, what it's like here: the Light is blazingly obvious, the Clarity transparently clear and unmistakable. But in another sense, alas, it's the most difficult thing in the world to see this Spot from this Spot: this mysterious Place one occupies, where one supposed there was some solid thing, a body or a brain, and where in fact is only the Seer Himself, is too wide open to inspection, too plain to catch our attention. All our arrows of attention point outwards; and they might be made of steel, so hard it is to bend them round to point in to the Centre, and still harder to prevent them springing back again immediately. Of all ambitions this is the most far-reaching, and no other adventure is anything like so daring or so difficult. This task, though clear and simple and natural, is also the one that requires more courage and persistence than most men have any idea of. The Sage has taken on an immense job: alongside him, Napoleon is a weakling. And this work, which makes all other work seem like irresponsible pottering, is his perfect realisation that there's nothing whatever to do!

Is the result worth the trouble? Is there nothing of value out there, nothing worthy of our attention and love? Turning our backs on a universe so magnificent and so teeming, and on all the treasures of art and of thought, and above all on our fellow beings, is surely a huge loss. The Sage - so it's reported - isn't interested in these matters: the world consists of things he doesn't wish to know: for him, knowledge of particular things is only ignorance. Is his achievement, after all, so difficult and so rare only because it's fundamentally wrong to despise the world?

Once more, the boot's on the other foot. Oddly enough, it's the man who attends only to the outer scene, ignoring what lies at its Centre, who's more or less blind to that scene. For the world is a curious phenomenon that, like a faint star, can be clearly observed only when it isn't directly looked at. It's an object that will not fully reveal itself till we look in the opposite direction, catching sight of it in the mirror of the Self. Like the Gorgons, it won't bear straight inspection. This isn't a dogma, but a startling practical fact. For example, though the world is sometimes beautiful when directly viewed as quite real and self-supporting, it's always beautiful when indirectly viewed as a product or accident of the Self. When you see Who's here you see what's there, as a sort of bonus. And this bonus is a delightful surprise: the universe is altogether transformed. Colours almost sing, so brilliant and glowing they are; shapes and planes and textures arrange themselves into charming compositions; nothing's repulsive or despicable or out of place. Every random patterning of objects - treetops and cloudbanks, leaves and stones on the ground, human figures and cars and shop windows, stains and tattered posters on old walls, litter of all kinds - each is seen to be inevitable and perfect in its own unique way. And this is the very opposite of human imagination: it's divine realism, the clearing of that imaginative, wordy smoke-screen which increasingly hides the world from us as we grow older and more knowing.

Indeed the path of Self-enquiry is no escape route: it's the shortest way in, our highroad to the keenest enjoyment of the world. Yet, seemingly, it's incompatible with any other serious creative endeavour, whether artistic or intellectual or practical. If so, this is surely a considerable drawback.

It's true that Self-enquiry will never succeed till we put our whole heart into it, and consequently the dedicated artist or philosopher or scientist is an unpromising subject. Actually this is not, however, because he's too devoted to his calling, but because he's not yet devoted enough, not yet absolutely serious about it: he needs to deepen and widen his field till it includes both himself and the whole world. For the only consistent genius, the only complete Artist Philosopher-Scientist, is the Sage, who is fully conscious of being the Painter of the entire World-picture, the Thinker of all thought, the Universe-inventor, Knowledge itself. This doesn't mean, of course, that he has all the details at his fingertips, but he does see what they all amount to in their innermost essence and outermost sum, namely his true Self. And whenever a question of detail does arise, his response is the correct one. His mindlessness is the indispensable basis of a smoothly functioning mind: his Self-information includes all the other information he needs. In short, he's sage, which means wise: not clever and learned and with a head full of ideas, but altogether simple and - literally - clear-headed.

Even in ordinary life we find hints of this vital connection between Self-awareness and creativity. Don't our very best moments always include a heightened consciousness of ourselves, so that we aren't really 'lost' in admiration or creative fervour or love, but newly found? At its finest, doesn't the opaque object over there point unmistakably back to the transparent Subject here? It may even happen that the transparency comes first: we attend, our idiotic inner chatter dies down, we consciously become nothing but an alert, expectant void - and presently the required tune or picture, the key notion, the true answer, arrives ready made in that void, from that void. With luck (or grace) and some practice, we may occasionally and imperfectly enjoy this insight into the process of Creation itself. It is the life of the fully Self-aware.

The result of observing only the universe is that one ends as a kind of one-man Resistance Movement in it. Anxiety mounts to cosmic proportions. Only observing the Observer of the universe will finally put a stop to a man's worrying and fussing and scheming. When his interest is diverted inwards he naturally relaxes his hold - his stranglehold - on the outer world. Having withdrawn his capital and paid it into his own Central Bank (where it immediately appreciates to infinity) he has nothing to lose out there and no reason for interfering. He knows how to let things be, and work out in their own time. He's in no hurry. Knowing the Self, he can hardly fail to trust its products: whatever occurs is agreeable to him, because even if it weren't it could never touch his real Being. In Christian terms, he has no will but God's; what he wants is what happens, and what happens is what he wants. Paradoxically, his obedience to the nature of things is his rule over them: his weakness is all-powerful. And the secret of his power is that he isn't concerned with events at all. 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.' Seek ye first these things, and even they shall be taken away.

This perfect obedience isn't just lining oneself up with God's will, or imitating it, or even becoming part of it: it's that very will itself in full operation. If we wish to find out exactly what it's like to make the world, we have only to desire nothing and pay attention. But total acceptance is very hard. It's precisely the opposite of the lazy indifference that merely lets things slide. It springs from inner strength, not weakness, and is the result of concentration, not slackness. Why is the world so troublesome, so frightful? Is it like that by nature, or because we make it seem so by our negligence? Is it perhaps so terrible a place because we take the easy way of fighting it instead of the difficult way of fitting in with it? We have to find out for ourselves the truth of the Sage's demonstration that even in the smallest things the way of non-interference, of giving up all self-will, of 'disappearing', is astonishingly practical, the wisdom that works. Not only in the long run, but from moment to moment, consciously getting out of the Light, giving place to whatever things present themselves in it, instantly puts them right. We do too much and therefore remain ineffectual; we talk far too much and therefore say nothing; we think far, far too much and therefore prevent the facts from speaking for themselves - so say those who know the power of Emptiness. It's for us to make our own tests, not - repeat not - by the direct method of trying to be inactive and quiet and mindless (it just won't work) but by the indirect method of seeing Who was trying to be like that. No man becomes Godlike except by seeing he isn't a man anyway.

His experience of deification has no content whatever, no details: it's not merely indescribable, but non-mental or non-psychological, and in the truest sense non-human. Thinking or talking about it destroys it at once, by complicating what is Simplicity and Obviousness itself. It's rather like tasting sugar or seeing green: the more you reflect on it the further you get from the actuality. But there the resemblance ends. Seeing green is an ineffable experience because it's a pre-human or infra-human one; seeing the Seer of green is an ineffable experience because it's a post-human or superhuman one. The Sage's rejection of the concept-ridden, word-clouded mind is poles apart from the sensualist's or the beatnik's: Self-enquiry isn't retrogression, but the next evolutionary step beyond man, or rather the whole path from him to the Goal. And though the Goal is beyond thought, pure limpidity, void even of voidness, it's also nothing but the Honest Truth at last. For only the Self can be known: everything else is partly guesswork, partly false. Only Self-awareness is wide-awake and fully observant: all other awareness is mind-wandering. Total alertness is the Self.

And so, every fault we could find with Self-enquiry has turned out to be only a merit, disguised by its very perfection. Certainly there are kinds of introspection which are harmful, but they're concerned with the ego or empirical self and the very opposite of the true enquiry, which is pre-eminently healthy and sane, creative, natural, life-enhancing, intensely practical, and altruistic. Though obviously we're not all ready for it yet, and some of us have left it terribly late, it's what we're here for. To neglect it is in every sense a shame.

It would still be shameful neglect, unworthy of our energy and intelligence, even if Self-enquiry promised no pay-off at all. And in any case its benefits are purely coincidental; the only way to have them is to care nothing for them, but only for the unvarnished Truth about ourselves, no matter how unedifying it might prove. If all we want is to see Who we are, nothing can stop our doing so this very instant. But if our plan is to use that vision to buy happiness or Liberation or any other goods, we might as well abandon the very idea of Self-enquiry, Our Light is for lighting up itself alone.