Michael James about Self Investigation and self-Surrender based on teachings of Ramana Maharshi - Part1

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Attending to anything other than ourself is an action, a movement of our mind or attention away from ourself. Attending to ourself, on the other hand, is not an action or movement, but is just an actionless state of being self-conscious, as we always really are. Therefore atma-vichara or ‘self-investigation’ is only the practice of being self-conscious – that is, the practice of being conscious of nothing other than our own self, ‘I am’. Only by this simple practice of thought-free self-consciousness or self-attentiveness can we know who or what we really are.

In certain places where it has been recorded that Sri Ramana said “ask yourself ‘who am I?’” or “question yourself ‘who am I?’”, the Tamil verb that he used may have been vicharittal, which is the verbal form of the noun vichara, because in such places he appears to be referring more or less directly to the following passage from the sixth paragraph of Nan Yar?:

… If other thoughts rise, without trying to complete them [we] must investigate to whom they have occurred. However many thoughts rise, what [does it matter]? As soon as each thought appears, if [we] vigilantly investigate to whom it has occurred, ‘to me’ will be clear [that is, we will be clearly reminded of ourself, to whom each thought occurs]. If [we thus] investigate ‘who am I?’ [that is, if we turn our attention back towards ourself and keep it fixed firmly, keenly and vigilantly upon our own essential self-conscious being in order to discover what this ‘me’ really is], [our] mind will return to its birthplace [the innermost core of our being, which is the source from which it arose]; [and since we thereby refrain from attending to it] the thought which had risen will also subside. When [we] practise and practise in this manner, to [our] mind the power to stand firmly established in its birthplace will increase. …

This letting go of the verbalised question ‘who am I?’ is a secondary but nevertheless valid meaning of the second half of the first sentence of the sixth paragraph of Nan Yar?, in which Sri Ramana says:Only by [means of] the investigation ‘who am I?’ will [our] mind subside [or cease to be]; the thought ‘who am I?’, having destroyed all other thoughts, will itself in the end be destroyed like a corpse-burning stick [that is, like a stick that is used to stir a funeral pyre to ensure that the corpse is burnt entirely]…

Since other thoughts can survive only when we attend to them,and since this effort to investigate ‘who am I?’ draws our attention away from all other thoughts, Sri Ramana says that this effort will destroy them all. Though our mind commences the practice of selfinvestigation by making this effort to attend to itself, as a result of this effort it will subside, because it can rise and remain active only by attending to thoughts. Therefore, since our mind will begin to subside as soon as it makes this effort to attend to itself, and since by persisting in this effort it will eventually subside entirely in the perfect clarity of thought-free self-consciousness, the effort that it makes to attend to itself will subside along with it. This is the real meaning that Sri Ramana intended to convey when he said, “… the thought ‘who am I?’, having destroyed all other thoughts, will itself in the end be destroyed like a corpse-burning stick”.

Just as a doorway is a means by which we can enter our house,but is not our house itself, so a thought such as ‘who am I?’ may be a means by which we can enter our own natural state of clear non-dual self-consciousness, but it is not our self-consciousness itself. If we wish to enter our house, we should not just stand at the doorway but should pass through it and leave it behind us. Similarly, if we wish to enter our real state of non-dual self-consciousness, we should not cling to any thought such as ‘who am I?’ but should pass through such thoughts and leave them behind us.

The state of surrender is the state in which we do not attach ourself to anything or identify ourself with anything. Of all our attachments, the most fundamental is our attachment to our body,because we mistake it to be ourself. Our mind or separate individual consciousness can rise only by identifying a particular body as ‘I’, so all our experience of duality or multiplicity is rooted in our identification of ourself with a body. Without first attaching ourself to a body, we cannot attach ourself to anything else. Therefore, in order to give up all attachment, we must give up our attachment to our body.

In order for us to surrender ourself completely, we must give up all our desires. But is it possible for us to remain completely free of desire? Is it not natural for us to be always driven by some form of desire? Can we not surrender ourself to God simply by giving up all our selfish desires, and replacing them with unselfish desires?

We can answer this last question only by understanding what we mean by an unselfish desire. Some people believe that if they are concerned only for the welfare of others, and that if they sacrifice all their own personal comforts and conveniences and dedicate all their time and money to helping other people, they are thereby acting unselfishly and without any personal desire. However, even if we are

able to act in such an ‘unselfish’ manner, which few if any of us are actually able to do, what actually impels us to do so?.... To Be Continued-- Om namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

Prasanth Jalasutram