Self-Inquiry

Self-inquiry is not a regular practice for most of us. It requires a change from our present way of being so involved with the world that we never take the time to ask ourselves about ourselves. The dictionary tells us that “to inquire” means to seek, to learn by asking, to make investigation. The meaning of “self” is given as a per-son or thing referred to with respect to individuality, one’s nature, character, etc. Self-inquiry, then, is to investigate a person (one-self) with respect to individuality, nature, etc. This definition will serve to get us started.

For example: we visit a medical clinic, have tests, and report the results to our family: “The doctor examined me and said I am strong and healthy.” Sometime later, we become ill and complain to our family, “My body hurts all over.” If then we were to stop our ordinary routine for a moment or so and wonder, “Why do I perceive myself in two different ways? When I went to the doctor, I referred to the body as myself, and now I refer to the body as a possession of mine, as ‘my body.’ Is this just a minor variation of the way I talk, or is it something significant which I should look into?” In that moment of asking about ourselves, we would be engaging in self-inquiry. If our interest were touched deeply enough, additional questions might arise, such as, “Can `I’ actually be separate from my body in the sense that although the body might be destroyed, ‘I’ am not thereby destroyed? If the body is not ‘me,’ how did it come into my possession? If I had any say in the matter, no doubt I would have asked for a better and more beautiful body! If indeed the body is mine, and not just assumed to be mine, what is my responsibility to it? And, further, who is this ‘we,’ this ‘I’ who at one and the same time claims to be the body and to be the owner of the body.”

In this way, self-inquiry may start. Or, any incident may spark the beginning of self-inquiry. In any event, we are most firmly told by Sri Sathya Sai Baba that self-inquiry is essential if we choose to become free of illusion and delusion and their accompanying miseries. Baba says, “We are not body, mind, intellect, senses. They are manipulated by us. The day we recognize this differentiation and live in that knowledge; from that day, we become aware of our reality and our goal.”

At present, many of us are intensely interested in the world. Because of our interest in the world, and because of our desire for the things of the world, we are attached to the world and powerfully fascinated by it. But it is we who become fascinated with the objects and experiences of the world; it is not that the world captures us and holds us as its prisoner. Of the two, the world and us, Baba tells us that it is ourselves upon which all depends, and, of the two, it is ourselves who are all-powerful and truly fascinating. Self-inquiry is a method to see the obvious truth of this and act on it right away.

That which we are able to observe belongs either to the world outside our skin, or to our inner world, so we feel: “I am observing all this.” Self-inquiry means to search out this “I” who feels he or she is the observer of all this, to inquire, who am “I” really? What am I really and truly? Does this subtle subjective observer have a ground or source? About this, the sage Ramana Maharishi ob-served, “The ‘I’ thought cannot be the totality of the individual for it perishes daily in deep sleep, but there is no break in the continuity of one’s being.”

Unless we know the answers to such inquiries, and until we realize and take our stand in the truth about ourselves, our decisions and actions have the terrible potential of being dreadful mistakes. It is because of this that Baba says, “So long as one does not know who he is, he cannot escape these sorrows. As long as one does not realize the presence of God in everything, one cannot escape this sorrow. As long as one does not understand that to be born and die is for one purpose only—to understand the nature of Atma (the Self), one cannot escape this sorrow.”

The formal question, “Who am I?” although helpful, is not essential. There can be a direct and immediate realization of the Self as indicated many centuries ago by the self-realized sage, Ashtavakra, in response to the question of King Janaka as to how he might be free. The sage replied, “O King, know the Self as pure consciousness, the unaffected witness of the phenomenal world, and you will be free.”

If we were to have it in mind to follow Sage Ashtavakra’s advice as given to King Janaka, the initial step, to know oneself as pure consciousness, is not difficult. The difficulty is to be established in that pure consciousness. We, as complicated adults, in-tent on realizing the absolute truth, are worlds away from the young children we once were. Great changes have come about in our lives, but, despite these great changes, our consciousness has not changed one iota during the years. Feel the way into consciousness, and it will be realized that, at a very deep level of our being, nothing which has happened, either outside the skin or within the skin, has had the slightest effect on that beingness—it remains untouched and unchanged. This part of Sage Ashtavakra’s advice will be easy for anyone. The difficulty arises within the mind, which will not be content. The point of deep awareness is quickly abandoned because of our fascination with the phenomenal world. About this, Baba informs us that, for consciousness to remain firm in non-differentiation into identity and object, the mind must immolate itself in total surrender to the deep, undifferentiated state; to the Divine. There must be that final moment of total surrender to God. That crucial moment of total surrender, and what follows, seems to be very much an individual affair. For instance, Baba tells the story of King Janaka; that immediately following his full, never-deviating Self-Realization, he returned to his throne and continued to rule his kingdom. The great Self-Realized saint, Sri Ramana Maharishi, on the contrary, after that crucial moment of surrender to truth, which came in a flash while he was still a young active boy, retired to the pit of the temple at Tiruvanamalai and remained there, absorbed in the Self for many, many months before he would even speak to another person.

The ultimate subjectivity is our Self, and all that is not Self is objective. The status of non-self, of “object,” must be assigned to everything in life about which we can say, “Of this I am aware, I have a feeling about it, I am thinking of it, I am the witness of it, but it is not I, for when it has changed or gone, I remain, and I know what has come into the place of that which is gone.” In self–inquiry, we do not pause to investigate that which we perceive as being non-self. We simply say, “Not this. Not this,” and continue onward. It is said that whatever changes and becomes other than what it was, cannot be the true, eternal Self of which sages speak. We cannot, therefore, accept anything which is subject to change as being our ultimate, ever-constant Self.

Some great philosophers hold that even “I,” the witness, is constantly changing, that both observer and observed are changing every moment and therefore “permanent and eternal” is a phrase without meaning. They are correct as far as they go, no doubt. But Baba, and also the ancient rishis [sages], say that the state of witnessing is not particularized into a “witness” and that if full and complete attention is concentrated on the “I,” that while “I” will indeed change, losing name, force, and form, it will merge thereby into the “Absolute,” which cannot be described in terms of categories of any type, including those of “eternal” and “temporary.” Baba tells that this non-categorized Absolute is his reality, and our reality also, if we choose to realize it.

Once self-inquiry is underway, we find ourselves more alert and less liable to be acting without really knowing what we are doing. Not that we are setting goals, it will just naturally happen that we are less “sound asleep” than was the case in the past. Baba has said that to be “awake” throughout the day is real meditation. Sooner or later, as we become watchful, the very powerful question of “Who and what am I,” whether expressed in those particular words or not, will occur to us with great intensity. This is the significant beginning; awareness becomes a deep self-inquiry.

The question, “Who am I?” is widely known and is freely bandied about in conversation. It has become a worldwide saying because it was the central point of the teaching of the great saint of Arunachala Hill at Tiruvanamalai in southern India, Sri Ramana Maharishi. But it is also the pertinent question put to us by the blessed avatar, Sri Sathya Sai Baba, as well as by great seers and sages of past ages about whom we may read and study. “Who am I?” is, perhaps, the most vital question which can arise in the life of any one of us. Not that the question is necessarily phrased in those particular words. However, to know the question and to repeat it is one thing. To actually penetrate deep within one’s consciousness and ask the question, is quite another thing.

When our self-awareness is sufficiently deep to actually have the intense feeling, “Who am I?” then what is next?

In discussing spiritual matters with interested people, it will be found that most devotees pose the question, “Who am I?” and look for an answer to the question. The question is taken to be a way to get from oneself the deepest knowledge about oneself. For this reason, devotees will often express uncertainty; that is, the question has been deeply and most sincerely asked, but there has been no definitive answer, and the Self is not realized. The solution to this puzzle is quite plain, but apparently hard to come by. People read and reread about “Who am I?” but do not notice the explanation of the question. The fact is, there is no duality of questioner and answer. The answer is the questioner. This means there is no answer in the customary question and answer dichotomy. Actually, the question, “Who am I?” is only a means we have elected to use in order to focus total attention upon the feeling, “I.” All other content is dropped from consciousness and every iota of burning interest and concentration is focused on “I.” The goal of the chase is to free our awareness from every attachment or interest or concept or activity other than the concentrated attention upon the feeling, “I.” The goal is to be, for an instant, totally unencumbered; the goal is to be, for an instant, totally without borders, totally vulnerable to the truth of oneself.

If that be the case, then why fasten attention upon the “I” of immediate awareness, which certainly will be the empirical “I” of our ego-self? The answer, again, is very plain. We are chasing hard upon the trail of that “ultimate I,” that ultimate “something or other” about which we can make no projection. And, that “I,” which we are presently holding to, is the best clue we have. Upon that clue we concentrate. Let us see where it will lead us! The self-proclaimed “I,” under intense scrutiny, will yield to the subtle reality which is its ground. But now words are no longer meaningful, any attempt at description would be false. From this point, each of us must go alone, naked of ideas and words.

In Baba’s divine teaching, he again and again tells us the practice of self-inquiry is vital to spiritual life. Self-inquiry is the flash of total consciousness. Its practice can be engaged in at any time. People engage in self-inquiry in order to realize the truth of Self once and for all, and thus be free of doubt. No philosopher, or sage or writer claims credit for discovering self-inquiry. Just as small creatures arise spontaneously within a mass of rotting flesh, self-inquiry arises spontaneously within the pain of human sorrow. The modes of self-inquiry are as varied as the individuals within whom the urge to inquire arises. The text and chapter of self–inquiry is more easily come upon in the East than in the West, but the urge to know what one naturally is, stripped naked of all that can be discarded, is strong and alive to inquiring minds the world over.

Source: My Baba and I