2. • ENZA: The teachings of RamanaMaharshi, one of the greatest sages of
this century, is the teaching of self-inquiry through the question, “Who
am I? Many of us think we need to find the answer to that question,
but the answer to “Who am I?” is irrelevant. What’s relevant is the
looking. His teaching is simply to look at ourselves, to look at the sense
of “me.” Whatever your sense of me is right now, just look, listen, and
feel that. You are here. Look at that sense of “am-ness,” the sense of
existing here, now.
Q. For four years I have practiced RamanaMaharshi’s
method of self-inquiry, asking myself “Who Am I?”
However, I am still unable to receive an intuitive sense
of who I really am.
3. • Self-inquiry is a method to get you to look at yourself. When you look
at yourself, without trying to know or understand anything, you realize
that you have always been this simple presence that is looking though
your eyes and hearing through your ears right now and always.
• This you is the same you that was peering through your eyes when you
were a baby, a child, a teenager. Thoughts, emotions, beliefs, ideas,
practices, and mental states have all come and gone endlessly, but the
fundamental experience of beingness remains always constant, always
steady, always here.
4. • Asking the question, Who Am I?is like holding up a mirror to try to
look at yourself, yet no matter how much you look, nothing appears in
the mirror. The I can never be found. In order to clearly see this,
however, the mirror has to be truly empty. If the false I, the egoic self,
shows up in that mirror through our beliefs, ideas, and concepts, then
all these diversions prevent us from seeing the awareness that is our true
nature. This causes an (apparent) obscuration. In actuality, the real self
has never gone anywhere. Nothing can make it disappear, just like the
sun is a constant even when there are clouds in the sky. But from the
viewpoint of the false ego, an obscuration is apparently taking place.
So, how do we fix this?
5. • The question, Who am I?points you back to the inner center of yourself,
the place where you are so present you can truthfully say, “I AM.” You
have to be completely and entirely present and aware without
distraction. Then you can directly see the difference between
experiencing “I am” as a concept and experiencing “I am” as
presence/awareness.
• When you ask yourself the question Who am I?you will immediately
notice a vast space, and that vast space is the answer. You, your
natural state as presence/awareness, is the answer. This is all that there
ever was, is, and will be.
6. • Ask the question, and then stop there, at the edge of a vast aware space
of not knowing. Go no further. Allow the answer to reveal itself. This is
not an intellectual knowing. If you just continue to pursue the question
rather than paying attention to what is actually there, thoughts and
ideas will continue to flood in to try to fill that unknowingness. You
will never find the answer in the realm of the mind, because the mind
seeks always to fill in the space with ideas, concepts, and imaginings.
Why? Because the mind, the false self, is uneasy with not knowing!
Generating fantasies gives the mind a reason to exist.
7. • You know that you exist. You know that you are. It is not just a
thought or a belief. The verb “to be” is expressed as “I am,” and this “I
AM” is the basic expression of presence/awareness. When you think
that there must be more than this simple presence/awareness, that there
is something more you need to know about it, you are continually
chasing thoughts round and round in your mind. Stop.
• If you keep going back to this core, you discover the presence/awareness
that is the ground of your being, the place where happiness, fulfilment,
and meaning are found.
• First there is a seeker, a body-mind, a false I. Then there is a finder, a
witness, universal consciousness. Finally what is revealed is what you
are before being either.