The Search For 'AhamVritti'

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Q: How can any enquiry initiated by the ego reveal its own unreality?

M: The ego's phenomenal existence is transcended when you dive into the Source wherefrom arises the aham-vritti.

Q: But is not the aham-vritti only one of the three forms in which the ego manifests itself? Yoga Vasishtha and other ancient texts describe the ego as having a threefold form.

M: It is so. The ego is described as having three bodies - the gross, subtle and causal, but that is only for the purposes of analytical exposition. If the method of enquiry were to depend on ego's form, you may take it that any enquiry would become altogether impossible, because the forms the ego may assume are legion. Therefore, for purposes of jnana vichara, you have to proceed on the basis that the ego has but one form, namely that of aham-vritti.

Q: But it may prove inadequate for realizing jnana.

M: Self-enquiry by following the clue of aham-vritti is just like the dog tracing its master by his scent. The master may be at some distant, unknown place, but that does not at all stand in the way of the dog tracing him. The master's scent is an infallible clue for the animal, and nothing else, such as the dress he wears, or his build and stature etc., counts. The dog holds onto that scent undistractedly while searching for him, and finally it succeeds in tracing him.

Q: The question still remains why the quest for the source of aham-vritti, as distinguished from other vrittis, should be considered the direct means to Self-realization.

M: The word 'aham' is itself very suggestive. The two letters of the word, namely A (अ) and H (ह), are the first and the last letters of the Sanskrit alphabets. The suggestion intended to be conveyed by the word is that it comprises all. How? Because 'aham' signifies existence itself.

Although the concept of I-ness or Iam-ness is by usage known as aham-vritti, it is not really a vritti like the other vrittis of the mind. Because, unlike the other vrittis which have no essential interrelation, the aham-vritti is equally and essentially related to each and every vritti of the mind. Without the aham-vritti there can be no other vritti, but the aham-vritti can subsist by itself without depending on any other vritti of the mind. The aham-vritti is therefore fundamentally different from other vrittis.

So then, the search for the source of the aham-vritti is not merely the search for the basis of one of the forms of the ego but for the very source itself from which arises the I am-ness. In other words, the quest for and the realization of the source of the ego in the form of aham-vritti necessarily implies the transcendence of the ego in everyone of its possible forms.