Earnest Enquiry Alone Needed

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Q: How then does ignorance of this one and only Reality unhappily arise in the case of the ajnani?

M: The ajnani sees only the mind which is a mere reflection of the light of Pure Consciousness  arising from the heart. Of the heart itself he is ignorant. Why? Because his mind is extroverted and has never sought its Source.

Q: What prevents the infinite, undifferentiated light of Consciousness arising from the heart from revealing itself to the ajnani?

M: Just as water in the pot reflects the enormous sun within the narrow limits of the pot, even so the vasanas or latent tendencies of the mind of the individual, acting as the reflecting medium, catch the all-pervading, infinite light of Consciousness arising from the heart and present in the form of a reflection the phenomenon called the mind. Seeing only this reflection, the ajnani is deluded into the belief that he is a finite being, the jiva. If the mind becomes introverted through enquiry into the source of aham-vritti, the vasanas become extinct, and in the absence of the reflecting medium the phenomenon of reflection, namely, the mind, also disappears being absorbed into the light of the one Reality, the heart. This is the sum and substance of all that an aspirant needs to know. What is imperatively required of him is an earnest and one-pointed enquiry into the source of aham-vritti.

Q: But any endeavour he may make is limited to the mind in the waking state. How can such enquiry conducted in only one of the three states of the mind destroy the mind itself?

M: Enquiry into the source of aham-vritti is, no doubt, initiated by the sadhaka in the waking state of the mind. It cannot be said that in him the mind has been destroyed. But the process of self-enquiry will itself reveal that the alternation or transmutation of the three states of the mind, as well as the three states themselves, belong to the world of phenomena which cannot affect his intensive, inward enquiry.

Self-enquiry is really possible only through intense introversion of the mind. What is finally realized as a result of such enquiry into the source of aham-vritti, is verily the heart as the undifferentiated light of Pure Consciousness, into which the reflected light of the mind is completely absorbed.