Self-Enquiry Hastens It

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Q:  Bhagavan often says: ‘The world is not outside you’, or ‘everything depends on you’, or ‘what is there outside you?’ I find all this puzzling. The world existed before I was born and will continue to exist after my death, as it has survived the death of so many who once lived as I do now.

B: Did I ever say that the world exists because of you? I have only put to you the question ‘what exists apart from yourself?’ You ought to understand that by the Self neither the physical body nor the subtle body is meant. What you are told is that if you once know the Self within which all ideas exist, not excluding the idea of yourself, of others like you and of the world, you can realise the truth that there is a Reality, a Supreme Truth which is the Self of all the world you now see, the Self of all the selves, the one Real, the Supreme, the eternal Self, as distinct from the ego or individual being, which is impermanent. You must not mistake the ego or the bodily idea for the Self.

Q: Then Bhagavan means that the Self is God?

[And in his next reply Bhagavan, as was his way, turned the discussion from theory to practice. Although the present chapter is, on the whole, devoted to theory, it seems appropriate to continue the dialogue so as to show how the theory was put to practical use.]

B: You see the difficulty. Self-enquiry, ‘Who am I?’ is a different technique from the meditation – ‘I am Siva’, or ‘I am He’. I rather emphasise Self-Knowledge, for you are first concerned with yourself before you proceed to know the world or its Lord. The ‘I am He’ or ‘I am Brahman’, meditation is more or less mental, but the quest for the Self of which I speak is a direct method and is superior to it. For, the moment you get into the quest for the Self and begin to go deeper, the real Self is waiting there to receive you and then whatever is to be done is done by something else and you, as an individual, have no hand in it. In this process all doubts and discussions are automatically given up, just as one who sleeps forgets all his cares for the time being. 

Q: What certainty is there that something awaits there to receive me?

B: When a person is sufficiently mature he becomes convinced naturally.

Q: How is this maturity to be attained?

B: Various ways are prescribed. But whatever previous development there may be, earnest Self-enquiry hastens it.