Which self is being enquired into here?

Which self is being enquired into here?

Dear Rupert,

Not very long ago, I came across the Nisargadatta book I Am That,in which his suggestion to ask ‘Who am I’? as the premier approach first crossed my radar. (Earlier than Nisargadatta, Ramana recommended the same method of self-enquiry, but I’m not familiar with much of Ramana’s teaching.)

Which self is being enquired into here? It seems to me that there are layers of self – simplistically, the fake self and the real self – and that the enquiry encounters both. Or rather, as the enquiry goes more deeply into the one, it dissolves, allowing the other one, reality, to come into the light.

Paul

 

Dear Paul,

The ‘self’ or ‘I’ that is being enquired into is the self that one thinks and feels oneself to be at any moment. For instance, in this current situation, ‘I’ is the name we give to whatever it is that is knowing or experiencing these words and whatever else is being experienced, such as the sound of traffic and bodily sensations. It is the knowing or experiencing element in every experience and it is, by definition, present.

These two ‘elements’, knowing and presence (being), are inherent in the sense of ‘I’. For this reason it is sometimes referred to as knowing presence or consciousness, that is, the presence of that which is conscious, or the knowing of our own being: I am, and I know that I am.

Self-enquiry is an investigation into the nature of this ‘I’. What can we say about it from experience other than that it is knowing and present? It is taken for granted by most people that this knowing presence is located as an entity inside the body and, at the same time, isthe body. However, here we take nothing for granted. 

The only way to find out for ourself what can truly be said about this ‘I’ that we intimately know ourself to be is to look at it. So, right now, turn around, as it were, and give your attention to whatever it is that is aware of these words, your thoughts, your bodily sensations, and so on. Try to find it and look at it.

A strange thing happens when we try to do this. Whilst this knowing presence is undeniably present, we cannot find it as an object when we look for it. In fact, we do not even know in which direction to turn in order to see it. Right there, in that experience, the belief that knowing presence or ‘I’ is an entity, located in or as the body, is undermined.

 

*     *    * 

 

As we enquire more and more into our experience we find that there is absolutely no experiential evidence for the belief that ‘I’, consciousness or knowing presence, is located or limited. Although this is being rationalised here, this conviction comes from the experience that what we are has no limits or location.

And what is it that experiences this? Our own self, of course. It is our self that knows or experiences its own unlimited, unlocated presence. In other words, the self that is being enquired into is the only self there is. 

This self seems, for a time, to be limited, but this very same self is later discovered to be unlimited. During the enquiry the apparent limitations of this self drop away naturally and effortless, leaving only the very same self, naked, as it were, unmodified by any of the apparent superimpositions of mind or body.

So your comment, ‘as the enquiry goes deeper into the one, it dissolves, allowing the other one, reality, to come into the light’, is very close. I would amend it slightly by saying that as the enquiry goes deeper into the sense of ‘I’, all those qualities that were superimposed upon it by the mind and the body are seen clearly to have no real limiting power over it. 

As a result (seemingly), that same ‘I’ shines forth as it is, unlimited and unlocated, knowing its own being with its own light. Why do I say ‘seemingly’? Because the above description is written for one who believes and feels their self to be a limited entity and, as a result, sets out on a process of self-enquiry to ascertain the truth of the matter.

 

*     *    * 

 

When consciousness is realised as being entirely independent of all the superimpositions of mind and body that seemed to limit it, we realise at the same time that the entity we thought and felt ourself to be was always non-existent, as such.

In other words, this apparently separate entity did not undertake a process of self-enquiry and discover itself to be unlimited, unlocated consciousness. Rather, there is always only this unlimited, unlocated consciousness, whose knowing of its own being seemssometimes to be veiled by the belief in and feeling of a separate self.

So we can now reformulate what self-enquiry is from this deeper perspective, although this formulation is also inevitably limited. We could say that consciousness takes the shape of a thought that seems to limit it to and locate it in a body. Consciousness, ‘I’, seems as a result to know itself as an entity, a body. As it withdraws this projection it comes to know itself again as it is, unlimited and unlocated.

It is only for the apparent entity that self-enquiry is a considered to be a process in the mind. When it is seen that this entity is non-existent and cannot therefore enquire into its own nature, or indeed do anything else, it becomes obvious that there is always only consciousness and that self-enquiry simply means to abide knowing as this consciousness. That is, self-enquiry is simply to abide knowingly in and as our own being.

We could say that self-enquiry is like an image on a screen slowly fading. What seemed to be an object or entity (the image) is revealed to be only screen. The apparent ‘I’ is revealed to be made, and always to have been made, of the real and only ‘I’, consciousness.

There is always only consciousness, at times seeming to be limited and local, but in fact always only ever being and knowing its own unlimited self.

 

*     *    * 

 

Many contemporary explanations of self-enquiry have reduced it to a simplistic mental exercise involving a repetition of the question ‘Who am I’? However, by far the larger part of the apparently separate self is present in the form of a feeling, not just a belief, and this feeling lingers, in most cases, long after the belief in a separate entity has been undermined.

For this reason, self-enquiry also involves an exploration of the sense of ‘I’ at the level of feelings, that is, at the level of the body. This aspect of self-enquiry is implicit in the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Atmananda Krishna Menon and others, although often not elaborated.

Many such teachers sat for periods of time in silence with their students, during which this apparent process of investigation at the level of the mind was taken much deeper into a silent and contemplative exploration of the more hidden layers of the separate-self sense in the body. It is, in many cases, this deeper exploration of experience that distinguishes intellectual understanding from real experience.

Amongst the many benefits of the internet for expressing and sharing the Advaita teachings, there are inevitable drawbacks. One of them is that this deeper experiential aspect of the teaching is often omitted (because words are the exclusive form of the teaching in such a format) and the teaching is sometimes reduced to verbal exchange, often getting lost in semantics and intellectual argument.

With kind regards,
Rupert

Category

You might also like

Philosophy

A Beacon of Light in the Darkest of Times

Published on 10 March 2022
Philosophy

Remaining as Awareness in the Presence of Thoughts

Published on 30 March 2022
Philosophy

Is it necessary to practice Kashmir Tantric yoga on a daily basis?

Published on 1 June 2021