Sri Ramana Maharshi on Self - Enquiry: 6

ॐ OAM NAMO BHAGAVATE SRI RAMANAYA ॐ

Devotee: How is one to realize the Self?
Bhagavan: Whose Self? Find out.
D: Mine, but, who am I?
Bhagavan: It is you who must find out.
D: I don’t know.
Bhagaan: Just think over the question. Who is that says: ‘I don’t know? Who is the ‘I’ in your statement? What is not known?
D: Somebody or something in me.
Bhagaan: Who is that somebody ? In whom?
D: Perhaps some power.
Bhagavan: Find out.
D: why was *I born?
Bhagavan: Who was born? The answer is the same to all your questions.
D: who I am I, then?
Bhagavan: (Smiling) have you come here to examine me? You must say who you are.
D: However much I try, I do not seem to catch the ‘I’. It is not even clearly discernible.
Bhagavan: Who is it that says the ‘I’ is not discernible? Are there two ‘I’s in you, that one is not discernible to the other?
D: Instead of enquiring: ‘Who am I? can I put the question to myself: ‘Who are you?’ so that my mind may be fixed on you whom I consider to be God in the form of the Guru? Perhaps I would come nearer to the goal of my quest by that enquiry than by asking myself: ‘Who am I?’

Bhagavan: Whatever form your enquiry may take, you must finally come to the one ‘I’, the Self. All these distinctions made between ‘I’ and ‘you’, master and disciple, are merely a sign of ignorance. The Supreme ‘I’ alone is. To think otherwise is to delude oneself.

Therefore, since your aim is to transcend here and now these superficialities of physical existence through self-enquiry, where is the scope for making the distinction of ‘you’ and ‘I’ which pertain only to the body? When you turn the mind inwards, seeking the source of thought, where is the ‘you and where is ‘I’? You should seek and be the Self that includes all.

D: But, isn’t it funny that ‘I’ should be searching for the ‘I’? Doesn’t the enquiry, ‘Who am I’ turn out in the end t be an empty formula? Or am I to put the question to myself endlessly, repeating it like some mantra?

Bhagavan: Self-enquiry is certainly not an empty formula; it is more than the repetition of any mantra. If the enquiry: ‘Who am I? were mental questioning, it would not be of much value. The very purpose of Self-enquiry is to focus the entire mind at its source. It is not, therefore, a case of ‘I’ searching for another ‘I’. Much less is Self-enquiry an empty formula, for it involves an intense activity of the entire mind to keep it steadily poised in pure Self –awareness. Self-enquiry is the one infallible means, the only direct one, to realize the unconditioned, absolute Being that you really are.

Maharshi’s Gospel, pp 35-38

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRvBOQ-R_i8