India Retreat

Question: What is the significance of Self Enquiry?
Sri Ramana: In the end, everybody must come only through this gate [of “Who am I?”] before reaching the citadel of the Heart. Who am I? is the only sadhana which is such that the one making it is the same as the one in relation to whom it is made. The snake must bite his own tail. Otherwise he will not die.

Beginners who complain that Who am I? is not working are given the suggestion that they should watch the thought “I”, or that they should remain attending to Subjective Consciousness alone. Still less mature souls are told to repeat “I”, “I” mentally, together with simultaneously concentrating on the sense of personality associated with “I”, that is to say with the mental concept of “myself”.

Those who are not able to do even this should do pranayama, japa [Mantra Meditation], moorthydhyana, or hathayoga. None of these practices, however, could possibly serve as a substitute for Self Enquiry, nor is it meaningful to confuse any of them with Self Enquiry or to imagine any of them to be the same as Self Enquiry. Self Enquiry is the final door. The “I” attends to himself, not to his Self. The ego attends to the ego and to nothing else; that is Self Enquiry.