Trying to see the seer
A friend recently wrote to me a series of emails asking about the practice of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), so this article is compiled and adapted from our correspondence.
In his first mail my friend asked whether there are any terms that are equivalent to ‘attending to ourself alone’. He suggested a list of possible equivalents, such as ‘attending to I’, ‘attending to myself’, ‘watching my sense of being’, ‘being aware of my aliveness’, ‘watching awareness’, ‘being aware of awareness’, ‘being aware of what is aware’, ‘paying attention to what is aware’, ‘paying attention to my consciousness’ and ‘drawing attention to myself and ignoring the world’, and he asked whether I could add to this list, because people can be helped by different terms. In reply I wrote:
No words can adequately express or describe what we are trying to experience when we practise self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), because what we are trying to experience is only ourself, and what we are is indescribable. Therefore any words that may be used to describe this practice should be understood to be just pointers or indicators rather than adequate descriptions.
What is important is not the words themselves but what we understand that they indicate. The terms you have listed can all indicate what we are trying to experience, but the extent to which they indicate it accurately or helpfully depends on how we interpret them. If we understand that what we are trying to experience is only ourself, and that we are not the body, mind or person that we now seem to be, but only that which is aware of all such things, we will interpret each of these terms to mean just trying to experience ourself as we actually are, but if we do not understand this, we will interpret them otherwise.
Therefore what is important is not so much the terms that are used, as how correctly we understand what such terms are intended to indicate. Initially our understanding of any terms that indicate that we should try to be aware of ourself alone will be imperfect, but if we try to practise what we have understood, our understanding will become increasingly clear, accurate and deep (provided of course that we do not completely misinterpret such terms).
I could suggest many other terms to add to your list, such as ‘being self-attentive’ or ‘trying to experience (or be aware of) oneself alone’, but the terms you have listed indicate that you have understood more or less correctly what they all indicate, so listing more such terms may not be helpful. When discussing this practice (as I do repeatedly in my blog), we tend to use different terms according to the context, but if they were taken out of context many of the terms we use would be liable to be misinterpreted, because it is often the context that determines the meaning of the words we use.
For example, if I say, ‘I will run upstairs’, the word ‘I’ then refers to my body (the body that I now experience as if it were myself), or if I say, ‘I have calculated how much it will cost’, the word ‘I’ then refers to my mind (the mind that I now experience as if it were myself), whereas if I say, ‘I am trying to be aware of myself alone’, the word ‘I’ then refers to something much deeper within me — something much closer to what I actually am.
Regarding the trend of inward reflection or thinking that you describe in the final paragraph of your mail, thinking in such a way can help us (particularly initially) to withdraw our attention from everything else and to try to focus it on ourself alone. What you have described illustrates very clearly how reflecting on Bhagavan’s teachings will constantly push us back to being self-attentive, and this is why constantly reading and thinking about his teachings is such a powerful aid to our practice.
2. What I actually am must be something that I always experience
In his subsequent emails my friend tried to describe his understanding of the practice of self-investigation and asked me to confirm whether his understanding is correct, so in my reply I commented on some of the ideas that he expressed. The first of such ideas that I commented on was:
This argument can be refined a little, because there is a slight weakness in the way you have expressed it, namely that though I am aware of other things, which are not myself, I am also aware of myself, so I cannot say that this means I am not myself because I am what is aware of myself. The reason why I cannot be any of the other things I am aware of is that I am not always aware of them. Anything that I experience at one time and not at some other time cannot be what I actually am, because I am always aware of myself. What I actually am must be something that I always experience, at all times and in all states — in waking, dream and sleep.
3. Thoughts occur only to ourself as an ego, not ourself as we really are
My friend also wrote, ‘So these thoughts occur to something, the Real Self I suppose, which is the real me’, to which I replied:
Whenever we experience thoughts, we are not experiencing ourself as we really are, because we are experiencing ourself as an ego (a person, who consists of a body and mind), so the something to which thoughts occur is not our real self but only our ego. However, this ego is a mixture of ourself (what we really are) and various adjuncts, such as our body and mind.
Now we experience ourself as this ego, but what we really are (our real self) is the one essential and unchanging element of this ego, namely the ‘I am’ in the confused mixture ‘I am this body, a person called Dragos (or Michael)’. Thoughts do not occur to us when we experience ourself as we really are (that is, as the pure adjunct-free ‘I am’), but only when we experience ourself mixed with adjuncts as an ego.
Therefore our aim when practising self-investigation is to experience ourself alone and thereby to separate or isolate ourself from all the adjuncts with which we are now mixed and confused.
4. Can we see ourself, the seer?
Another idea that my friend expressed was, ‘I can see my mind (thoughts) but never the Seer which is the real me (like the eye who cannot see itself)’, to which I replied:
The eye cannot see itself because it is not self-aware. It is just an instrument through which we see things. It itself does not see anything, but merely receives and relays impressions. What actually sees or experiences the impressions conveyed by our eyes is ourself, and we are aware not only of other things (visual and other sensory impressions, thoughts, feelings, emotions and so on) but also of ourself.
In waking and dream we are aware of things other than ourself, and in sleep we are aware of nothing other than ourself, but whether we happen to be aware of anything else or not, we are always aware of ourself. Therefore self-awareness is the only permanent and essential element of our experience.
When you say, ‘I can see my mind (thoughts)’ you are using the verb ‘see’ in a metaphorical sense to mean experience or be aware of. In this sense, we are always seeing ourself, the seer, because we are always aware that I am.
However, though we are always aware of ourself, we are not aware of ourself as we really are, because we are now aware of ourself as if we were a person consisting of a body and mind. Since we are aware of ourself in sleep, even when we are not aware of this person that we now seem to be, we cannot actually be this person. Therefore our present experience of ourself is confused, because it is mixed with our experience of other things that now seem to be ourself.
This confused self-awareness is our ego. Whereas pure self-awareness is just the adjunct-free experience ‘I am’, this ego is the adjunct-mixed experience ‘I am this person’. Therefore, in order to experience ourself as we really are, we need to distinguish and isolate ourself from all the adjuncts with which we are now mixed and confused. In other words, we need to be aware of ourself alone, in complete isolation from any awareness of any other thing.
We become aware of other things because we attend to them, so to be aware of ourself alone, we must try to attend only to ourself, thereby withdrawing our attention from everything else.
5. ‘Attending to myself’ means trying to be attentively self-aware
After saying that he is able to gently see to whom thoughts occur, and that when he does so attentively, they seem to disappear, evaporate or subside, depending on how much attentiveness he puts into this process, my friend said that this seems to be the right practice for him personally at this time since he is a beginner, but then he added that ‘attending to myself’ leaves him baffled for now, so he has no idea how to proceed, to which I replied:
When we try to gently see to whom thoughts occur, what we are trying to see or attend to is ourself, so the practice you are describing is what is otherwise called ‘attending to myself’, or at least attempting to attend to myself.
Attending to anything other than ourself is attending to an object (or a collection of objects), and each object has certain features, which are what distinguishes it from each other object. However, we ourself are not an object, and we have no distinguishing features, so attending to ourself is quite unlike attending to anything else. We are familiar with attending to objects, so doing so seems easy, but initially we are not so familiar with attending to ourself, so it seems more difficult.
However, with a little practice we can familiarise ourself with being self-attentive, and then the initial difficulty we had in trying to understand what ‘attending to myself’ means will diminish. We are always aware of ourself, but we are not usually attentively self-aware, because we are more interested in being aware of other things. ‘Attending to myself’ simply means being attentively self-aware, and all that is required for us to be attentively self-aware is for us to be more interested in our self-awareness (which is ourself) than we are in anything else.
Interest in (or curiosity about) our self-awareness is something that we each have to a limited extent, because without a germ of such interest and curiosity, we would not be attracted to the teachings of Bhagavan Ramana. Somehow this seed of self-curiosity has taken root in our heart, and we can nurture and strengthen it only by trying to be attentively self-aware. The more we practise trying to be attentively self-aware, the more our interest and curiosity to experience what we actually are will increase. Therefore let us try at least little by little to be attentively self-aware.
As you say, the correct practice is simply to try to gently see, attend to or observe ourself, the ‘I’, seer or self to whom all other thoughts or experiences occur.
6. Our curiosity to see what we really are is what is called grace
In his next email my friend wrote:
What we really are is always waiting to reveal itself to us, but in order for it to do so we must try to attend to ourself as much as we can.
7. Trying to see what sees
In other email my friend wrote, ‘Incidentally I found this quote (apparently) attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, “What you are looking for is what is looking”, which basically states what was previously discussed’, to which I replied: Yes, this expresses it very nicely. We are looking for what is looking, namely ourself, and the only way to find it is to look at it — that is, to try to direct all our attention back towards ourself alone.
In his next email he quoted the following passage from Maha Yoga (2002 edition, page 74):
Yes, in this passage Lakshmana Sarma neatly expresses the essence of Bhagavan’s teachings. The seer is our ego, which is what we now experience as if it were ourself, but if we try to see this ego, it will subside and disappear, since it is a mere phantasm, and what will then remain is only ourself as we really are.
Finally my friend quoted an instruction that Bhagavan gave to F.H. Humphreys (as recorded on page 112 of the third edition (1936) of Self-Realisation: Life and Teachings of Ramana Maharshi): ‘Try to keep the mind unshakenly fixed on That which Sees’, to which I replied:
Yes, once again, that which sees is our ego, and it seems to exist and to be ourself only so long as we are seeing or experiencing anything other than ourself. If we try to see only ourself, this ego will dissolve and disappear and we will then experience ourself as we really are, just as an illusory snake dissolves and disappears when we look at it carefully and see that it is actually only a rope. Therefore, as Bhagavan said to Humphreys, we should try to keep our entire mind or attention fixed firmly on ourself, this ego, until we see that we are not this ego that we now seem to be, but are only what we always actually are.
- No words can adequately describe the practice of being self-attentive
- What I actually am must be something that I always experience
- Thoughts occur only to ourself as an ego, not ourself as we really are
- Can we see ourself, the seer?
- ‘Attending to myself’ means trying to be attentively self-aware
- Our curiosity to see what we really are is what is called grace
- Trying to see what sees
In his first mail my friend asked whether there are any terms that are equivalent to ‘attending to ourself alone’. He suggested a list of possible equivalents, such as ‘attending to I’, ‘attending to myself’, ‘watching my sense of being’, ‘being aware of my aliveness’, ‘watching awareness’, ‘being aware of awareness’, ‘being aware of what is aware’, ‘paying attention to what is aware’, ‘paying attention to my consciousness’ and ‘drawing attention to myself and ignoring the world’, and he asked whether I could add to this list, because people can be helped by different terms. In reply I wrote:
No words can adequately express or describe what we are trying to experience when we practise self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), because what we are trying to experience is only ourself, and what we are is indescribable. Therefore any words that may be used to describe this practice should be understood to be just pointers or indicators rather than adequate descriptions.
What is important is not the words themselves but what we understand that they indicate. The terms you have listed can all indicate what we are trying to experience, but the extent to which they indicate it accurately or helpfully depends on how we interpret them. If we understand that what we are trying to experience is only ourself, and that we are not the body, mind or person that we now seem to be, but only that which is aware of all such things, we will interpret each of these terms to mean just trying to experience ourself as we actually are, but if we do not understand this, we will interpret them otherwise.
Therefore what is important is not so much the terms that are used, as how correctly we understand what such terms are intended to indicate. Initially our understanding of any terms that indicate that we should try to be aware of ourself alone will be imperfect, but if we try to practise what we have understood, our understanding will become increasingly clear, accurate and deep (provided of course that we do not completely misinterpret such terms).
I could suggest many other terms to add to your list, such as ‘being self-attentive’ or ‘trying to experience (or be aware of) oneself alone’, but the terms you have listed indicate that you have understood more or less correctly what they all indicate, so listing more such terms may not be helpful. When discussing this practice (as I do repeatedly in my blog), we tend to use different terms according to the context, but if they were taken out of context many of the terms we use would be liable to be misinterpreted, because it is often the context that determines the meaning of the words we use.
For example, if I say, ‘I will run upstairs’, the word ‘I’ then refers to my body (the body that I now experience as if it were myself), or if I say, ‘I have calculated how much it will cost’, the word ‘I’ then refers to my mind (the mind that I now experience as if it were myself), whereas if I say, ‘I am trying to be aware of myself alone’, the word ‘I’ then refers to something much deeper within me — something much closer to what I actually am.
Regarding the trend of inward reflection or thinking that you describe in the final paragraph of your mail, thinking in such a way can help us (particularly initially) to withdraw our attention from everything else and to try to focus it on ourself alone. What you have described illustrates very clearly how reflecting on Bhagavan’s teachings will constantly push us back to being self-attentive, and this is why constantly reading and thinking about his teachings is such a powerful aid to our practice.
2. What I actually am must be something that I always experience
In his subsequent emails my friend tried to describe his understanding of the practice of self-investigation and asked me to confirm whether his understanding is correct, so in my reply I commented on some of the ideas that he expressed. The first of such ideas that I commented on was:
If I close my eyes, I am aware that there are thoughts, mental images, sensations, inside this body... Now, if I am aware of this it means I CANNOT BE THEM!!! I AM WHAT IS AWARE OF THEM! (whatever that is)In reply to this I wrote:
This argument can be refined a little, because there is a slight weakness in the way you have expressed it, namely that though I am aware of other things, which are not myself, I am also aware of myself, so I cannot say that this means I am not myself because I am what is aware of myself. The reason why I cannot be any of the other things I am aware of is that I am not always aware of them. Anything that I experience at one time and not at some other time cannot be what I actually am, because I am always aware of myself. What I actually am must be something that I always experience, at all times and in all states — in waking, dream and sleep.
3. Thoughts occur only to ourself as an ego, not ourself as we really are
My friend also wrote, ‘So these thoughts occur to something, the Real Self I suppose, which is the real me’, to which I replied:
Whenever we experience thoughts, we are not experiencing ourself as we really are, because we are experiencing ourself as an ego (a person, who consists of a body and mind), so the something to which thoughts occur is not our real self but only our ego. However, this ego is a mixture of ourself (what we really are) and various adjuncts, such as our body and mind.
Now we experience ourself as this ego, but what we really are (our real self) is the one essential and unchanging element of this ego, namely the ‘I am’ in the confused mixture ‘I am this body, a person called Dragos (or Michael)’. Thoughts do not occur to us when we experience ourself as we really are (that is, as the pure adjunct-free ‘I am’), but only when we experience ourself mixed with adjuncts as an ego.
Therefore our aim when practising self-investigation is to experience ourself alone and thereby to separate or isolate ourself from all the adjuncts with which we are now mixed and confused.
4. Can we see ourself, the seer?
Another idea that my friend expressed was, ‘I can see my mind (thoughts) but never the Seer which is the real me (like the eye who cannot see itself)’, to which I replied:
The eye cannot see itself because it is not self-aware. It is just an instrument through which we see things. It itself does not see anything, but merely receives and relays impressions. What actually sees or experiences the impressions conveyed by our eyes is ourself, and we are aware not only of other things (visual and other sensory impressions, thoughts, feelings, emotions and so on) but also of ourself.
In waking and dream we are aware of things other than ourself, and in sleep we are aware of nothing other than ourself, but whether we happen to be aware of anything else or not, we are always aware of ourself. Therefore self-awareness is the only permanent and essential element of our experience.
When you say, ‘I can see my mind (thoughts)’ you are using the verb ‘see’ in a metaphorical sense to mean experience or be aware of. In this sense, we are always seeing ourself, the seer, because we are always aware that I am.
However, though we are always aware of ourself, we are not aware of ourself as we really are, because we are now aware of ourself as if we were a person consisting of a body and mind. Since we are aware of ourself in sleep, even when we are not aware of this person that we now seem to be, we cannot actually be this person. Therefore our present experience of ourself is confused, because it is mixed with our experience of other things that now seem to be ourself.
This confused self-awareness is our ego. Whereas pure self-awareness is just the adjunct-free experience ‘I am’, this ego is the adjunct-mixed experience ‘I am this person’. Therefore, in order to experience ourself as we really are, we need to distinguish and isolate ourself from all the adjuncts with which we are now mixed and confused. In other words, we need to be aware of ourself alone, in complete isolation from any awareness of any other thing.
We become aware of other things because we attend to them, so to be aware of ourself alone, we must try to attend only to ourself, thereby withdrawing our attention from everything else.
5. ‘Attending to myself’ means trying to be attentively self-aware
After saying that he is able to gently see to whom thoughts occur, and that when he does so attentively, they seem to disappear, evaporate or subside, depending on how much attentiveness he puts into this process, my friend said that this seems to be the right practice for him personally at this time since he is a beginner, but then he added that ‘attending to myself’ leaves him baffled for now, so he has no idea how to proceed, to which I replied:
When we try to gently see to whom thoughts occur, what we are trying to see or attend to is ourself, so the practice you are describing is what is otherwise called ‘attending to myself’, or at least attempting to attend to myself.
Attending to anything other than ourself is attending to an object (or a collection of objects), and each object has certain features, which are what distinguishes it from each other object. However, we ourself are not an object, and we have no distinguishing features, so attending to ourself is quite unlike attending to anything else. We are familiar with attending to objects, so doing so seems easy, but initially we are not so familiar with attending to ourself, so it seems more difficult.
However, with a little practice we can familiarise ourself with being self-attentive, and then the initial difficulty we had in trying to understand what ‘attending to myself’ means will diminish. We are always aware of ourself, but we are not usually attentively self-aware, because we are more interested in being aware of other things. ‘Attending to myself’ simply means being attentively self-aware, and all that is required for us to be attentively self-aware is for us to be more interested in our self-awareness (which is ourself) than we are in anything else.
Interest in (or curiosity about) our self-awareness is something that we each have to a limited extent, because without a germ of such interest and curiosity, we would not be attracted to the teachings of Bhagavan Ramana. Somehow this seed of self-curiosity has taken root in our heart, and we can nurture and strengthen it only by trying to be attentively self-aware. The more we practise trying to be attentively self-aware, the more our interest and curiosity to experience what we actually are will increase. Therefore let us try at least little by little to be attentively self-aware.
As you say, the correct practice is simply to try to gently see, attend to or observe ourself, the ‘I’, seer or self to whom all other thoughts or experiences occur.
6. Our curiosity to see what we really are is what is called grace
In his next email my friend wrote:
If what I said before is correct, and basically the practice is ‘trying to see/attend/observe the Seer of the thoughts, the One to whom they occur’, and I cannot see this Seer/Self as a separate object, nor grasp it or grab it or hold it, it follows that in the end it all amounts to nothing than Grace. In other words, I do the practice with my best intentions, but depend on the Self to reveal Itself to me (in other words Grace).Yes, the interest or curiosity we have to experience ourself as we really are by trying to see the seer is what is called grace. Grace is the love that we as we really are (our real self) have for ourself as we really are. This love is what has attracted us to this path of self-investigation, and it is what will lead us unfailingly along it until we reach our destination.
What we really are is always waiting to reveal itself to us, but in order for it to do so we must try to attend to ourself as much as we can.
7. Trying to see what sees
In other email my friend wrote, ‘Incidentally I found this quote (apparently) attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, “What you are looking for is what is looking”, which basically states what was previously discussed’, to which I replied: Yes, this expresses it very nicely. We are looking for what is looking, namely ourself, and the only way to find it is to look at it — that is, to try to direct all our attention back towards ourself alone.
In his next email he quoted the following passage from Maha Yoga (2002 edition, page 74):
Whether in dream or in waking, if one turns aside from the world and tries to see him that sees that world, the world and its seer would vanish together, and the Self alone would remain.In reply to this I wrote:
Yes, in this passage Lakshmana Sarma neatly expresses the essence of Bhagavan’s teachings. The seer is our ego, which is what we now experience as if it were ourself, but if we try to see this ego, it will subside and disappear, since it is a mere phantasm, and what will then remain is only ourself as we really are.
Finally my friend quoted an instruction that Bhagavan gave to F.H. Humphreys (as recorded on page 112 of the third edition (1936) of Self-Realisation: Life and Teachings of Ramana Maharshi): ‘Try to keep the mind unshakenly fixed on That which Sees’, to which I replied:
Yes, once again, that which sees is our ego, and it seems to exist and to be ourself only so long as we are seeing or experiencing anything other than ourself. If we try to see only ourself, this ego will dissolve and disappear and we will then experience ourself as we really are, just as an illusory snake dissolves and disappears when we look at it carefully and see that it is actually only a rope. Therefore, as Bhagavan said to Humphreys, we should try to keep our entire mind or attention fixed firmly on ourself, this ego, until we see that we are not this ego that we now seem to be, but are only what we always actually are.
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15 comments:
Is it at all possible to be attentively self-aware that is paying close direct high concentrated undivided attention and looking intensely-carefully
to anything featureless ?
To try to keep our entire mind or attention fixed firmly and unshakenly on that which sees i.e. our ego is surely a reflective activity of the subject i.e.ourself. You say that we ourself are not an object. But to gently see, attend to or observe ourself seems to be just an objective process to which the subject is involved.
Hello Michael,
Many seekers have spent 10, 20 years, even an entire lifetime seeking to no avail. Since this illusion of a separate "i" has to end when the body dies, why do we even bother to seek at all? What was Bhagavan's view on this? Thank you in advance for your response.
Hello, it is me again. On a different note, how does one remain attentive to oneself when busy with work and stuff in life? I find it impossible when at work or interacting with people, and that leaves me with very little time to be attentively self-aware. I understand that Bhagavan did not recommend seekers running off to meditate full-time in a cave... so how do we get round this problem?
Michael, you write under point 2. What I actually am must be something that I always experience :
"[...]because I am always aware of myself...at all times and in all states - in waking, dream and sleep."
A provocative thought arises:
So as the most important thing in human life we are always aware of ourself.
Is that fact not enough ?
To experience in addition other things ("various adjuncts")
can therefore be no disadvantage for our paradisical condition of being always aware of ourself what we really are.
So why should we fight windmills and have the hard and nearly hopeless struggle for destroying the ego which has anyway arisen only from ourself ?
Ange,
The prevailing wisdom is that the illusion of separate ‘I’ does not end when the body dies. According to scriptures, only the physical body dies as a result of death. The subtle and causal bodies survive death and after an unknown time lapse another dream/physical body is projected and it goes on and on and is depicted as the wheel of samsara. So unfortunately, just waiting it out, does not help in any way towards realizing absolute reality.
With regards to the comment of seekers having spent 10 to 20 years to no avail, it is vouchsafed that the effort put towards realization will never be in vain and the sadhana will come to fruition in a future life.
With regards to the comment of having little time for self-attentiveness, there are many similar questions asked to Bhagavan and recorded in Talks. One such question/answer is (Talk 268)
D.: It is true from Bhagavan’s standpoint. But for us .... my work
demands the best part of my time and energy; often I am too tired
to devote myself to Atma-chintana.
M.: The feeling “I work” is the hindrance. Enquire, “Who works?”
Remember, “Who am I?” The work will not bind you. It will go on
automatically. Make no effort either to work or to renounce work.
Your effort is the bondage. What is bound to happen will happen.
If you are destined to cease working, work cannot be had even if
you hunt for it. If you are destined to work you cannot leave it; you
will be forced to engage in it. So leave it to the Higher Power. You
cannot renounce or hold as you choose.
To the person who identified as village idiot,
“So why should we fight windmills and have the hard and nearly hopeless struggle for destroying the ego which has anyway arisen only from ourself ?”
If the arisen ego does not provide any trouble to you, then are is no reason for the struggle. But like Siddhartha(Buddha), if you are troubled by seeing sickness, poverty, old age and death everywhere and want a way out of it once and for all, then it may be worth the struggle. Just because something arises from our self only does not imply that it is desired. Cancer also arises out of our own body but we do not accept it since it came out of ourselves only.
Diogenes, I have replied to your comment in a separate article, Being attentively self-aware does not entail any subject-object relationship, which I have posted here today.
Ange, in reply to your first comment, it would be nice to hope that this illusion of a separate ‘I’ will to end when our present body dies, but unfortunately we have no reason to suppose that this will be so, because this illusion is obviously not dependent on our present body, since we experience it even in dream, when we do not experience ourself as this body but only as some other body.
If our present life is just a dream, as Bhagavan says it is, when this dream ends we will either temporarily subside back into sleep or immediately start to dream some other dream. Until we cure our fundamental disease of self-ignorance by investigating ourself and thereby experiencing what we actually are, the sleep of self-ignorance that underlies and gives rise to all our dreams will persist, and hence we will continue dreaming one dream after another.
In reply to your second comment, suppose that someone very close to you was critically ill in hospital, would not the thought of that person often come to your mind even while you are ‘busy with work and stuff in life’? Because of your concern for that person, you would not be able to put the thought of them out of your mind, so you would continue intermittently thinking about them even while you are busily engaged in whatever work or other thing you may need to be doing. Likewise, if we had so much concern to know what we actually are, our attention would continue to be intermittently drawn back to ourself even while you are engaged in other work.
Therefore the reason why we find it so difficult to remain attentively self-aware when we are busy with work and other commitments is that we are not yet sufficiently concerned to experience what we actually are. Because we are more interested in other things, we find it easy to think of those things even when we are working, but find it difficult simply to remember our own constant and unchanging self-awareness.
Therefore, in order to be persistently self-attentive, we need great love (bhakti) to experience ourself as we actually are, and the only way to cultivate and strengthen that love, which we now have in at least a small measure, is to persevere in trying to be self-attentive as much as we are currently capable of being.
As I wrote in Self-attentiveness alone is the key to real detachment (section 7 of Witnessing or being aware of anything other than ourself nourishes our ego and thereby reinforces our attachments), our practice of self-investigation will increase in depth and intensity the more try to be attentively self-aware, just as a snowball increases in size and momentum as it rolls down the side of a snow-covered mountain, because the weaker our attachments to other things become as a result of our self-attentiveness, the easier it will become for us to be self-attentive even in the midst of other work and activities.
‘Village idiot’, in reply to your comment, though we are always aware of ourself, we currently seem not to be aware of ourself as we really are, but only as a person, and as such we experience all sort of difficulties, problems and sufferings. Therefore experiencing anything other than what we actually are is certainly a disadvantage for us, so for many of us it does seem worthwhile to try hard to experience ourself as we actually are.
However, as Sivanarul replied to you, if you are content with your present condition in which you experience yourself as a finite person, even Bhagavan would not ask you to struggle to experience what you actually are. This is why he did not preach or give lectures, but only taught this path of self-investigation to those who came to him with an open heart and mind and asked him how they could get out of the mess in which they found themself as a suffering individual.
Reading this was very helpful in reinforcing Bhagavans teaching so thank you Michael.
Bob
Thanks Michael for your reply to my comment.
From the viewpoint of the present moment I seem not to be aware of myself as I really am but only as a person who does not even have an idea what it means to be really (aware).
Now I sit calmly and relaxed in peace and quiet in front of the screen.
Now I do not experience the listed difficulties and so on.
Now I do not feel any disadvantage and because I am aware only as the simple-minded village idiot it does not seem worthwhile to try hard to experience myself as I actually am.
Inspite of my obvious unripeness to practise the path of self-investigation
I feel attracted to Bhagavan‘s teaching and above all magnetically to the unspectacular hill Arunachala.
Now I do not at all find myself as a suffering individual. In this moment I am content with my present condition in which I experience myself as a finite person. Like an unattached witness I let the ego do its business.
Sivanarul,
thanks for your well-meaning comment.
In my experience it seems to be a very optimistic belief that there is any way out of "seeing sickness, poverty, old age and death everywhere". The desire for getting out of it once and for all is entirely human. But is not suffering inherent in the earthly creature and life on earth ?
The comparison of the ego with the body-born cancer is a poor one because we undisputedly are not the body whereas the source of the ego is the self.
Thanks Michael for replying in the mentioned separate article dated Sunday, 3 May 2015.
Hi Michael,
question: When I do meditation. I usually meditate(observe) where in my body this false "I" rises? For me usually "I" raises on left hand side of my chest. My question is who is the one that observing/feeling I on the left hand side of my chest. Is it ego or consciousness?
Dear Ravi,
I have the complete opposite experience.
The chest rising from the sense of "I"...
Interesting, isn't it?
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