Why is it necessary to make effort to practise self-investigation (ātma-vicāra)?

In two comments on one of my recent articles, Why should we believe what Bhagavan taught us?, a friend who writes under the pseudonym ‘Viveka Vairagya’ quoted extracts from the teachings of HWL Poonja (who is referred to as ‘Papaji’ by his devotees) as recorded on the Satsang with Papaji website, in both of which he expressed ideas that directly contradict the teachings of Bhagavan. In one of these extracts Poonja said regarding sleep, ‘This is a dull state because there is no awareness at all so you may not recognize it. In deep sleep you forget yourself completely’, which contradicts what Bhagavan taught us about sleep, as I explained in the fourteenth and fifteenth sections of my previous article, We are aware of ourself while asleep, so pure self-awareness alone is what we actually are, and in both of these extracts he contradicted in several ways what Bhagavan taught us about the practice of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), as I will explain in this article.

We are aware of ourself while asleep, so pure self-awareness alone is what we actually are

In many of my articles in this blog, including my most recent one, The role of logic in developing a clear, coherent and uncomplicated understanding of Bhagavan’s teachings (particularly in sections six and twelve), I have written about Bhagavan’s teaching that we are aware of ourself while asleep, but it is such a crucial aspect of his teachings that I do not hesitate to write about it repeatedly, because it is a concept that many people seem to have difficulty grasping, and because thinking about it deeply and understanding it clearly is an extremely valuable aid to us in our practice of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra). In fact, until we are able to recognise clearly that we are aware of ourself even when we are aware of nothing else whatsoever, as in sleep, while trying to investigate ourself we will not be able to distinguish our fundamental self-awareness from our awareness of all other things, including our body and mind.