withdrawal into the Self

... In Maharshi’s Gospel, Ramana says that:

“The purpose of self-enquiry is to focus the entire mind at its source”.

The purpose of this focusing is the same as that which has just been outlined for the practice of surrender. According to Ramana the mind is only a connection of ignorant ideas and unless one steps completely outside this mental realm by keeping attention on the being from which the mind emerges, then the ignorance and the wrong ideas inevitably continue. It is important to note that Ramana never explains self-enquiry as a practice by which an individual self is eliminated, he always phrases his advice to indicate that when one looks for the source of the mind or the ego, they both disappear, and it is discovered that neither of them ever existed. This stepping outside the mind is as crucial to an understanding of self-enquiry as it is to an understanding of surrender.

In a passage in Talks he says:

“The fact is that the mind is only a bundle of thoughts. How can you extinguish it by the thought of doing so or by a desire … Your thoughts and desires are part and parcel of the mind! The mind is simply fattened by new thoughts rising up. Therefore it is foolish to attempt to kill the mind by means of the mind. The only way to do it is to find its source and hold on to it.’’.

This finding the source and holding on to it is the beginning, end and purpose of self-enquiry. The precise method is simple and well known. When thoughts arise one does not allow them to develop. One asks oneself the words “To whom do these thoughts occur?” And the answer is “To me,” and then the question occurs “Then who am I? What is this thing in me which I keep calling ‘I’?”

By doing this practice one is shifting attention from the world of thoughts to the being from where the thought and the thinker first emerged. The transfer of attention is simply executed because if one holds onto the feeling “I am” the initial thought of “I” will gradually give way to the feeling of “I” and then sooner or later this feeling “I am” will merge into being itself, to a state where there is no longer either a thinker of the thought ‘I’ or a feeler of the feeling ‘I am’; there will only be being itself. This is the stage where attention to the feeling of “I am” has merged with the being from which it came so that there is no longer the dualistic distinction of a person giving attention to the feeling of “I am”. There is only being and awareness of being.

If this practice is done persistently, then the verbal redirection of attention soon becomes redundant; as soon as there is the awareness of attachment to a particular thought then attention is immediately switched back to the being, from which the thoughts and the imaginary thinker came. It is important to stress that the verbal preliminaries of asking “Who am I?” or “To whom do these thoughts occur?” are simply tools to redirect the attention; the real self-enquiry begins with the subsequent witnessing of the disappearance of the thoughts and the re-emergence of being as the mind subsides into temporary abeyance.

Ramana summarized this very succinctly when he said in Talks:

“Abhyasa (spiritual practice) consists of withdrawal into the self every time you are disturbed by thought. It is not concentration or destruction of the mind, but withdrawal into the Self”.

~ David Godman, "The Unity of Surrender and Self-Enquiry", The Mountain Path, Vol.18, No.1, 1981