the often misunderstood self-enquiry

That everything is in the mind and that the mind itself is only a passing phenomenon was continually stressed by Bhagavan.

"Who is the one behind the mind?" he would ask repeatedly. "Find that one and the mind itself will automatically disappear."

To do this one must repeatedly seek out the source of the "I" by the enquiry "Who am I?".

This process has often been misunderstood, though actually Bhagavan's teaching is quite clear. In this search one is not to seek for some transcendental "I-Absolute", but the ego itself and the point where it arises. Find this, [and] the ego automatically drops away and one then knows there is nothing but the Self.

It is like following a stream to its source through the hills, and when one has reached that point whence it arises the stream itself will no longer exist.

~ Sadhu Arunachala, A Sadhu's Reminiscences

Dwelling on the Past

"Bhagavan never encouraged people who came and started to confess their sins. He would not allow them to continue but shut them up by telling them not to dwell on the past but to find out who they were now in the present. The point was not the act but attachment to it that mattered. Dwelling on it in retrospect was the worst thing they could possibly do. This itself was attachment."

~ Sadhu Arunachala (Major Chadwick), A Sadhu's Reminiscences

"One of us"

Major Chadwick (Sadhu Arunachala) came to Bhagavan in 1935 and stayed until Bhagavan's mahasamadhi in 1950.

On this day (April 17), in 1962, Sadhu Arunachala passed away.

“I felt the tremendous peace of his presence, his graciousness. It was not as though I were meeting him for the first time. It seemed that I had always known him, though I had not been conscious of it at the time. Now I know.” ~ Sadhu Arunachala

Sri Bhagavan has said, “Chadwick was with us before, he was one of us. He had some desire to be born in the West, and that he has now fulfilled.”

~ quotes from Bhagavan, A Pictorial Biography


(I could not find a photo of Sadhu Arunachala on the internet -- if anyone has one to post, please do!)