my article

A friend recently wrote to me asking: I have a question if attention has to be drawn (intentionally) to the self, or is it enough if I just remain as I am, surrendering the filthy ego to God? No “fixing the mind into self”, nor “looking for the source” or “I-thought”, but just remaining? I wrote a brief reply, and he replied asking some further questions, so this article is adapted from the two replies I wrote to him. The oneness of self-attentiveness, self-abidance and self-surrender Merely giving up being aware of anything other than ourself will not destroy our ego We can dissolve our ego only by trying to be attentively self-aware Upadēśa Undiyār verse 16: we must attentively observe our own self-awareness 1. The oneness of self-attentiveness, self-abidance and self-surrender In reply to his first email I wrote: How can you ‘just remain’ if you do not attend only to yourself? So long as we attend to or are aware of anything other than ourself, our attention is directed away from o...

In a comment on one of my earlier articles, The fundamental law of experience or consciousness discovered by Sri Ramana , a friend called Chimborazo wrote: Michael, sometimes it is said that the source of the ego (all thoughts, ‘I’-thought) is the heart. And the same heart is said to be the source of the breath. Therefore thoughts and breath have the same source. So if one holds one’s breath no thoughts would rise. I cannot confirm that and I did not learn it in my experience of meditation. Please could you comment on this or clarify. In reply to this I wrote a comment in which I explained: When it is said that the source of the ego and the source of the breath are both only ‘the heart’ (which does not mean any physical organ or location in our body, but only the core of ourself, which is what we really are), and that therefore when either the ego or the breath subsides, the other will also subside, what is meant by the word ‘breath’ or prāṇa is not just the physical act of breathin...