my article

A friend recently sent me an email in which he asked: I had mentioned to you that in my view there appear to be three different approaches to self-investigation, i) self-enquiry, which involves asking who am I and going to the root of the I thought, ii) meditating on I am, excluding the arising of any thought, and concentrating on I am, and iii) trying to notice the gap between two thoughts, expanding the gap, and being without any thought, summa iru. You had replied that these are not three different approaches but constitute only one approach. Could you please elaborate your comment? This article is adapted from the reply that I wrote to him. Nāṉ Yār? paragraph 16: ātma-vicāra is only the practice of keeping one’s attention on oneself Our aim should be to destroy the illusion that we are this ego Upadēśa Undiyār verses 24 and 25: experiencing ourself without adjuncts is experiencing what we actually are To destroy our ego we must try to be attentively self-aware Being attentively ...

In a comment on my previous article, Self-investigation ( ātma-vicāra ) is just the simple practice of trying to be attentively self-aware , an anonymous friend asked, ‘Does this practice work?’ and went on to explain why he or she asked this question, saying, ‘There are so many Gurus each offering a unique method — a method that might have worked for them. The real question is does it work for others? Michael, from your writings I gather you have been practicing this for more than two decades (?). What is your realization so far? Have you been able to achieve what Bhagavan describes? Honestly, if the answer is no, then I will be very skeptical of this method’. Should we rely on what others claim to be their experience? What is the goal that we should aim to experience or attain? By knowing what goal we should seek, we can logically infer what must be the means to achieve it No matter how long it may take us to reach our destination, patient perseverance is required 1. Should we rely ...

This article is adapted from the replies that I wrote to two emails written by a friend called Ladislav asking for advice on how to practise self-investigation ( ātma-vicāra ). First reply In his first email Ladislav wrote: My issue: still I can’t feel ‘I’ or my self. I also tried to repeat in my mind the word ‘I’ or ‘I am’, but still I have not succeeded (i.e. I don’t feel anything other than before. I don’t feel myself). I don’t look for sensation but I seek sense of self. Please can you advise me, what do I do to know feeling self? In reply to this I wrote: When you say ‘I can’t feel I’, are there two ‘I’s, one of which cannot feel the other? Are you not always just one ‘I’? Are you not always self-aware? Are you not always aware that ‘I am’? There is nothing more to know than this. However, though you always know ‘I am’, now you know yourself as ‘I am Ladislav’. Though you now seem to be Ladislav, you are not really Ladislav, because you exist even in sleep, when you are not aware ...

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...

A friend wrote to me recently: I am still struggling with understanding the concept of ‘Who am I’. Am I looking for that which existed before my body and mind came into this existence, i.e. emptiness/fullness etc.? Do I explore the personal ‘I’ and from where it arose? I understand that I am that source from which the body came into the dream but when I explore it there is nothing there and I cannot feel the love that is supposed to be the real me. Also why is the dream of life so unpleasant when it has come from a source of love? What is the point of the dream? I find it frightening and I worry so much about the animals/the environment and I feel such pain. Why would the self create such a dream? In reply I wrote: Yes, we are looking for that which existed before our body and mind came into existence, but that exists not only then but also now and always, because it is what we actually are, so since we cannot go back in time we must find it here and now. Is it (ourself) emptiness o...

In a comment on one of my recent articles, The term nirviśēṣa or ‘featureless’ denotes an absolute experience but can be comprehended conceptually only in a relative sense , a friend called Bob asked several questions concerning the idea of a void, blank or nothingness and expressed his fear of such an idea. He started by asking why all we can now remember about what we experienced in deep sleep is a blank, or rather why we cannot remember anything at all except that we existed, and he suggested, ‘Is this because the illusory dualistic knowing consciousness [our mind or ego] cannot conceive the real non-dual being consciousness[?]’. He then went on to say, ‘I would be lying to you if I said that surrendering myself […] isn’t scary. It is very scary as I am scared of dissolving into the unknown. It is like letting go of the cliff and falling into nothingness, the complete unknown … the cold empty void’, but then asked, ‘is it more accurate to say that myself as I really am, the infini...