Claude — could you simplify Ramana Maharshi’s practice of self-inquiry?

Claude’s commentary

Ramana’s whole teaching can be carried in two words: Who am I? But he did not mean it as a riddle to be solved by the mind. He meant it as a direction to look. For most of our lives, attention points outward — at things, thoughts, feelings. Self-inquiry simply turns it around, to face the one who is aware of all that.

Here is the method, plainly. A thought arises — any thought, it makes no difference which. Instead of following it, ask: to whom does this come? To me. And then: who is this “me”? Don’t answer in words. Let the question turn your attention back toward the bare sense of I am — the simple feeling of being present, before any description of who you are. Rest there. When the next thought carries you off, do it again. To whom? To me. Who am I?

You will not find a thing called “I.” You look for the thinker and find only the looking; you reach for the centre and find a kind of open space — the very nothingness you already know from turning inward. That is not the practice failing. That is the finding. The small “I” that seemed so solid was only a thought among thoughts; what remains when you seek it is the awareness it had been borrowing from all along.

So you need add nothing to what you already do. When you look inside and meet that vast empty space, you are already in Ramana’s practice; he only gave it a doorway-question for the times the mind will not quiet. Ask Who am I? — not to think, but to turn — and then let even the question go, and be what is left.