Sri Ramana Maharishi’s Portrait - Giclee canvas print of Indian visionary artist Mr. Asokan Nanniyodu - Style: Visionary Art
“Several devotees do not go there to talk or ask questions; they are happiest when visitors do not talk and Maharshi sits still in samadhi giving them the lead. They are those who have been working on the lines recommended by him, i.e., Atma Vichara (pursuing the quest ‘Who am I?’).”
Though we now seem to be ego, if we look at ourself keenly enough we will see that we are actually just pure awareness
A question that troubles some people when they want to understand the practice of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra) is whether the ‘self’ or ‘I’ we are to investigate is ego or our real nature (ātma-svarūpa), but as I will try to make clear in this article, investigating ego is itself investigating our real nature, because what seems to be ego is just our real nature, just as what seems to be a snake is just a rope. We are just one self or ‘I’, not two different selves or ‘I’s, but when this one ‘I’ remains just as it is, without any adjuncts, it is pure awareness, which is our real nature, whereas when it seems to be conflated with adjuncts, it is what is called ego.
Therefore, though we now seem to be ego, if we investigate ourself keenly enough we will see that we are actually just pure awareness. In order to understand why this is the case, we need to clearly understand that ego is cit-jaḍa-granthi, a knot (granthi) formed by the seeming entanglement of pure awareness (cit) with a body, which is non-aware (jaḍa), binding them together as if they were one, so it is a conflation of two elements, one of which is real, namely pure awareness, and the other of which is a mere appearance, namely the body (which in this context does not mean just the physical form but all the five sheaths that constitute whatever body we currently mistake ourself to be, namely the physical form, life, mind, intellect and will, all of which are non-aware, being just phenomena perceived by us as ego). When we investigate ourself, what we try to attend to is only the real element in this mixture, namely pure awareness (cit), as Bhagavan explained in an answer recorded in the final chapter of Maharshi’s Gospel (2002 edition, page 89):
The ego functions as the knot [granthi] between the Self [ātma-svarūpa], which is Pure Consciousness [cit], and the physical body, which is inert and insentient [jaḍa]. The ego is therefore called the cit-jaḍa-granthi. In your investigation into the source of ahaṁ-vṛtti [the thought ‘I’, which is ego], you take the essential cit aspect of the ego; and for this reason the enquiry must lead to the realization of the pure consciousness of the Self.
The source from which we rise as ego (the ahaṁ-vṛtti or thought called ‘I’) is our real nature, which is pure awareness (cit), so in order to find out from where we have risen as ego we need to attend only to the fundamental awareness aspect of ego, as Bhagavan implies when he says, ‘In your investigation into the source of ahaṁ-vṛtti, you take the essential cit aspect of the ego’. The more keenly we focus our attention on this essential cit aspect, the more everything else will recede into the background, until eventually we will be aware of nothing other than ourself, which is the state of pure awareness. This is therefore the means by which we can separate ourself from all our adjuncts and thereby untangle this knot called ego.
~ https://happinessofbeing.blogspot.com/2020/02/though-we-now-seem-to-be-ego-if-we-look.html
