The Path of Sri Ramana

a fresh clarity, distinct from the limited body-awareness called ‘I’) alone will appear itself to itself [oneself to oneself] without sound as ‘I am I’.

Without saying ‘I’ by mouth, investigating by an inward sinking [submerging, immersing, diving, plunging, or piercing] mind where one rises as ‘I’ is alone the path of jñāna [the means to experience jñāna, real knowledge or pure awareness, which is one’s true nature].

Oneself (ātman) is svayam-prakāśa (self-luminosity), which shines constantly as ‘oneself alone is oneself’, the form ‘I am’.

As a result of this fear of death his attention was deeply immersed and fixed in self-investigation to see ‘What is my being? What is it to undergo death?’. This fixing of his attention deep within himself is what is called vicāra, as we have discussed earlier and as he himself explained in Nāṉ Ār?:

‘All this happened in a split second, as direct experience without any activity of mind or speech.’

All these were experienced only as direct awareness (as pratyakṣa), not as mere thoughts. From that time my being-awareness (sat-cit), which transcended the body, has always continued as the one single nature.

Since each one of us experiences ourself as ‘I am only one, not two’, we should not give room to any sense of duality in which one ‘I’ seems to be seeking another ‘I’ by differentiating two distinct selves, a lower self called ego and a higher self called ātman, as Bhagavan implies in verse 33 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu: To make oneself viṣaya [an object, s

you investigate it, it will disappear and cease to exist (in accordance with the principle “if sought, it will take flight”),

The adjuncts of body and mind that seemingly transform the awareness ‘I’ into ego are just a false appearance without any real existence, like the snake seen in a rope. Just as there are not two things there, namely one snake and one rope, there are not two ‘I’s called ego and ātman.