Spirituality Studies 9-2 Fall 2023 7 Martin Dojčár “I”, we would be attempting a logically impossible task, because there could not be any conception or imagination without an “I” that is conceiving or imagining it. Therefore, as Bhagavan asks rhetorically in verse 3 of Āṉma-Viddai: “Without knowing oneself, if one knows whatever else, so what? If one has known oneself, then what exists to know?” [4]. That is, since “I” is the knower of all knowledge, if it does not know what it itself actually is, how can it know what anything else actually is? The “I” that knows all other things is ego, the first person or subject, which is what knows itself as “I am this body”, but since this body is an object known by ego, it cannot be what ego actually is, because ego is aware, whereas the body (like all other objects) is not aware. Therefore, since ego knows itself as something other than what it actually is, its knowledge of itself is incorrect, so its knowledge of all other things must be equally incorrect. Before trying to know anything else, therefore, we should first try to know ourself as we actually are rather than as we now seem to be. In order to know what we (this “I”) actually are, we need to investigate ourself, so rather than investigating anything else, what we should investigate first and foremost is ourself, because only when our knowledge or awareness of ourself is clear, correct and certain will we be able to judge accurately the correctness and reliability of whatever other knowledge we may have. Can you explain “self-investigation” in more detail? Should we think of it as a kind of technique or method similar to yoga techniques or, let’s say, clinical psychology methods? Further, what is the meaning of aham-sphuraṇa, which Bhagavan mentions in this context? As I explained above, “self-investigation” (Sa. ātma-vicāra) is the simple practice of being keenly self-attentive in order to know ourself as we actually are. In other words, metaphorically speaking, it is just keenly observing or looking at ourself in order to see what we actually are. Since we are not an object but only what is aware, we cannot look at or attend to ourself as we would look at or attend to any object, but since we are always aware of ourself as “I”, we can look at or attend to ourself by simply turning our awareness back on itself, so to speak. No words can accurately convey what this simple practice of self-attentiveness actually is, so whatever words may be used are only pointers, and hence we need to consider such words carefully and try to understand for ourself what they are pointing at. We cannot learn how to ride a bicycle by reading books or listening to lectures about it, but only by getting on a bicycle and trying to ride it. At first, we will wobble and fall many times, but if we keep on trying, we will gradually get the hang of it, and eventually it will become second nature to us. Likewise, we cannot learn or understand how to be self-attentive merely by reading books or listening to lectures about it, but only by trying to be self-attentive. However, whereas riding a bicycle is a gross physical action, being self-attentive is an extremely subtle redirecting of our awareness or attention back towards ourself, away from all other things, so in order to attend to ourself correctly we need to clearly understand what is the “self” or “I” that we are to attend to. Unless we understand that we are not any of the “five sheaths” (i.e., the physical body, life, mind, intellect or will) but only the awareness in which all such things appear and disappear, when we try to attend to ourself, we will attend to whatever we take ourself to be rather than to what we actually are. Therefore, a certain degree of understanding is necessary before we can begin to investigate ourself, but if we investigate ourself with that required degree of understanding, we will thereby begin to develop a much deeper and clearer understanding than we could ever gain merely by reading books or listening to explanations. In order to see something, we need to look at it, but we would not generally call looking at something a technique or method for seeing
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjkyNzgx