Continued from Verse Twenty-Eight
29. The only enquiry leading to Self-realization is seeking the Source of the 'I' with in-turned mind and without uttering the word 'I'. Meditation on 'I am not this; I am That' may be an aid to the enquiry but it cannot be the enquiry.
Commentary: ”I” is a kind of illusion that depends on your not looking in its direction. You — or what seems to be you — believes yourself to be aware and independent, beliefs which cannot be sustained if you see the background from which what seems to be you arises. That “background,” and not you — in other words, not “I“ — is what is aware and independent. Noticing that background fully, however, destroys the very ideas of background and foreground.
The one who seeks to destroy the illusory I needs to move the attention away from all changeable objects and “inward” towards the one observing those objects. The “I” is what feels like what is noticing everything. It is the sense of being awake, alive, aware. When one turns the attention in pursuit of it with intense concentration, we can find from where that I originates — meaning, that when we look for the I, we find that it did not originate at all, that it is in fact not what we thought it was. As we chase the I, we repeatedly find that when we think we have it, we actually have a thought or a feeling. So the intense concentration is a matter of consistent re-focusing in pursuit of the I. It is a chase or a hunt, until a point which cannot be predicted, when the runs through the obstacle course and into the vast vista of the Truth.
This process of chasing the I is what is meant by self-inquiry. This is not the same as simply thinking that “I am not the body and the mind, and I am the Self, which is consciousness,” or any thoughts along those lines. Those are helpful, but they are merely intellectualizations. What is necessary is a continuous process of inner noticing that goes deeper and deeper in search of that sense by which you know you exist. These methods are as different as thinking “I can lift a 20-lb. weight” and actually lifting one, or thinking that a certain wine tastes good, and actually tasting it.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.