Who Am I? — The Direct Path of Ramana
Ramana Maharshi's method of Self-inquiry — the question 'Who am I?' pursued until the questioner dissolves into the Self — is the most direct non-dual practice in any tradition.
Atma Vichara (Self-inquiry — 'Who am I?') is Ramana Maharshi's primary teaching. The practice: instead of trying to achieve a new state or accumulate spiritual experience, one simply inquires into the nature of the 'I' that seeks liberation. Who is it that thinks? Who is it that feels limited? Who is it that wants to be free? Following the question back to its source — not seeking an intellectual answer but attending to the actual feeling-sense of 'I' — one discovers that the 'I' cannot be found as a locatable thing. What remains when the constructed 'I' is seen through is the open, spacious awareness that was always already present. Ramana taught that this practice is more direct than mantra, pranayama, or devotion — because it directly attacks Avidya at its root (the mistaken identification with a separate self) rather than purifying the mind in preparation for that recognition. 'Who Am I?' (Nan Yar?) was his first written teaching, composed in 1902.
The thought 'Who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then there will arise Self-realization.
Ramana Maharshi set out this method in 'Nan Yar?' (Who Am I?), his earliest written teaching, given in answer to questions from Sivaprakasam Pillai: he directs the seeker to trace the 'I'-thought back to its source, so that when the mind turns inward to seek the one who thinks, the sense of a separate 'I' subsides into its origin.
Nan Yar
Written about in
- What Advaita Vedanta says about the self
Ramana Maharshi reduced the practice to one question asked of the questioner. His image is a stick used to stir a fire, which burns away with everything else.
- What Advaita Vedanta says about doubt
Ramana turned the apparatus on the doubter. Ask who is doubting, follow the feeling of "I" back toward its source, and his claim is that it cannot be found as a locatable thing. Nan Yar sets the method out as answers to a seeker's questions.