Who am I ? Who wants to know ? These are questions that do not occur to us in the South because we have come to identify with the body and are too busy trying to manipulate our circumstances in search of those perfect moments of desirelessness. In our minds, the answer is we are this body and all the things it has done and the thoughts it has had now and in the past and in the future. This experience of being real and separate we have created so that the universe can come into being is an exquisite illusion that is not easily transcended. The question only becomes relevant when we come to realize that we are not the doer we thought we were and are left with the only power we ever had which is to be witness to the world around us from changed perspectives that allow the visions to be transformative. And where this takes us is into the East on the Medicine Wheel where the only question left is ‘ if I am not all those things I thought defined me then who am I ?’.
Ramana Maharshi had his moment of realization when, as a teenager, he laid down in his bed and imagined himself dying and his body being taken to the burning grounds. At the end of this experience, having gone through the process of identifying everything he thought he was as external to the I that was observing, he was left with what it is to no longer be separate. Having attained the top of the mountain, he was done with this world and got on a train to a place where he found a cave to sit in and meditate awaiting the end to his life. And he would have ended like this if not for being discovered by the inhabitants of this place who decided they were not done with him and took him from the cave to set him up in an ashram where he would spend the rest of his life teaching those who would come seeking advice on spiritual matters or simply to know the peace of being in his presence.
What he taught is called Jnana Yoga. It is a way to use the thinking mind to transcend the thinking mind. Of course asking the thinking mind to know itself is like asking the eye to see itself, but this is all we have to work with and we are not actually trying to make this happen. What we are doing is constantly trying to isolate this I by noticing everything we experience in our lives as not this I. According to Ramana Maharshi, this will lead to self realization if done with enough fervor and diligence. I do not know if this is true and it was certainly not the case with Ramana himself who had this experience come to him with no previous spiritual training or desire for this to happen to him. This being born with this kind of potential just lying in wait for the right circumstances to appear is a mystery that we can only begin to understand as the way in which evolution is moving us forward as a species toward a time when we will all be brought into this world with this potential. In the meantime, those of us who must actually make this journey and put in the effort will find these instructions useful when we find ourselves moving out of the West and into the North on the Wheel and wondering who it is that decided to leave the lowlands and actually attempt to reach the top of the mountain.
