title: Vichara Chudamani.(Crest Jewel of self-inquiry).: self-inquiry. (Volume 1)
author:  Suryanarayana Raju 
description: "Who am I" is the most profound question in human life and it must be resolved first before other matters. Life without self-knowledge is miserable and life with self-knowledge is joyful and full of freedom. Self-inquiry is the way to gain Self knowledge.<br />It is the most blissful activity in life because it is through which we realize the truth and become capable of dropping all miseries in the light of Self knowledge.<br />Self-inquiry is not a mental practice unlike other spiritual practices in which ego is very much preserved safely to do the so called practice.<br />It is not a cultivation of habit; it is a heightened awareness born out of understanding into the identity of consciousness to trivia, and so a liberating process, a creative Self discovery which frees thought-feeling from bondage of limitation of consciousness by the ego.<br />The beauty of self-inquiry is that it is a "verbal quest through heightened awareness," to know the nature of ego and comprehends its activity, rather than a static inquirer as noun trying to manipulate the ego and its activity.<br />Ego is an epiphenomenon like rainbow and so it is not substantial and is formed during the interaction between you and the other. You are identified with that and this identity with the ego as the "me" is just a habit, and calling that substitute self, the ego as the "me", is the original sin, fall. You are continuously giving it energy to it and so, that dead entity became established and looking so alive and posing as though it is the real Self.<br />In self-inquiry we inquire into ego, its urges, compulsions, frustrations, and desire to fulfill, misery, strains, anxieties, struggles, sorrows, and other innumerable problems, seeing all these facts with an "Inquiring mind filled with heightened awareness" which is free from all beliefs, dogmas, and so which is beyond thought.<br />Mind in the present status is not fit to do self-inquiry because it is not a free mind, its awareness is entangled in the network of thought and it became one with it. This network of thought itself is unwanted furniture polluting the biological mind which is natural. So we have to free the biological mind which functions out of awareness from this network of thought commonly called the ego. Once the biological mind is free of conditioning like that, it is filled only with awareness is capable of doing self-inquiry. So still mind is sine qua non for inquiring into the "self" because, ego mist evaporates only in the fire of heightened awareness which fills the empty and still mind.<br />Self-inquiry is not an effort of one part of mind observing other. In fact there is no place for effort in self-inquiry.<br />Doing self-inquiry with effort is like dog chasing its own tail but it never succeeds and such an effort stops only when dog realizes that tail is its own part.<br />Similarly human must realize that in deliberate self-inquiry the observer and the observed are both conditioned entities of mind and there is no use of such effort however sincerely it is done.<br />So self-inquiry is a gestalt from habit of thinking to understanding of "nature of ego". Now how that gestalt happens?<br />All of us feel that we are aware in waking mode of mind but that awareness is in the grip of tendencies inside which leads the mind to get attracted towards objective reality thus causing awareness to be distracted by trivia in objective reality like amassing wealth, pursuit of pleasure, running after name and fame etc and a constantly struggling mind like this cannot watch. In such context awareness is in the grip of objective reality and so can never be centered and so we function without Self knowledge.<br />Unless you are uninterruptedly aware of and so comprehend self activity you are likely to identify with the ego again because it is an age old habit to get identified with it.<br /><br />In self-inquiry when we start negating the things imposed on our consciousness by the society and to some extent by us, we will come to know that our nature is pure consciousness.<br />Child is born as tabula rasa with tendencies in seed form at birth but those tendencies are waiting to sprout and so he is ignorant. If we can negate the imposed conditioning through understanding and spend our tendencies we can claim back tabula rasa in full awareness which amounts to self realization. That negating of conditioning out of understanding is "real discipline", and responding spontaneously from the consciousness is maturity and is religiosity. Just by belonging to a particular religion you are not religious. Religiosity is not that cheap.<br />Only men without understanding belong to certain organized religion, ideologies,concepts, beliefs and respond from that fixed point. But life is a flow, it demands response from a living mind. When you respond to "life in the present" from past memories, which is a fixed and static state it results in conflict. That continuous response from the past to the "life in present" results in continuous conflict and that continuous conflict is called the ego and we are identified with that. Ego is a mist that is formed during interaction between you and the other. When we see things through that mist, things look distorted and the action born out of it is incomplete and so leads to conflict. So ego is state of psychological immaturity. Self-inquiry helps the mist of ego to evaporate and then we start looking things "as they really are". Awareness is the wiper that wipes out ego mist.<br />When awareness free from the influence of past it is heightened awareness and when we act from it, the action is complete and the ego mist stops rising. Ego mist is the result of incomplete action born out of unawareness of self activity. If we set can set aside that ego by going beyond it and start learning to respond to the "present" spontaneously from unconditioned mind instead of responding from the ego, then we know what it actually means to live.<br /><br />If awareness is not wasted in trivia, it goes on accumulating and you become a reservoir of awareness because it is not distracted by unnecessary occupation. And when that reservoir of awareness reaches certain breakeven point, the "jump", the "quantum leap", the awareness falls back on itself and radical transformation of mind happens instantly. In this luminous, "Pure witnessing awareness" self-inquiry and understanding happens. Self-inquiry leads you to a space where you can drop all effort in the name of spirituality. Till then real self-inquiry does not start.
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  IT BE 
  Keys of  life 
  …on the search for the self, the we and 
  the where 
  Paradise IT 
  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  For my children. 
   
   
  
   
   
  CONTENT 
  Preface.................................................................................. 1 
  On the search for the self .................................................... 2 
  The self as composition ....................................................... 4 
  The most complete individual consciousness .................... 12 
  The cosmic consciousness ................................................. 15 
  Life principles toward Transformation.............................. 17 
  The principle of gratitude ............................................... 19 
  The principle to perceive creator ................................... 21 
  The Principle of dignity for the life ............................... 24 
  The practicing of the principles .................................... 27 
  The hierarchical structure ....................................