Feel: my thought, I-ness, internal organs – me.
- Four nested layers, peeled in strict sequence – thought, then the I-sense, then the inner organs of knowing, then the boundless ME. Each must be passed before the next becomes reachable (thought de-identified, I-ness dissolved, internal organs known, ME revealed); the order cannot be skipped.
- Prerequisite: shift from thinking to feeling – feeling is heart-centered and direct, thinking is head-centered and second-hand. The head supplies ready-made labels before any contact (see a rose, instantly ‘beautiful,’ and the rose itself is never met). Train on the gross first (touch, sound, taste, the shower’s coolness): don’t verbalize at all – the instant a word arises, feeling has stopped and thought has resumed. If you can’t feel the gross outer, you can’t feel the subtle inner.
- My thought – watch the flowing traffic of thought as a witnessing seer, not a thinker. The deeper you feel, the clearer it becomes that no thought is yours: all are borrowed and conditioned (a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a communist each carry a different set). Thoughts are clouds passing in the sky of consciousness; the consciousness is yours, the clouds are not. ‘My’ is the trick – out of many ‘mine’s the I is built. Cut ‘my’ at the thought-root and every outer ‘mine’ (house, wife, religion) falls with it, since all rest on this one inner thread.
- I-ness – once thoughts are seen as not-mine, turn on the I itself. Ramana’s ‘Who am I?’ presupposes that you are; the sharper Tibetan form is ‘Where am I?’ – move silently through inner space, search every corner; it is found nowhere. A death-like sinking sensation arises (the I disappearing feels like dying) – this fear is the best sign, not a danger. Pass through it: the old identity dies, a pristine virgin consciousness is born.
- Internal organs – not the outer sense organs (eyes, hands) which know others, but the inner instruments through which you know your own being: consciousness, intelligence, awareness. Visible only after thoughts are de-identified and I-ness has dissolved. The self-image assembled from others’ mirrors falls away; for the first time you know yourself from inside, needing no outer reflection.
- ME – not the ego-I (the I has already vanished) but the cosmic, boundary-less ocean – no longer ‘I AM’ set against the world, but the whole. Its revealing is ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ – not an ego’s claim but the disappearance of the claimant.
- (Q&A) When the I drops, you first feel emptiness – but that is only the ABSENCE of ego (something was there, now gone), not yet real emptiness. Two stages: the ego disappears, then the awareness of its absence must also disappear; only then are you truly empty, which is to be truly full. Bodhidharma slapped the disciple who declared ‘I am totally empty’: ‘Now throw this emptiness too’ – being filled with the idea of emptiness is still being filled.
- (Q&A) The technique dissolves the ego; it cannot transform or refine it (a refined ego is subtler and more poisonous). The ego is false – it survives only because it has never been directly encountered; don’t fight it (fighting a shadow only drains you), simply search inward for where it is and it is not found. Bodhidharma to Emperor Wu: ‘Come at four AM and bring your restless mind, I will silence it’; after two hours searching for where the mind was, the emperor could not locate it, and it was gone.
- (Q&A) After realization, memory, brain cells, and thought process all remain – and work better, now instrumental rather than master; only the feeling of ‘I’ is gone. Buddha: ‘I walk, but no one walks in me; I eat, but no one eats in me.’ The ME is the witnessing knower – the body-mind apparatus functions, the false center is simply absent.