Who Are You? How to Practice Vedantic Self-Inquiry

The Essence of Vedanta, Part 3

The previous article, ‘Samsara and How to Escape the Wheel of Suffering’, explored how the large part of human suffering comes not so much from our outer problems — with are many and varied — but from a fundamental suffering of a more universal nature.

This is the sorrow of samsara.

Samsara is rooted in faulty thinking — in misapprehending who and what we are. By making certain false assumptions about who we think we are and what we think we need in order to be happy and whole, our lives are driven by a sense of lack and the desperate need to remove that lack.

The stronger this sense of self-lack is, the greater our desires become.

From this, we end up chasing a never-ending array of objects; the things we believe will make us whole, but which never do. We spend our lives trying to GET and BECOME; trying to make ourselves acceptable in the eyes of others and, therefore, acceptable in our own eyes.

The thing is, however, the joy is never in the object of our pursuit. 

We assume that it is because when we get what we want, we temporarily feel happy, complete and satisfied.

But is this happiness coming from the object?

If it was, that object would bring the same amount of joy all the time, and it would bring that joy to everyone.

This clearly isn’t the case. What brings happiness to one person can bring misery to another. As James Swartz comically points out, “A granny who knits socks and little wool caps for her grandchildren is not going to enjoy bungee jumping. Can you see granny standing on the edge of a bridge with bungee cords attached to her legs? And how happy is her teenage grandson who loves jumping off bridges going to be knitting socks?”

Happiness appears to come from objects because when you attain the object of your desire you experience a wave of happiness. This happiness comes not from the object itself, but from the cessation of desire for that object.

Desire, being rooted in a sense of self-lack, comes from a place of pain. The removal of this pain — the cessation of the desire — allows the bliss and happiness that is your own natural state to flood your mind. Perhaps you’re not quite convinced that happiness and bliss is your own nature. It certainly may not seem that way. Stick with me, however, because eventually I’m going to prove this to you.

In the preceding article, we also saw how all object-based joys are inevitably coupled with pain. To attain the object of a desire, three types of pain are involved: the pain of having to acquire it, the struggle of then maintaining and holding onto it and, finally, the worst pain of all: the pain of eventual loss.

This is the predicament of samsara. You feel a fundamental sense of lack and incompleteness in yourself, which drives you to chase external objects and pleasures in the hope of finding lasting happiness, joy, and wholeness. Sadly, all such joys inevitably turn bitter and rarely remain satisfying for long.

The samsaric mind is caught in a cycle of lack, desire, attachment, sorrow and delusion.

Vedanta proclaims the root of this problem to be ignorance — specifically, self-ignorance.

You’ve assumed yourself to be a lacking, limited and insufficient little person, for whom sorrow is a constant companion.

The only way out of this problem is to question this fundamental misapprehension and this is done by practising self-inquiry.

Is Sorrow Your Nature?

First of all, where does all this sorrow come from?

If you experience a lot of sorrow in life, does that mean you are a sorrowful person?

Does this sorrow come from your own self, or does it come from something else?

If suffering is inherent to the self, then there’s no possible solution to it. The nature of a thing can’t be changed, so if sorrow IS your nature, you’d better get used to it, because sorrow will forever be with you!

Sorrow, however, cannot be your nature.

If it was natural to you, it wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, you’d happily accept it.

It’s only when something is unnatural to us that we try to rid ourselves of it. Just as the physical body tries to expel toxins and foreign bodies, so, too, do we want to eliminate anything unnatural to us; in this case a sense of sorrow and limitation.

If this sorrow was inherent to your nature, you wouldn’t want to eliminate it. You, therefore, cannot be the source of your sorrow.

The Two Categories of Existence

Vedanta distinguishes two categories in existence:

Atma (the Self) and anatma (the non-Self).

In short, there is awareness (the knower) and the various objects (the known) that appear in awareness.

(In actual fact, anatma is later negated and all that is shown to exist is atma, otherwise, Vedanta would be a dualistic philosophy. This provisional acceptance of a subject/object duality is a necessary part of the teaching.)

Differentiating between these two orders of reality is the essence of Vedanta and is the key to liberation.

Our core confusion, and the root of our suffering, is an inability to discriminate between the two.

If atma isn’t the source of your sorrow, then it must surely be anatma?

The Bhagavad Gita is the story of Arjuna, a warrior on the brink of a battle who lays down his arms, overcome by doubt and despair.

He turns to his mentor, the divine Krishna, who immediately tells him, “your sorrow is misplaced.” The original Sanskrit, aśocyān anvaśocastväm, literally means “you grieve over that which deserves no grief”. 

Krishna is saying that Arjuna’s grief is illegitimate. A problem can only be solved if it is a legitimate problem. If I mistakenly believe that I have a certain medical condition, I can’t be cured of it. I can’t be cured of it because I don’t have it in the first place! All I have is a mistaken belief; a superimposition.

The cure will only work if it belongs to the same order of reality as the problem. If I have a physical problem, an imaginary cure won’t work. Likewise, if I have an imaginary problem, a physical cure also won’t work. I can only cure my imagined illness by removing the superimposition that apparently caused it.

Krishna reveals that Arjuna’s problem is of a similar nature. Arjuna’s suffering represents the basic sorrow of humankind. Sorrow is superimposed on atma, the self, due to ignorance; to non-recognition of the true nature of the Self.

If this sorrow is only due to confusion and the non-apprehension of our nature, then it’s not actually caused by anatma; by the external conditions. Like my imaginary medical condition, my sorrow and grief are caused by ignorance and nothing more.

Self-ignorance

Human beings are born ignorant.

At birth, you don’t even know your own mother and father. You know nothing of the world, your environment, or yourself. 

As the mind, senses and intellect develop, you soak up information like a sponge. Bit by bit, the operating system of your personality is installed. You begin to adopt certain roles: son or daughter, brother or sister, pupil, student, friend, or whatever else.

A sense of ego begins to develop along with this — the sense of being a separate, defined ‘self’. 

While this sense of self feels solid and real, it’s a completely arbitrary, ad hoc assemblage of ever-changing variables. These variables include assorted memories, impressions, thoughts, beliefs, likes and dislikes, as well as extensive cultural and social conditioning.

Your sense of self is based upon certain assumptions. These assumptions are rarely, if ever, challenged. While you learn all about the world and your environment as you grow up, the one thing you never learn about is YOU — the you that apparently sees, hears, thinks, feels, and does — the you behind the succession of roles and masks you adopt.

You are, therefore, self-ignorant.

By a process of superimposition, you assume yourself to be something you are not, and this, Vedanta explains, is the source of your suffering. It can only be solved by learning the truth about who you are.

Who are you?

As a means of self-inquiry, Vedanta employs a process of negation.

A rigorous, step by step logic is applied to eliminate all non-essential variables; to strip away the many layers of self-misidentification.

In this way, the truth is revealed by removing what is false.

1. Are you the body?

A person’s primary identification is with the physical body.

Therefore, the notion “I am the body” should be our first line of inquiry.

It seems like a safe assumption for most people. It intuitively feels true. The body is the first thing we become aware of as apparently ‘ours’. I can move my arm and not yours, therefore it must be my arm.

We also assume that our body is always present; that it’s there all the time.

However, the Mandukya Upanishad reveals that the physical body is only experienced in one of the three states we experience every day. It is present in the waking state. But when you are asleep, you can inhabit any body your mind cares to dream of. You can be young or old, a man or woman, a tiny mouse or a bird soaring across the sky. In dreamless sleep, you experience no body or objects of any kind.

Although you only experience the physical body in one of these three states, the mind automatically identifies with it.

You never say, “my body is fat,” “my body is tall,” “my body is old,” or “my body is hungry.” Instead, you say, “I am fat,” “I am tall,” “I am old,” “I am hungry”. The body is invested with a sense of “I-ness”.

You become the body. 

However, this is a superimposition of subject onto object.

Because the body is known to you — i.e., perceivable as an object — it cannot be the subject; it cannot be “you”.

The knower is always distinct from the known.

The body is experienced as an object of perception. While there is clearly an association with this particular body, it remains an object of perception.

Furthermore, like all objects in the world, the body is subject to constant change and has no independent existence as we shall see later.

2. Are you the mind?

The next level of inquiry is to examine your identification with the mind, intellect and ego.

Together these comprise what Vedanta calls the subtle body. The locus of your identity hinges not only your physical body but also your thoughts, beliefs, interpretations and emotions. Some people have an even stronger identification with the subtle body than the gross body.

However, the same logic of negation applies to the subtle body.

Just as the physical body is an object that you, the subject, are aware of, so, too, is the mind, intellect, and ego.

Your thoughts, beliefs and sense of identity are intangible, arbitrarily constructed and constantly changing. Yet they seem so very real and you invest them with a tremendous sense of ownership and ‘my-ness’. 

In our minds, we create a whole subjective world, which we then superimpose onto the objective world and mistake for reality.

Most people are unable to separate the objective world from their subjective interpretation of it. That’s why identification with mind and thought can be even harder to break than identification with body.

3. Are you the ego?

Identification with the sense of being a ‘doer’, an agent of action—which Vedanta calls the ahamkara, or ego—is the hardest of all to break.

Yet Vedanta does just that, as we will later explore in great detail. Suffice to say, in order for you to be the doer, you would need to be aware of and have control over every single factor that determines your thoughts and actions.

The inescapable conclusion is that mind, intellect, and ego are all known to you as subtle objects of perception.

Because you know your mind, you cannot be your mind. Because you know your thoughts and feelings, you cannot be your thoughts and feelings. Finally, because you know the part of yourself that takes itself to be the ‘doer’ of actions, you cannot be that doer.

When all objects are negated as anatma (not-Self), what remains is you: atma, the Self — the knower; the eternal subject — which is pure awareness.

The next article will explore the nature of this Self in much greater detail.

The articles in this Essence of Vedanta series are excerpts from my commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which systematically unfolds the entire teaching of Advaita Vedanta. Be sure to get your copy and enjoy the series and much more in its entirety. “Bhagavad Gita – The Divine Song” by Rory B Mackay is available on the Unbrokenself shop here, and also on Amazon and all other good booksellers.


Other articles in this series

What is Advaita Vedanta?

The Problem of Suffering

Limitation, The Quest for Liberation and the Four Human Pursuits

Samsara and How to Escape the Wheel of Suffering

Who Are You? How to Practice Vedantic Self-Inquiry

What is the Self? Vedanta and the Power of Self-Knowledge

The Truth About Enlightenment

Vedanta, Spiritual Practice and the Necessity of a Qualified Mind

Karma Yoga: Vedanta’s Secret Weapon For Purifying the Mind

Vedanta’s Definition of God

Practising Self-Knowledge: The 3 Stages of Vedanta

What is a Jiva?

Action, Free Will and the Three Orders of Reality

About Rory 130 Articles
Rory Mackay is a writer and artist who was born and lives in Scotland. Having practised meditation and studied Eastern philosophy since he was a teenager, his life is devoted to sharing the knowledge, wisdom and tools that transformed his life. In addition to teaching meditation and traditional Advaita Vedanta, he has written two metaphysical fantasy/sci-fi novels ('Eladria' and 'The Key of Alanar') and releases electronic ambient music under the name Ajata. When not at work, he can be found in nature, walking his rescue dog, and studying and translating Vedantic texts.