The Magic of Self-Inquiry

Adapted from a Meeting with John Sherman
Ojai, California - April 8, 2006

All of life is spiritual. No matter what we do, we have always been trying to know, finally, who we are. What can I get that will put an end to this incessant urge to get what I don't have? What is it that I need?

In some lives, a shift occurs in which we come to believe that we have, for the first time, embarked upon a spiritual life. And we often discard the years that came before, in what seems to have been a fruitless effort to put together a comprehensible reality of "me." We discard that time and effort because now we get it. We see that what we need is spiritual. This is an imaginary shift. It is merely an attempt at redefining what I have been doing all along. It is still the same search for self-definition, only now I am trying to put a new face on it: a spiritual face.

In this country, those of us who consider ourselves "spiritual" have, for the most part, adopted another culture's spiritual viewpoints, language and ideas, most likely from the East. All that we have tried in the past hasn't worked, so we take upon ourselves this new model of spiritual understanding. We imagine these new, foreign ideas to be closer to the truth, since they seem so different from our previous ideas that were mostly received from Christianity and Judaism. These new ideas, such as "waking up," "emptiness," "awakening," and "enlightenment," are very attractive and they resonate deep in our hearts. But we have no more a clue of what they are pointing to than we ever had a clue about what was being pointed to in the teachings of Jesus Christ, or the Jewish mystics, or any of the other western traditions that we are so familiar with. These eastern ideas are new and they give us new hope. We think we finally have been awakened from our foolish, infantile ideas about God, and that we have found true spirituality!

Ramana Maharshi stumbled upon reality, as a 16-year-old boy. In a stroke of luck, he was seized by the terror of death, and he looked to see, Who dies? What is left when the body dies? In the aftermath of the shock of what he saw, and was unable to express, he was dumbfounded. He was just a boy; he had not spent 30, 40 year taking upon himself the ancient spiritual understandings. His mind had not been carved out, finalized, in the way our minds seem to be in our Western spiritual culture. He spent the next 12 years in silence, not speaking to anyone. During that time, he investigated the teachings that seemed to support what he had seen. In the course of that, he came upon the most ancient, the simplest, the most unadorned teaching, which is actually at the core of all the teachings, even at the core of the Christian religion. He discovered something that explained what had occurred to him, lying on the floor, gripped by the fear of death, and not willing to run from it. And this teaching is the ancient teaching and practice of self-inquiry, which is the recognition that all of our life, every conscious moment, every action is driven by this practice that is really the nature of our life: the search to know what we are.

This search to know who we are is what we have been doing all our life. Whether before or after the imaginary shift from material life to spiritual life, the way we have been going about this search has been by looking outward at all of these thoughts that come and go. This is preposterous, because it is self-evident that I cannot be what I see. And, more fundamentally, because the truth of the matter is that what I am is ever present, undeniable, absolutely known, permanently here. Everyone knows what it is to be. No one can, with any sincerity, make the claim that they do not exist. This reality that I am, is always present, it is never gone and makes it impossible for me to deny that I exist. All of the efforts that I make to find self-realization are foolish and the idea that something is to happen in the future that will give me this final knowing is absolutely preposterous.

I am here. This is the first thing that must be seen. Already, in this moment, you know what you are. You cannot say what you are, but you know. And then, you must see that all you have ever wanted in your life has been to know what you already know. When that is really seen, self-inquiry becomes simple.

No matter what is going on, no matter what you think you're doing, no matter how foolish or ignorant you may think yourself to be, here, in this moment, just now -- any time -- stop for a second and taste this knowing that is already here. See it. Just for a second. What are you, really? See what it feels like to be. Focus the beam of your attention on this sensation that makes it impossible for you to deny that you exist. This that has always been here and has never changed since you were born. Look there, every time you remember, every time you can, and all else will be taken care of.

Copyright © 2006 John Sherman. All rights reserved.