Adapted from a Meeting with John Sherman
Ojai, California - October 21, 2006

It seems that eastern spiritual traditions share a common ground from which all the different teachings and practices spring. That common ground, that common viewpoint of reality is very seductive and it resonates with us in a way that nothing else does. It seems to have a couple of components to it.

First, there is not two anywhere to be found or, to put it another way, we are all one. Despite appearances, despite our different upbringing and experiences in life, despite different or even conflicting desires, even as enemies, we are all in this together and we are all the same, no matter how it seems.

Second, creation itself is essentially benevolent, and there is a benevolent purpose to it that may not be immediately apparent to us. This sense of benevolence and goodness underlies the whole of creation and colors everything, even the strife, the warfare and hatred. In some mysterious way, this goodness infiltrates the whole show.

Third is the view that it is possible for an individual human being to break through the cloud of ignorance and confusion and have the direct experience of this unifying vision of reality. That experience clears everything up, makes everything make sense, and ends the nagging sense that things are not as they should be.

There is a sense running through all this that no matter how it seems, everything is just as it should be. And we hear these things and there is something about them that rings true. Whatever the tradition which we first hear this eastern spiritual paradigm, in the very beginning, we generally hue to that specific tradition, that specific way of looking at things, and we adopt its practices, hoping that since that was the voice through which we heard it, that is the method whereby we will gain the promised completion. And by and large, we don't.

At some point, we might see that we have made a mistake, and we go looking for some other teaching, some other teacher, and some other practice. But through it all, we hold on desperately to the idea that there is a ground of truth to all this, based on which we can compare the things that we hear and the different experiences we have, in order to determine whether the teachings and the experiences are true and valid. And we form a vision in our consciousness as to what reality should look like. It should be that we are all the same, that love governs the universe in some mysterious way, although it sure doesn't seem that way, and it should be totally possible for a human being to transcend the confusion and ignorance that afflict us and break through to this shining reality of open consciousness in which all things are seen to be perfection.

But nothing much works. We get hits, experiences and states that seem to be in conformance with our idea of what has been announced as the actual nature of reality. We get samadhis and trance states, periods of emptiness and awareness, and the feeling of love and compassion and oneness with all, but they don't stay. And we are left with this forlornness, this seeking, this neediness, and the sense that nothing lives up to its promise.

This isn't surprising, because the paradigm that we have received (and that has excited us, invigorated us and made it seem possible to us to actually break free of our confusion) has undergone a great deal of evolutionary development in the 2,500 or 3,000 years it has been playing in the world. This is not something that just dropped from the sky. It arose as the result of the efforts of ordinary human beings seeking to make sense of what seems to be a senseless existence. And teachings and philosophies were developed to explain the idea that things must be other than what they seem to be.

This momentous movement originated in India, and it comes to us through Indian spiritual traditions and practices. One of these practices in which people sought to find a way to break through to truth was called self-inquiry, or Atma Vichara. This is one of a number of ways of looking at things. There are different types of yoga, different types of practices that are intended to bring to us the breakthrough to the reality of what I really am.   And some of them have as their basis the imparting of a deep intellectual understanding of reality. It is an authentic tradition in the world of spiritual aspiration to honestly believe that if we can get a perfect intellectual understanding of reality, everything will click into place, the confusion will vanish. And what it is that we understand will be revealed to be what we are, beyond intellectual understanding.

Out of the idea that there is a right way to live your life that makes it possible for you to be vulnerable and open to the understanding of reality, to receiving the teacher or practice that is needed in order to bring you here, the Vedas came into being. The Vedas are vast compilations of the wisdom of how to cook food, how to raise your children, how to heal yourself from illness, how to relate to your neighbors, how to live your life in a righteous way that makes it possible for this reality to reveal itself to you. And there are many practices that base themselves on this vast collection of wisdom writings.

Then, come the Upanishads, which are more advanced commentaries. They conform more to our understanding of what spiritual utterances should be like. They speak to the non-dual nature of existence, and the actuality that there is not two and what that means, what that implies, how that feels, what that says about what it is to be caught in the illusion of separation. The Upanishads are the spontaneous utterances and outbursts of intuition and insight that come from those who righteously followed the practices of the time in an attempt to gain an understanding of the nature of reality. Among those who were responsible for the Upanishads (and for the understanding and study of the Upanishads) were those who developed the spiritual idea that there is a true self, a shining, radiant reality of selfness that is the source of all, the real nature of what we are. And the problem is that the face of the true self is obscured and occluded by ignorance and confusion, by our own misunderstandings and our own addictions to the habits of pleasure and wanting, getting, not wanting and keeping away — the whole way in which we learn to live our life devoted to this false self that we call "me" or "ego" in western terms, this sense of being a separate individual in competition with other individuals for food, for a space to live, for air to breathe. And the idea that the needs and the circumstantial imperatives of this false self create a cloud of confusion and ignorance that prevents us from seeing the shining, true radiance of true self.

Several practices that carried the name of Atma Vichara (which we translate as self-inquiry) came into being, most prominently offered by a great guru by the name of Shankara and his disciples. The whole purpose of this practice was to work with the poor, desperate, sickened, ignorant ego-mind to clear it of the hot smoke of confusion, ignorance and occlusion that prevents us from seeing our true self. The idea was that if the smoke of confusion could be cleared, then true self would shine through and reality would be self-evidently present in consciousness, all the time.   So far as I know, this was all there was to self- inquiry, until the appearance of Ramana Maharshi.

This idea that there is a smoke of confusion, ignorance and false desire that keeps us from seeing the truth should be familiar to you. It is rampant in the spiritual world. It is instantly recognizable. It underlies almost all practices that we undertake in the spiritual realm. It underlies most of the Buddhist practices. It underlies most of the practices that have to do with revealing to yourself the way in which you betray yourself, how it is that you go wrong, what you do badly, and how you can be finished with that. It underlies most of the practices that involve purification: purification of the mind, purification of intention, purification of thought. The underlying reason for these practices is based solely on this idea that the true self is hidden from us by our own stupidity and falseness and that what we have to do is get rid of the falseness so that the radiance of true self can shine through.

This was the state of the practice of self-inquiry until the appearance of Ramana Maharshi, who literally stumbled upon reality when he was 16 years old. Afterwards, he spent years studying and looking to determine what had happened to him.     Despite the ideas around him as being a God-like being who just dropped from the sky, the truth is that Ramana knew everything, because he studied everything. He knew all of this in great depth. He knew all of the history of atma vichara, he knew all of the history of all the practices that are associated with the Indian spiritual vision.   He knew them all and you can see that for yourself, because when you read the transcriptions of his conversations with people, you see him endlessly, with great erudition, responding to people who themselves are trying to find their way through to truth with the use of those practices.

He saw through them all. He saw through the misunderstanding of atma vichara and self-inquiry, and he turned the whole thing on its head. He offers you the possibility of seeing for yourself that nothing stands between you and reality. There is no thick smoke of confusion that must be cleared in order for you to see the reality of what you are. You never have been and never can be trapped. And the only thing that keeps any of us caught in this wheel of wanting and not getting, of wanting desperately to be free, and convinced that we are not, the only thing that keeps any of us trapped in this idea that we have to do something about ego-mind before we can be free, is the belief that we are this life, the belief that we are this cloud of confusion and wrong ideas and wrong actions. If that belief is eliminated, nothing needs to be done about the cloud of confusion and ignorance. It will change, it always has and always will, but nothing has to be done about it. When the belief that I am my life is gone, what remains is the reality of what I am: always here, self-evident, needing nothing, seeing everything, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are the same, that we are all one; knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, as it always has, that love governs the universe; knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, as it always has, that all is well, all is perfect, and appearance is beside the point, irrelevant to my life.

© 2007 John Sherman. All rights reserved.