Adapted from A Meeting with John Sherman
Westlake Village, California - September 24, 2006

The longer that I am in this peculiar role, the less it seems to me that I have to do. For a long time, I talked about a whole lot of things and maybe that was of some help to people. But in the last six months or so, I have taken to calling this role I am in  as the role of a servant of the teaching of self-inquiry as given to as by Ramana Maharshi  And I have come to see that what I have to offer, and what I have to speak about, is very little and very simple. It is my goal, my desire, and my intent to persuade you to try the practice of self-inquiry that comes to us from Ramana Maharshi. This is all I am here for.

I am not here to persuade you that you are infinite consciousness. I am not here to offer you enlightenment or self-realization. I am not here to offer you a solution to your problems. I am not here to bring forth in you great spiritual insights or understandings. There are a few insights that are useful, but even those are dispensable.  Just try this practice of seeking the truth of what you are.  I leave the calling forth of insights and understanding, the transcendence of ego, the solution of the life's problems and the triggering of enlightenment and self-realization to others. They are more qualified for that than I am.

All I want is to persuade you to try Ramana's practice.  Over the years, I have come to see how little it is that I really want to accomplish in this role, because I know from my own experience that if you try Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry, which consists of nothing other than seeking the experience of the reality of what you are, everything else will be taken care of.  

There are a few insights that can be useful here, if they serve to persuade you or to provide you with some basis for trying this practice. The first insight that is useful to us, one of the most profound insights, is from the Buddha himself. It is the insight that human life is suffering, that human life sucks. Life as a human being is fundamentally unsatisfactory. It is not suffering in the sense of soap opera suffering or the classical spiritual suffering, the fire and the soulfulness and all of that stuff. It is just the simple everyday suckiness.

In the language that the Buddha spoke, it was called dukka, which is a term that refers to the axle of a wheel being slightly off-center. It is just not quite right.  It is just not quite what it ought to be.  And that's the way human life is. With the storyline that we believe ourselves to be, we are able to generate experiences of immense, tragic suffering, longing and yearning, hope and desire, failure and so forth. We are also able to generate, once we know how, huge experiences of satisfaction and fulfillment, enlightenment and realization. But, in the end, the overall experience of life as a human being is the experience of riding in an oxcart with an axle that is just not quite centered. It's just not quite what it ought to be.  It seems like it ought to be more -- sweeter, easier than it is. But it is not. Life as a human being is a promise that just isn't fulfilled in reality.

This is the first noble truth of Buddhism. The insight that we often miss, even those of us who are in the spiritual life and understand about the four noble truths of Buddhism, the suffering and the end of suffering, is that this is a characteristic of human life, no matter whether you are awake or asleep. This is the way human life is. There is no solution to this.  And that is what we miss. And because we miss that, we think that our spiritual aspiration has to do with finding a solution to the unsatisfactoriness of human life, for which there is really no solution. Therefore, when we are blessed with huge experiences of opening, clarity and peace, and in the moment that they are present, they seem to relieve this unsatisfactoriness, we say to ourselves, "This must be what I am looking for!"  And we thus condemn ourselves to endless spiritual seeking, searching, trying to regain, to hold onto and to make permanent what is fundamentally impermanent -- which is itself the underlying reason for the unsatisfactoriness of human life.  What truly is the off-centeredness of the axle of the wheel is the impermanence of everything, most fundamentally the impermanence of me, but also the impermanence of these wondrous spiritual awakenings and so forth.

But since we are looking for a solution to something for which there is no solution, we miss the possibility of completely bypassing all of that. This doesn't mean to discard the wondrous experiences that we have, or deny the ugliness of the other experiences that we have, or try to get over the general experience of boredom, and mundane routine.  This means that nowhere within that array of phenomenal arisings is there to be found what we are truly looking for.  And we need not condemn ourselves to trying to make permanent what is inherently impermanent, or do away with what naturally comes and goes.

The first useful insight that we can have is this insight that comes from the Buddha, which is that "life is suffering" -- human life is fundamentally unsatisfactory and there is nothing whatsoever that can be done about that.  There is no solution to that. There is no spiritual solution, no material solution, no psychological solution and no scientific solution. Human life just ain't what it ought to be.

The second insight, which is also from the Buddha, is that "nobody can give you or do this for you." This is one of the most shocking things that the Buddha saw and taught when he lived.  You are in this on your own.  And whatever it is that you are seeking, nobody can find it for you.  Nobody can tell you where it is.  Nobody can give it to you.  You've got to do it for yourself.  There is help available. I can be of some help, sometimes. There are teachings that can be helpful to you in this, but only up to a certain point. At that final point, it's got to be you. Whatever it is that you are seeking, whatever it is that in the end will satisfy you and will finish your spiritual longing and searching, you have to find it on your own. Nobody can tell you how or where to find it.

The best that can be done by those of us who are in my position is to fan the flames of intent, to spark the fire of the desire to find what is real, and to keep that fire burning. And to suggest to you what is really at the core of your intent.  There are those who have this shakti and can transmit experiences, and the sense of awakening, and shaking and spark the blue fire of kundalini within you. But these things come and go. One thing that you can be sure of is that, if it was not here yesterday and it is here today, it will not be here tomorrow.  These things come and go. They can't be what you are looking for. They are good, they are not to be sneered at or thrown away, but they cannot be what you are looking for in the end.

The third most useful spiritual insight that we can have is that "the cause of all human striving, the cause of all the suffering of life is false belief about what we are." And by that I don't mean the unavoidable unsatisfactoriness of human life.  The cause of all the misery, aggression and hatred, betrayal and self-betrayal, lying and deceit whatsoever in the world of human beings is a false belief about what we are. That is the cause of it all. This is an insight that comes to us from Ramana Maharshi. The cause of all the trouble is a false belief about what we are.

We go through life with this deeply held, absolutely invisible, unconscious, unseeable, false conviction that I am the story of me -- where I was born, who my parents were, what my background is, what I have wanted, what I have failed to want, what I should want, what I shouldn't want, what I have been, what I should be, what I shouldn't be, what I think, what I do, what I don't think, what I don't do, what I want, what I don't want, who I am married to, who I am not married to, what I love, what I despise, what I have learned, what I have forgotten, my worthlessness, my worthiness. I am this endlessly unfolding, unraveling story of me that is forever running in our minds as our minds.

There is nothing to our minds other than this story. Sometimes it is explicit, sometimes it is unconscious, but it is always running.  "What about this? Well, what about that? Do I like this? Well, let me see.  What do I think? What was I doing yesterday? What was I yesterday? What should I be? What should I become? What should I not become? What should I avoid? I should be liberal, not conservative. I should be a communist. I should be a fascist. I should be a torturer or I should be a resister of torture. What am I? That's the story of me, all driven by this one engine: What am I? I am this, I am that. I am the doer of deeds. I am the thinker of thoughts. I am spiritual. I am the Buddha. I am consciousness. I am infinite, eternal awareness. I am peace and love without condition. I am lost. I am found. I am a meditator. I am good. I am bad. I am on the right track.  I am on the wrong track. Last week, I had an awakening experience. Tomorrow, I will be ignorant again. I am asleep. I am awake. I am happy. I am sad.  I am me. I am this. I am all of this." And the belief in this story runs so deep, so unquestioned and unexamined that it is impossible even to see that it is a belief. It is self-evident that this whole story is me, right? This is what I am.

It is Ramana's insight that nowhere within the story is there to be found the problem. The problem is my belief that I am this story. There is no other problem anywhere to be found. If you were reading the exact same story in a novel, or watching it in a movie, and fully experiencing the totality of it -- its shifting nature, its impermanence, the wanting, the longing and all of that -- but there was absolutely no belief present in you that it was you, would there be a problem? Of course, not. If you are watching a really good movie, and it is so powerful and artistically effective that it really makes you live the character's experiences in the movie, all his trials and tribulations, what is absent there is any real belief that this is you. Therefore, there is no problem. You leave the movie theatre and, who cares?

The source of all the trouble -- all of the murder, hatred, aggression, betrayal, lying, deceit, every bit of it -- is a false belief about what you are. It is this false belief that you are this story of me, which itself is nothing other than the question "What am I?" If it is really true that the only problem in life is the false belief about what we are, then it must also be true that the only solution is the truth of what we are. The only thing that can eradicate this false belief is the truth -- not a new belief, such as the belief that "I am Buddha" or "I am God," or "I am infinite awareness itself." These are just new beliefs injected into the storyline of "What am I?" That can't do the job. If it is true that the whole show is predicated on the false belief about what I am, the only solution possible is to know the truth of what I am, right here and now.  

Many people have difficulty hearing Ramana, because he arose in a spiritual culture, surrounded by the most intriguing web of spiritual understandings, insights and practices known in the entire history of humanity. And those who bring Ramana to us, by and large, present Ramana as a saint, a God-like being who bestows upon us the gift of silence and realization. But that is not what Ramana is and it is not what Ramana was.  Ramana brings us again and again to this: The only problem is a false belief about what we are. The only solution is the truth of what we are; therefore, find out what you are. That is self-inquiry.

This is not the ancient teaching of self-inquiry of Shankara and the Upanishads, which held it as the practice that would free the true self from the samsaric delusion that kept it hidden and locked away. This is something different.  The self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi is the gift to each individual human mind of the possibility of discovering, for itself, what it really is. It is the possibility of bypassing the entire array of the story of me -- not fixing it, not making it go away, not making it stay, not prettying it up -- and, just for a second, looking with the full power of attention for what it is that I am, before the words, before knowledge, before understanding. What am I, really, here and now?

As it happens, this is much easier than they make it out to be. And by "they," I mean those who seem to think that reality is something that needs to be attained. Reality is nothing that needs to be attained. Reality is here. It is you. And this is why self-inquiry is really easy. You are always, always here. There is never a second, a millisecond, a nanosecond ever in your life that you are not here. The story isn't always here and it is always changing, but you are always here. You are always the same and you know it. This is the other thing that makes it so easy: you already know it. You may disregard it, deny it and turn away from it, and dive into the lusciousness of the story of me. But you are here, always. You never change. You are always the same. You are never absent. You are here. You cannot deny that you are here. No power on earth can make you deny that you are.

If I say, "You are a good person," you can say, "No, I'm not a good person." Or if I say, "You are a bad person," you can say, "Oh, no I'm not a bad person." But if I say, "You are not," you'll say, "What? I beg your pardon." You can absolutely deny that I am here, as I can deny that you are here. You can say, "Well, that guy is not here. He's just a figment of my imagination, a delusion that has arisen in mind." But if you try to say, "I am not here," you will stumble and fail. You are here, now. The reason that you cannot deny your own existence is the target of self-inquiry. It is the ever present experience of being that never moves, never changes, never shifts. It is not "Being" with a big capital "B," and sparks shooting out of it. It is the absolutely simple, underlying reality of being: I am always here.

Even in the popular world of material aspiration, it is a common insight that shows up in stories, books, sitcoms, where a person who has attained the age of an old geezer like me looks in the mirror and says, "Whoa, wait a minute! I haven't changed! I feel exactly the same as I did when I was twelve." That experience is the target of the self-inquiry. And it is missed most often because it is always here. You miss yourself because you are always here, because you never change, because you don't move, and you are unaffected and untouched by any of it.

The self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi is simply this: whenever you can, whenever it occurs to you, look at this experience of being.  This practice doesn't require that you become a monk or a saint. It doesn't require that you fix the neurotic fixations within your own mind or seek therapy for them.  It doesn't require that you stop seeking therapy for them. It doesn't require that you have huge kundalini experiences from pranayama practice. It doesn't require that you discard those practices and experiences. It doesn't require anything other than, in the midst of the endlessly unfolding, unraveling story of me, whenever you can, whenever it occurs to you, you stop for one second and turn your attention to this that makes it impossible for you to deny that you are. Just for a second, just taste it. Not to taste realization or enlightenment, but just to taste this reality.

And you will bounce away from it, and go back into being in love with the story of me. And that's okay. It is really not a problem. Then, at some point, it will occur to you again to stop for a second and just turn your attention to this experience of being, this unchanging, ordinary reality of being that never moves, that is never affected. And then, you will go off about your business again. It doesn't matter; nothing that happens in the story matters. In this adventure of looking for what you are, nothing that you do wrong matters and nothing that you do right matters. Truth is all that matters. Only those moments of following the deep intention within you to know what you are really have any importance. Those moments matter. The rest of it is really all beside the point.

Whenever you can, as often as you can, without wasting a second of your life regretting the times when you can't, stop for a second and, with your deepest intention, look for this feeling that you are. What am I, really? What is it to be here? What do I mean when I say "I am here?" What does that describe? What is the present experience that it describes?

If I can persuade you to try this, I would advise that you do not look upon it as a spiritual practice. It is much better if you look at it as medicine, like antibiotics. If you were living 5,000 years ago and you became sick, feverish and shaking with chills, and somebody came to you and said, "Listen, I can make you better.  All you have to do is take this little pill, but you have to take it every time you think of it and you have to take it until it runs out." Well, you might say, "That doesn't have anything to do with my sickness, my feverishness and weakness." But if you did what you were told, the medicine would do its work, no matter that you had no idea what was going on and you didn't really understand it. The medicine would still do its work. And this is the way it is with the self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi.  I promise. This is the wonder of it, the magic of it. It is like medicine.

Don't expect that you will suddenly get it. Don't expect anything like that. If you will take the medicine -- whenever it occurs to you, turn your attention to this reality of being -- over time, it will eradicate the false belief about what you are. And just as the false belief has been invisible to you, so too will its eradication be invisible to you. But over time, an easiness, sweetness and clarity will rise like a tide, within the story of you, and reality will have its way. Over time, if you take the medicine.

You cannot have enlightenment. You cannot have self-realization. That you cannot have. That is not available. It is not for sale anywhere, no matter how they try to sell it to you. What you can have is the truth, because you are the truth. This is what I am here for. I am here to encourage you and maybe inspire you a little to look for what is really here, for what you really are. I am the servant of self-inquiry and I am your servant in this. I have nothing to give you, nothing other than this.

© 2006 John Sherman. All rights reserved.