Self-Knowledge

S. RAMU

THROUGH much of our life, we seek to

experience and acquire knowledge of many things outside ourselves. While knowledge of certain external things does have functional value, all such knowledge does not have beneficial results. Pursuit of such knowledge has not liberated man from the basic problems of life such as fear, violence and egoism. Such knowledge can even be a barrier to knowing something else that may be of greater value. Knowledge of the material world seems to create its own ignorance! Perhaps that is why certain wisdom traditions have distinguished between higher knowledge (par-vidy or brahma-vidy, which must include selfknowledge) and lower knowledge (apar-vidy or knowledge of the external world acquired through the senses). Why should I have self-knowledge? Life in general, my experiences of the world and their impact on me, must also depend on what I know of myself. I need to understand myself, since the values of all things external to me depend on my assessment of them. I may attach high importance or value to something unimportant, of no value or even nega-

tive value, and vice versa. It is also possible that the fundamental human problems (misery, struggle, suffering, etc.) and therefore my own problems are a result of the absence of selfknowledge. As Plato said: It seems ludicrous to me to study things external when I do not know my own self. J. Krishnamurti recommended: You are not to understand the teachings; you are to understand yourself. While perceiving and experiencing the external world, what I perceive or experience could be treated as a mirror-reflection of myself, and I can contemplate such reflections to know myself by my own thoughts and behaviour. How do I come to know who I am? I have no option but to start with the question, Who am I? Further, every time I experience anything, I need to keep asking myself the same question (Who is experiencing?) in different forms. Am I only a physical being? Can I know without wanting to understand only what I want? Can I reason without rationalizing my desires? Can intellectual understanding lead to a transformation that will free me from the shackles of time, space,

Mr S. Ramu is Manager of the Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar. August 2007 425

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cause and effect, and the fundamental causes of human afflictions? Is not transformation constrained by the innate human needs to exist, to know, to be happy (or to be at peace and blissful)? How may I be inspired to find from within and from the abundant sources in Nature? How should I prepare myself as a fit pupil, and what qualities would make me receptive to understand? Can I open my mind and be capable of unveiled perception? Who am I? Am I my ego, or individual self, spirit, consciousness, etc. ? I did not seem to have had any ego or individual self as an infant, though some latent physiological tendencies for selfpreservation seem to have existed in infancy. My individual consciousness or ego seems to have come into being through reactions to external stimuli. My ego seems to have developed a tendency to react to external stimuli based on what it perceived as favourable or unfavourable, tendencies of attraction and aversion. How did this ego come about? In other words, a consciousness (or a life principle), in a very dormant state at birth, by experiencing the environment and by storing such experience as memory, gets filled with memories and thoughts. These experiences, memories, and thoughts react to the environment as being favourable and unfavourable for its own existence, forming a vicious circle, in which the only preoccupation of the ego is to gain more experience to strengthen itself. Such an ego seems to have developed
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fear as a mechanism for its own defence and for the defence of the body on which it is dependent. This fear, which is one form of insecurity for the ego, seems to drive all its functions, including various defence mechanisms. This is due to lack of intelligence, a false perception of threat to the egos security when there is neither security nor anything to be secured. Crippled by its own self-inflicted fear, the ego wants to escape from threat and suffering, rather than meet them. While in the egos morbid imagination there is suffering, there is no escape from it; the only other option is to let intelligence take over from the ego to deal with suffering through understanding suffering. Therefore fear is the compounding of several false perceptions of the ego, which seem to base the egos tendencies on a fundamental duality of approach I and all external objects. All objects are broadly classified as favourable and unfavourable. It is a paradox that the ego, a mere aggregate of experiences, memories, and thoughts, which has no substance, becomes a being together with the body through which this aggregate seems to function. The egos transformation into thought seems to impose a self-identity, I-ness, on the thinker, who is the same as the ego! Therefore, the questions arise: Can I transform myself so as to be different from the identity imposed by thoughts on the ego? How can I experience the external without adding to the ego-ness? Will any type of action destroy this fictitious aggregate? If action cannot
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be avoided, how can I act without adding to the ego? Does it depend on action without motive, without anticipating a definite outcome or being affected by the outcome? Can I know good and evil? Amongst other things, in forming a sentence, a predicate or predicative adjective cannot be avoided. To say, I am is not correct, though it is the only truth; hence we are sentencing ourselves with I am this or I am that, giving an identity to the ego. Thoughts such as this is mine, I am enjoying, I am suffering, I own, I lost, I am attractive, I am disliked and I achieved are all, due to providing their attributes-based and experience-based identity for the ego, counterproductive to self-knowledge. Thoughts and words twist truth; the symbolic attributes-based identity is projected for the real, attributeless self, even as a statue of a god is projected for that god. The ego may be made sublime. Giving up thoughts implies giving up the habit of forming images, judgements, evaluations, including those of oneself, which means memories of my experiences of pain and pleasure. Thought turned outwards is ego and, when turned inwards, dissolves into pure consciousness. Avoiding ego-motivated thoughts is not avoiding creative thinking or escaping troublesome thoughts and actions. It may suit the ego to be a (pseudo) jni to escape from troublesome thoughts and actions. Therefore, I cannot and must not avoid actions, but I can try and limit my actions to the expression of my sense of
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responsibility and not be triggered by the egos self-serving thoughts. The ultimate right conduct is egolessness, and every act becomes bad conduct if there is a motive. Motives are the egos tools. Selfless and virtuous thoughts and actions are not those of the ego, for virtues are children of intelligence. Virtues also have their own intelligence, and compassion is the most important virtue to be practised. Compassion has its own intelligence, as is seen to a great extent in mothers of newborn infants. Egoism, its sense of I, becomes an automated response-system like a computer based on a set programme (in the egos case, the programming is through the experiences it has undergone). Such a conditioning of the mind contributes to its sense of separateness. Therefore, in the initial stages, the effort needed may well be towards unconditioning the mind. Once the quality of not retaining memories is reached, further effort may not be required. The ego and the real I are opposites if one is true the other must be untrue. The opposite of the real is unreal and the unreal ego does not have a substance-based existence. I can only say that I am that which is not an object to me. I have to progress from who I am not, to who I am. The steps include withdrawal of thoughts from the knowledge of all things external, so that the internal can be realized. At any given moment, only one experience is possible. Only in the absence of experience of the external, is the experience of the internal possible.
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The course covers denial as well as discovery, renunciation as well as realization. The renunciation is that of the ego, its thoughts, its knowledge and its experiences, and the realization is that of the fictitious nature of the ego and the non-viability of the concept of security for the ego. Even as I am contemplating these facts, I am aware that I cannot apply thought to realize the truth. How do I realize these facts beyond thought for truth? The ego can withdraw when it projects itself as thought. I must limit attention to creative thinking and to the present. Can there be attention without thought? Functional thoughts that cannot be avoided can be allowed to leave without residue of any kind, as a bird that leaves no trace of its flight across the sky. This means I must constantly be selfaware (including being aware of the ego) and remember the fact that, at the ego

level, I am just an aggregate of a set of experiences, lacking real substance. In such a state, I have to discriminate between good and evil, following the good and shunning the evil through a dispassionate, non-personal approach. My perception should change. I should try and avoid mistaking facts of life for the truth underlying all of life. Truth is not a static experience, and hence there is no question of someone like me striving to arrive at the truth or realize the truth, though glimpses into it are possible. When I get a glimpse of the truth, I may not need to consciously strive after good, yet I cannot do evil! Even as I do not realize truth, I can start by meditating on these facts. These practices may well be true meditations for selfknowledge through which, ultimately, I, meditation, and self-knowledge may become one. In that state of oneness, the question Who am I drops away and there is none left to ask.

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. . . . Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.

Henry David Thoreau

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