What is Self-Attentiveness?

By Sadhu Om

Sadhu Om wrote this letter on September 18, 1982 in response to questions about Ramana Maharshi’s teachings.

YOU ASK WHETHER BEING ATTENTIVE to the feeling of one’s existence-consciousness is (a) feeling one’s existence or (b) watching the feeling that exists. Both are correct, for they are one and the same. Feeling, watching or attending is consciousness (chit), which is the same as being or existence (sat).

So long as we feel our attention to be other than our being, we are told to make effort to attend to our being, but when we do so correctly (that is, when we turn a full 180 degrees towards our being) we will find that our very being is itself attention to our being. In other words, we will realize that our existence and the consciousness of our existence are one and the same, after which we will find that no effort is required to attend to self, for self-attention (sat-chit) will be known to be our effortless and natural state. That is why verse 990 of Sri Ramana Sahasram ends by saying, “…But why even attend, when my very existence (sat) is itself attention (chit)?”⁠1

You ask how the body is to be felt when one is being attentive to the feeling of one’s existence-consciousness — whether (a) it is to be felt as a part of existence-consciousness, or (b) it is to be felt as a container for our existence-consciousness, or (c) it is not to be thought of at all. Only choice (c) is correct. I have explained that attention itself is attachment.⁠2 The mind or ego, the consciousness ‘I am the body’, grasps (attaches itself to) the body only by attending to it, and that is how it rises or comes into existence, as Sri Bhagavan says in verse 25 of Ulladu Narpadu:

Grasping form [a body], it comes into existence. Grasping form [thoughts or perceptions], it endures. Grasping form, it feeds and grows [flourishes or expands] abundantly. Having left one form, it grasps another form.

It is this tendency to grasp or attach itself to the body and other forms that is to be destroyed. Of all attachments, this attachment to the body (dehabhimana) is the root. Therefore to destroy all attachments, it is sufficient if we destroy this root-attachment. Unless this root-attachment is destroyed, no other attachment can be permanently destroyed, for like the leaves and branches of a tree they will continue to sprout out so long as the root remains undestroyed.⁠3

If we in any way attend to, think of or feel the body, we cannot give up our attachment to it. That is why Sri Bhagavan gives us the all-important clue, “Attend only to the mere feeling ‘I’.” The mind can attend to second and third persons only after it has risen by grasping the body as ‘I’, and hence the mind can never give up its attachment to the body by attending to any second or third person object. The only way to give up one’s attention to (and attachment to) the body is to attend to the mere first person feeling ‘I’.

Though that first person feeling may be taken to be the ego, the mixed awareness ‘I am so-and-so’, ‘I am this body’, what you must try to attend to during self-enquiry is the ‘I’ portion in this mixed awareness. In Maharshi’s Gospel Sri Bhagavan says:

The ego is therefore called chit-jada-granthi [the knot that binds consciousness (chit), ‘I am’, to the non-conscious (jada), this body]. In your investigation into the source of the aham-vritti [the ‘I’-thought or ego), you take the essential chit aspect of the ego…⁠4

That is to say, in the mixed awareness ‘I am the body’, you must try to attend to the ‘I am’ portion (which is chit) and not to the ‘body’ portion (which is jada). When you thus attend to the feeling ‘I’ or ‘I am’, then the ‘body’ feeling, which is only an unreal adjunct, will automatically subside or slip away (since no one is there to attend to it), and the pure ‘I am’ alone will remain shining.

Therefore, when trying to attend to ‘I’ (the feeling of your existence-consciousness), the body (which is a mere second person object) should not at all be thought of or felt in any way. Then only will your attention be a correct and true first person attention. If the thought of the body comes to your mind during self-enquiry, see ‘who knows this body?’ and thereby turn your attention back once more to the mere feeling of ‘I’.

Though it is true that the body cannot exist apart from or outside of existence-consciousness, it should not really be considered to be a part of existence-consciousness, because existence-consciousness is in absolute truth the one undivided and unlimited whole, which admits no parts. And to think of the body as a container for our existence-consciousness is still more wrong, for the reason given by Sri Bhagavan in verse 3 of Ekatma Panchakam:

When in fact the body is within self, [which is] existence-consciousness-bliss (sat-chit-ananda), he who thinks that self is within that insentient body is like one who thinks that the cloth [of the screen], which is the substratum of the [cinema] picture, exists within that picture.⁠5

The experience of a jnani is that he (the existence-consciousness ‘I am’) alone exists, and that the mind, body and all else are mere false appearances, which have no real existence. How can that which is unreal and truly non-existent, be either a part of or a container for that which alone really exists?

You ask whether what one feels as ‘I’ will be either the ego or self. Truly the feeling ‘I’ is only one. When that one feeling ‘I’ remains unmixed with adjuncts it is called ‘self’, and when it appears as if mixed with adjuncts (such as ‘the body’ or ‘so-and-so’) it is called ‘ego’. But since the adjuncts which make up the ego are truly unreal, the ego is only a false appearance (like the seeming snake seen in a rope) while self alone really exists (like the rope which is the base on which the unreal snake appears).

If you are able to understand this truth even intellectually, then you will be able to understand that what one feels as ‘I’ is truly only self and not the ego. But since many people are not able to grasp this truth, and since they believe that what they feel now as ‘I’ is only the ego and not self, Sri Bhagavan used to advise them to attend to the ego-feeling, and he said that if the ego is thus attended to, it will disappear, as he says in verse 25 of Ulladu Narpadu:

When sought [or scrutinized], this formless ghost, the ego, takes to flight.

This is just like saying to a person who is frightened on seeing a snake, “Look at it carefully and it will disappear.” If he thus looks closely at the snake, it will disappear, being found to be nothing but a rope.

Therefore, even if you now think that what you feel as ‘I’ is the ego, if you attend to it vigilantly you will find that it is not really the ego but only your real self. That is why it is written, “Moreover, it is not necessary for sincere aspirants even to name beforehand the feeling ‘I’ either as ego or as self.”⁠6 Since all people know clearly and without doubt that they have the feeling ‘I’, it is also written, “Thus it is sufficient if we cling to the feeling ‘I’ uninterruptedly till the very end. What is important to be sure of during practice is that our attention is turned only towards ‘I’, the first person singular feeling.”⁠7

The reason why the difference between enquiry in the form ‘whence am I?’ and enquiry in the form ‘who am I?’ has been analysed elsewhere⁠8 is not to suggest that there is any difference between attending to the ego and attending to self, but is only to show that — even though the ‘I’ in ‘whence am I?’ can only be the ego and not self (since self can never have a source or a place of rising) — enquiry into the source or rising-place of the ego (by investigating ‘whence am I?’) is the same both in practice and in result as enquiry into self (by investigating ‘who am I?’). That is why it is written, “In either of these two kinds of enquiry, since the attention of the aspirant is focused only on himself, nothing other than the real self, which is the true import of the word ‘I’, will be finally experienced.”⁠9

Another point to be noted is that whereas in the question ‘whence am I?’ the word ‘I’ denotes only the ego, in the question ‘who am I?’ it may be taken to denote either the ego or self. But whichever one may take it to denote, it will make no difference either to the practice (which is to attend only to the feeling ‘I’) or to the result (which is to know the true nature of ‘I’).

Notes

Reprinted from The Mountain Path, July 2009.

Sri Sadhu Om was a direct disciple of Sri Ramana Maharshi. In later years he was Muruganar’s literary executor and a collaborator with Michael James on numerous literary projects.

Links

This page was first published on July 20, 2025 and last revised on July 20, 2025.