Nan Yaar – Who am I?

One size fits all

Ever since the world has gone into an indefinite lockdown, people have chalked out innumerable strategies to counter this isolation. Our mind after all is what wanders the most and can take you to the extreme degrees of events which at most times isn’t even real. To calm this unrest within, many have retorted to meditation as a solace during these times. ‘Finding yourself’ or ‘going within’ is the slogan doing the rounds. I took to write this post to explore a bit more on these terms and give my two cents in helping those trying a hand at it after practicing and reading it for nearly three years.

The most common myth people hold about meditating is that it needs intense practice, focus, dedication and time. All of this is false. I have been meditating without a set time in the day. I have not taken any formal education in this art apart from reading about it. Alternatively, you need not strive extremely hard on focussing right from day 1. Focus as an ability improves as your practice gets stronger and as long as you remain diligent to the exercise. Importantly, you can belong to any religion, caste, creed, financial or health status as all these are oblivious to the science of meditation.

Self – realization

There have been innumerable masters in the history of mankind who have reasoned about life, its elements, humanity and God alike through meditation. Right from Gautam Buddha who deduced man’s reason for suffering to Viktor Frankl in Auschwitz looking for meaning of life to Steve Jobs looking for inspiration and modern day philosophers – all have attributed immensely to the practice of meditation to arrive at their queries (problems or breakthroughs). It is not that meditation is the only reason people have been successful in what they do, but meditation as an aid with their unflinching quest has been pivotal in their journeys all along.

I stumbled across the work of one such master from the 18^th century named Ramana Maharshi. His enquiry on the self, through “Nan Yaar” or “Who am I” is seen as one of the quintessential discoveries in the science of knowing yourself or going within. I have found the learning to be extremely profound in calming the wavering mind of all its dogmas and focussing on the truth that matters. To explain the process of self-enquiry, Maharshi in an interview through gestures and minimal usage of words decrypts all that one must know ‘what we are not’.

By comprehending what we aren’t, individuals can distance themselves from the trivial issues that constantly engulf them. These issues which eventually take them away from one’s own inherent joy. He decodes the concept of this awareness and its nature. What is the meaning of mind and thought and its similarities? What is the world that we see in our daily lives? What do the terms, ‘inwardness’, ‘externalisation’ and ‘release’ infer?

Post his pursuit in finding the self, he narrates that we are not the body comprising of the seven tissues (dhatus) – plasma, blood, muscle, fat, bone, marrow / nerve, and reproductive tissue. We are not even the five cognitive sensory organs through which we hear, touch, see, taste and smell. We are not the functions of speaking, moving, grasping, excreting and enjoying. We are not the five airs (prana, apaana, vyana, samana and udana) which perform the function of breathing. We are not the mind or ignorance endowed in residual objects. If we are none of these, then Who am I?

Maharshi says when I denounce each of them as not this, not this, ‘I am the awareness that knows I am none of these’. The nature of this awareness is existence, consciousness and bliss that is devoid of all materials and the world itself. Therefore, I am not whatever changes happen internally in me due to an external stimulus, I am only the awareness of these changes in me. Nothing else.

For the world that we see is nothing but our thoughts that reside in our mind. When this mind is silenced, there is no world that ever exists. A phenomenon when we are in deep sleep, the mind shuts – no thought occurs and hence no world exists. We are within the self at this moment. When we are awake with our thoughts that ignite the mind, the world appears. We are now in the world and away from the self. An event we experience in our regular life when we are entangles in hordes of activities and loose sense of the self. Therefore, we can safely say that our mind is nothing more than a collection of innumerable thoughts which leads to suffering when we externalize it in worldly matters.

The mind is hence similar to thoughts and comprises nothing but a collection of thoughts. This mind can only be removed when it becomes quiescent or calm. The path to achieving calmness within the mind is through constant querying, ‘Who am I” which will naturally kill other thoughts and lead us onto self-realization.

Hence when a thought arises, forget how and why it came up but focus on – to whom this thought has been raised – the answer being – ‘to me’. Then query ‘Who am I’, with the answer of awareness as mentioned above. With this cycle any thought goes to calm by itself or is destroyed. This repeated practice keeps the mind still within yourself leading it to ‘inwardness’. The essence of Self – Query and knowing Who am I is non-attachment with any worldly thought. Destroying all such thoughts and keeping them in its origin is a critical function of non-attachment. ‘Release’ is obtained by each one through his own effort while pursuing the path of knowing himself with his own knowledge. Not by the knowledge of others about you.

This is where happiness exists, in the self and not in any outwardly world matter or event. When the mind is externalized it only subjects itself to misery as it fails to see the contentment within. It fails to acknowledge the self; it stops querying on the I and therefore is involved in all the noise outside. It will always blame others and other events leading to constant dissatisfaction.

Breathe

The above method of self-inquiry can be overwhelming for fresh starters. Before you start wondering on what I have been smoking, let me layout a simpler path of understanding thyself. Regular meditation prepares you for extreme focus on querying the self. This is a method I mostly follow before graduating on to the above stage. This stage is directed at only focusing on your breath. Do nothing else. Before trying to understand the world, try and see if you can understand yourself. Close your eyes, remain silent and try to focus on your breath – inhaling and exhaling. If you are new to this method you will find how often the mind wanders.

This is the externalization Ramana Maharshi speaks about in his interview. The idea of focusing on your breath is therefore to calm the mind and destroy all thoughts. Eckhart Tolle in his bestselling book ‘The Power of Now’ also speaks on the mind as a culprit of all negativity.

Destruction of thought does not mean you fight or get upset when it interrupts you. Let the thought flow alone with no attention from your end. Focus again on your inhaling and exhaling routine. Continue to do so, until you are at ease and no other thought intervenes. Once you have attained this state, focus on your body, the pain, the anger or any such emotion within. Every emotion within is essentially millions of neurons in your brain been fired from one end to the other. It is a chemical reaction within your brain. When you get angry, a million neurons are fired to make you feel so. When you get happy, it’s the same. Whatever happens outside, they only cause a million neurons to be fired within the brain. Hence do not lay too much impetus on the emotions or what caused it.

Observe and feel them with your eyes closed and your focus still rested on the breathing. An external event therefore has no power over you. When you observe this closely you eventually make yourself immune to anything that is happening outside. As all queries are raised within to the self and least depends on externalization.

In trying times, understanding the essence of inwardness is what creates everlasting joy or happiness. You may start this practice, again with the simple technique on focusing on your breath and asking questions to yourself on what are your emotions and how do you react to them. When you are able to rationalize and manage these efficiently is when you have start understanding the self and are void to everything that happens out.