JOURNEY BACK TO THE SELF

A Complete Guide and Roadmap to Self-Inquiry

with Rajiv Kapur

Self-Realization is not a question of attainment. Rather, it is a recognition of our true, pristine awareness which has gone into oblivion due to its association with various objects (i.e., 2nd person and 3rd person objects).

We were all born with happiness and joy in our hearts — the knowledge and perception of the pure blissful ‘I AM’. As we started to grow ‘wiser’ to the ways of the world, we picked up many other forms of understanding through the faculties of our !ve senses.

is way we started becoming aware of something more than our original ‘I AM’ feeling. We began to apprehend something which is a combination of many perceptions along with the original ‘I AM’. From ‘I AM’ we began to recognize ‘I AM so and so’ (forms and names).

e perception of this ‘mixed awareness’, which contaminates our original pure awareness, is the basic cause of ignorance and human suffering.

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erefore, self-inquiry practice involves: “withdrawing/isolating the subject ‘I’ from all the objects that it associates with, latching on to the witnesser of such a subject, sinking into and becoming that witnesser, and then following such a feeling (the witnesser being the real ‘ME’ or ‘I’ ) right till the very end until all three (i.e. object, subject and witnesser) disappear totally.” is single sentence sums up the complete journey back to our original true perception or pure awareness.

What constitutes practice is therefore the retracing of our steps back from a mixed awareness (including awareness of the names and forms that we have adopted) to a uni!ed consciousness of pure ‘I AM’.

For the sake of convenience, the journey back to the true SELF, or pure ‘I AM’, may be undertaken at two levels, viz. ‘WAKING STATE MEDITATION’ and ‘FORMAL SITTING MEDITATION’.

Please see accompanying videos on the Rajiv Kapur YouTube Channel.

LEVEL 1 (WAKING STATE MEDITATION) is all about stepping back and isolating the subject from outer objects and then feeling/being the I- witnesser [i.e. the one who witnesses the Subject ‘I’]. is is explained in Video 1. LEVEL 2 (FORMAL SITTING MEDITATION) consists of following, or pursuing, the felt I-witnesser relentlessly beyond the waking state into the void (through formal sitting meditation). is is explained in Video 2.

Video 3 introduces a technique named ‘Implosive Self-Inquiry’ which helps in carrying out inquiry in a scienti!c manner and assures faster and quicker results by breaking the two knots of ignorance which bind consciousness to the false identi!cation — "I am the body".

A detailed explanation of the above follows.

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LEVEL 1/PART 1: WAKING STATE MEDITATION

Reference Orange #1 in Chart 1 below.

is forms the very foundation on which the entire Self-Inquiry Practice is based.

“Isolating the subject ‘I’ from all the objects that it associates with, latching on to the witnesser of such a subject, and sinking into and becoming that witnesser” !rst involves bringing the attention away from the second person object (he/she and related thoughts/images), as well as the third person object (them and related thoughts/images), and focusing it !rst on the subject ‘I’ or ‘ME’. is will bring one’s attention !rst to the body.

en the second step consists of latching on to the witnesser of the body (i.e., subject ‘I’) and sinking into the feeling ‘I am that witnesser’.

Having withdrawn from the foreground [the sum of all objects and the subject ‘I’] and become focused on the witnesser as the background awareness, one must then sink/melt into that witnesser as one’s inner self.

Such a practice must be done at regular intervals, usually through a mental inner question such as “Who perceives this?” or “To whom does this appear?”.

For example, if you experience anger or fear arising within you, ask the question, “Who perceives this?” is question will !rst bring your awareness to your body.

en ask, “Who perceives this body?” is will point to the witnesser.

en sink into that witnesser and become one with it.

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Such a practice would lead to an impersonal space of awareness, usually recognized and felt as stillness or peace — which is often referred to as “e NOW” or “Present”.

At !rst, the practice requires consistent effort of inner questioning and a resultant recognition of the background awareness at regular periods (usually every 45 minutes or 1 hour) during the waking state.

Over a period of time, this practice becomes effortless and the background witnesser is experienced as an increasingly profound stillness, peace and harmony. e mind is automatically drawn towards “being” the witnesser and enjoys staying inward, irrespective of the way events unfold outside. Now we come to an important revelation, which is that the recognition/awareness (of the NOW), even if having qualities of stillness and peace, is still unreal as it disappears during sleep, whereas the Real is ever present and neither arises nor falls/leaves.

It means that one’s newly found ‘awareness’ needs to be puri#ed further.

e !ve senses are the culprits which contaminate the pure ‘I AM’. Hence they too need to be teased out of, or eliminated from, this awareness in order that pure ‘I AM’ may emerge. at is made possible only through formal sitting meditation which constitutes LEVEL 2/PART 2 of the series on Self-Inquiry.

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LEVEL 2/PART 2: FORMAL SITTING MEDITATION

Reference Red #2 in Chart 1 below.

LEVEL 2/PART 2 of the series ‘Self-Inquiry-Practice’ is Formal Sitting Meditation which addresses the central and probably the most vital part of Self-Inquiry.

It consists of following the ‘I’ to the very end point where it disappears. It traces awareness right back to the source from where the ‘I AM’ (pure awareness) !rst arises.

Obviously, such an inquiry can only take place beyond the waking state.

To be aware of such a state, one must move beyond the mind, which itself is a huge challenge as the #ve senses bind consciousness to the body-mind.

Practice here is far more complicated, and intricate, than that in the waking state because the subject-object-witnesser all appear to be the same at this level. Everything looks the same, being perceived as a blank void within.

erefore, separating the subject from the objects (2nd person and 3rd person) is extremely difficult.

For example, it is a common experience during meditation to feel that one has experienced a “thoughtless” state for just a moment. One then desires and looks for that experience again. One wonders, “Where did that state (thoughtless) go?”. One then begins to stop thoughts forcibly and to repeat past modes, or recreate conditions, in order to get to that thoughtless state again.

But one is bound to miss it each time that one tries to do so, because every such planned effort is just another thought — an object which needs to be

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dropped and not chased as a goal. is is just one example of an object being mistakenly regarded as a subject.

Similarly, one can experience lights and sounds within during deeper meditation and these could all give rise to the illusion of a false subject.

One may be attending to an object, rather than the witnesser of the same, for years, never realizing that the observed is actually an object itself.

e inner void is a labyrinth of various false subjects and it takes much practice to evolve a keen sense of discrimination and to notice that there is a witnesser to even such a false subject. And even if such wisdom and discrimination ensues over time as he matures in practice, the practitioner could still remain trapped there for many years, making no further progress inwards. He may experience himself falling back repeatedly to a wall of void, not knowing how to penetrate it. ese are all examples of “false subjects”. 

Besides these false subjects, the various distractions in terms of bodily sensations, emotions, pain-body and memory-body tendencies can also frequently pull a practitioner’s attention away from the abidance in the ‘I’. at is why a more scienti!c approach would be to withdraw life-force from these needless distractions, thereby enabling the one who practices inquiry in sitting meditation to attend completely to the background witnesser.

PART 3 of the series on Self-Inquiry deals with the technique named ‘Implosive Self-Inquiry’ which helps ful!ll that very objective.

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THE IMPLOSIVE SELF-INQUIRY METHOD

‘Implosive Self-Inquiry’ is a dynamic form of inquiry practiced in formal sitting meditation, so as to make one’s practice most effective and least time-consuming, thereby serving as a catalyst to achieve the goal of Self-Realization.

Every night we withdraw from the outer world into ourselves and fall into deep sleep, wherein there is neither ‘I’ (form and name), nor the world.

Every day, after a good night’s sleep, just before coming back fully to the waking state, we experience pure ‘I AM’, but within a matter of a second consciousness rushes down the brain  through the 72,000 nadis [neural pathways] and the outward thrust of the body-mind mechanism resumes.

One’s sense of body form-name arises again and with that the identi!cation with it as well (please see the yellow line in CHART 2 below). is causes the principle ignorance that “I am the body”.

Subsequently, we start to relate to the world through our bodies and through 2nd person/3rd person object-subject relationships (see yellow line in CHART 2).

rough sitting meditation, we seek to reverse the process where attention is !rst brought back to the subject (away from all objects) and then redirected to the HEART.

ere are two knots which prevent us from achieving the same easily. One is the Nadi knot and the other is the Heart knot. Untying both the knots is most essential for the pure ‘I AM’ to emerge and for the I-thought to retire back into the source (Heart).

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At the outset, the Implosive Self-Inquiry method breaks the Nadi knot wherein the attention is !rst brought to the ‘ird eye’ and the life-force is directed upwards towards the sahasrar [crown of the head] without the use of breathing techniques/pranayamas. Please see CHART 2 below.

is helps in arresting the ceaseless %ow of thoughts and also pulls the life-force away from the sense organs. is, in turn, brings about what appears to be a complete collapse of the body-mind mechanism, leading to laya/dissolution (samadhi). is results in untying the Nadi knot.

With no distracting pull from the body-mind, consciousness is then redirected or sent spiraling backwards (through the Amrita Nadi) into the source [Heart] through an intuitive perception of surrender. Please see the green line in CHART 2.

is results in the untying of the Heart knot where even the #rst principle ‘I’ folds into the timeless.

In!nite love and bliss are experienced in this paradoxical state wherein the SELF is both here and not here. e sadhaka/meditator/seeker enjoys uninterrupted periods of peace and bliss. e ultimate goal of Self-Realization is thus attained.

IMPORTANT NOTE

It is absolutely vital to seek personal instruction from a Master before attempting to force the life-force upwards into the third eye and sahasrar.

©2013 Rajiv Kapurhttp://www.rajivkapur.com

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CHART 1

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CHART 2

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