The I-thought (aham vritti) is not at all easy to understand experientially–until you get it.

To come to this experiential understanding, let’s move in a stepwise fashion:

1.) To begin with, a thought appears. That thought, which is indeed an arising, could be: “I am sitting here” or “I don’t like John” or “What a fine day it is.” Truth be told, it doesn’t really matter what the content of the thought is. In Self-inquiry, the interest lies in tracing that from which the experience arose–first back to the I-thought and, “from there,” to the Self.

2a.) Next, the spiritual instruction is to see that any thought has to have an I-thought as its “root.” That is to say, one first “goes back” to the “sense of me,” which is the sense of an ego-I that “had” the thought that occurred in 1.).

2b.) And what is this I-thought more specifically? Well, that’s the tricky part since ultimately the I-thought does not exist. Though unverbalized, the I-thought could be tentatively formulated thus: “I am something that exists” or “I am something that exists behind all thoughts.” Or it could be an “inner feeling of I-ness.” Or it could be “the sense that I–this allegedly existing I–am limited and localized inside of the body.” One you experience the I-sense or I-thought, you can “go back to it” as indicated in 2a.)

3a.) Now, staying with this I-thought, one asks, “But what am I, really?” Or: “Wherefrom does this sense of I arise?” Some expositors emphasize the fact that one is not really to ask but is instead to have the flavor of the question. Others will speak of seeing or scrutinizing. It seems to me that all of these approaches are legitimate, provided that “the question” or “the flavor of the question” slowly reveals the unreality of the I-thought and the only Reality that is the Self.

3b.) Because the ego or I-thought is inherently unstable–it quivers between formlessness (the Self) and form (a thought) but, in truth, isn’t actually existent–“holding onto the I-thought,” as Sri Ramana says, can’t but reveal the formless Reality–the Self–that one truly is.

Poetically put, Sri Ramana tells us that the I-thought ultimately “merges into the Heart.”