In “Verse 5” of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s Ulladu Narpadu (trans. Michael James), we read:

The body is a form of five sheaths. Therefore all five are included in the term ‘body’. Without a body, is there a world? Leaving the body, is there anyone who has seen a world? Say.

My purpose, in this post, is to focus only on the first two sentences and to set aside the last three.

For the question invariably arises, “If Advaita Vedanta is right to claim that the ego is nothing but the ‘I am the body’ idea, then what sense can be made of this claim?”

Sri Ramana Maharshi helps us out here. The body is just form, and what’s being said is that there are five forms with which ‘the I’ can identify itself–namely, with

• The gross body
• The energy body
• The mind body
• The intellect body
• The blissful state body

Self-inquiry involves zeroing in on the I-thought or what I’ll term the “I-sense”: the sense of being me-with-form, the sense of my existing as a form.

In which case, we’re initially invited to “lock in” or “hone in on” the I-sense–whether the latter, in the current experience, felt in a physical way, in an energetic way, in a mental or intellectual way, or in a blissful state sort of way.

And then the crux: regardless of the form that may seem to be that with which ‘the I’ is currently identified, we’re then invited to ask: “What is the source of this I-sense or I-form?” In other words, the investigation’s supreme point is to see through the illusion of the I’s grasping onto any form whatsoever and thus to realize that the true and only I is formless indeed.