What is required to undertake self-inquiry?

Sri Sadhu Om answers the questions masterfully: one needs “unbreakable indifference” to mental and worldly objects as well as a “tremendous love to attend [only] to ourself” (The Path of Sri Ramana [2023], p. 90).

The first is vairagya–dispassion or detachment–and yet this “unbreakable indifference” needs to be better understood. I find that I withdraw my interest from worldliness and from habits of thoughts because I want, above all else, to be who I am. My life question is no longer about how I can “get on” in the world or about how I can achieve happiness “in the world”; I see that these ideas are bankrupt. The natural consequence of seeing that these ideas are bankrupt is that I turn within.

Which brings us to what I take, in fact, to be the sufficient condition on its own: love of pure being. There is–Sadhu Om rightly puts it–a love, a spirit of devotion as regards the essential nature of being. Desireless and with one-pointed concentration, I love only myself (atma svarupa).

To love pure being–my essential nature–is to know myself alone. To know, or love, myself alone is to be myself alone. And being myself alone is nothing but abiding as the happiness that I am.