The ultimate teaching of nonduality is ajata: nothing ever came into being; or: nothing ever happened; or: only being is and non-being, necessarily, is not.

One can discover the truth of ajata through an incisive type of self-inquiry. Here is Sri Sadhu Om making a most significant remark in passing:

In that state of true awareness, we attain the firm conviction that no such thing ever came to be; it did not arise; there is only being; that which exists as ‘I am’ exists simply as it is.

–The Path of Sri Ramana (2023), p. 131.

Context matters. The “thing” in question here is the ego, or I-thought. Let’s begin by taking a step back.

Because the world and the body are only concepts, “external phenomena” rise only with the rising of the mind. Thus, we need to tack back to the mind and inquire into it.

What is the mind? It’s only thought. And what is, provisionally speaking, at the heart of the mind? It is the sense of I, the rising I, the I-thought.

Hence, the target of self-investigation is the nature of the I-thought.

Of course, every practice is, in some sense, a gimmick, and this is just as true of self-inquiry. Usually, then, self-inquiry assumes that the rising I has indeed arisen so that it can be scrutinized or investigated: “Who, ultimately, is this rising I?” Or: “Whence this I?” Or: “What is this I really made of?”

But self-inquiry can, as it were, be as direct as possible if it calls immediately into question whether the I has arisen in the first place. How could that have happened, if nothing ever happens? How can there be any arising, let alone the seemingly root arising named “the I-thought,” if there’s never been one single arising? If pure being never became anything, then how could pure being ever have become an ego I?

Perch right here and let the koan intensify, intensify, intensify!