One key to understanding self-inquiry is to get, at the level of practice, what Ramana Maharshi means when he says that you need to “go back the way you came.”

1. When Ramana Maharshi says, in particular, that at the root of all thoughts is the I-thought, what he means is that all objective experiences seem to point back to the sense of being “a me.”

Let’s look more closely at this proposal. Since the waking and sleep states are effectively “thoughts” or “thought forms,” we can translate the broad use of the word “thought,” here, into “objective experiences.” The latter refer to thoughts (in the narrow sense) as well as to feelings, sensations, and perceptions.

Notice what we can see through self-inquiry. It is that all objective experiences seem to “hang on” while “pointing back to” the very one who, allegedly, is experiencing each of them and all of them. For the belief really is that this activity (thinking or feeling) is contingent whereas that one who is experiencing it–and, again, all–is essential. No one seriously believes that his sense of individuality hangs on any activity or objective experience in particular. The unexamined idea, clearly, is not that I perish when thinking or seeing ceases. The basic assumption is that there really does seem to be this sense of “being myself” that’s “behind” every objective experience but is not, of course, exhausted by any experience.

2. That which is seemingly “behind” every objective experience is, again, the I-thought. The latter, then, is “the target” of self-inquiry. And so, as we “go back” from objective experiences to the I-thought, we’re then told to stick with the I-thought.

Why?

3. So that the I-thought can “go back to” its essential source. The reason that the I-thought “goes back to” its source is that it’s discovered that there actually isn’t such an I-thought in the first place. This phantom subject doesn’t actually exist and so what’s revealed is that the I-thought is really only “I am I” and has never actually been anything other than “I am I.”

4. When one is established in and as “I am I,” then there’s no more “going back” or “going out.” This establishment Ramana Maharshi terms “sahaja samadhi.”