What’s very special, it could be said, about Self-inquiry is that it’s an inquiry. But what sort of inquiry is it?

Not, to be sure, a philosophical inquiry whose point is to come to unimaginable clarity in the mode of thought (see The Art of Inquiry). Usually, the conclusion of a philosophical inquiry is a new insight.

Unlike philosophical inquiry, Self-inquiry is an inquiry into what is self-evident. That sounds puzzling! How can one inquire into the self-evident? Isn’t this a patent contradiction?

No. We need to avail ourselves of a distinction between appearance and Reality. Once we do, then we can allow for ego to be an appearance and for Consciousness to be Reality. Crucial, though, is to have the conviction that the nature of the appearance is Reality, much as the nature of all gold ornaments is gold.

Holding onto this conviction, one attends only to this sense of I (appearance), and what’s revealed is the nature (Reality) of this I. The immediate recognition is that the essence of this very I is nothing but the Self.

This is all very sweet and fascinating, not the least because some meditations are affirmations (“I am Brahman,” for instance) while others are negations (neti neti). Yet Self-inquiry is neither: it is neither an affirmation nor a negation but, in essence, the silent, sacred question whose answer is the direct recognition of experience of the Self.