A wonderful comment from a dear friend on his experience with self-inquiry....
It is difficult for me to say anything about self-inquiry due to many reasons, mainly:
1. I am in no way qualified to say anything about self-inquiry;
2. Even though I consider myself a devotee of Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi, I have never practiced self-inquiry as a question “Who am I”;
3. During the last year, the many concepts I believed to be true have disappeared [which I only noticed now] without any trouble, so why bother with which concept is right, wrong, or helpful? Concepts will come and go, they were never helpful or disturbing, so why worry about them too much; and
4. My writing is not good.
Accidentally, when I was introduced to Bhagavan, I never considered his main teaching as Self-Inquiry. To this date, I have no idea about his teachings but somehow, I have an innate knowing and trust that whatever Bhagavan is or whatever he said cannot be understood by my little mind so why bother? So, anything I say here is incorrect, but I will try to explain some of my experiences.
I write this as thoughts come to me so this might not be directed or pointed. Another reason I may have disregarded self-inquiry as an intellectual inquiry [question and answer] may be my Buddhist background. Inquiry is a very common concept in Theravada Buddhism, and I had a first-hand experience of how bad it has turned out over the centuries in the Buddhist world.
I had an inclination for meditation and spiritual realization from my childhood [age 12]. I had no understanding of any other religion but Buddhism, so I followed Buddhist inquiry as Suresh has explained, but by the age of 20-25, I was deeply questioning and arguing with many great teachers: “Whether this is right or even something that truly explained by Buddha? Imagine the reception I got!!!!!
During this period, accidentally, while searching for something else, Bhagavan’s photo appeared which I was deeply attracted to. After some inquiries, I came across “Who am I”. Even though it was identical to Buddhist negation practice, I felt something so profound, so wholesome and sacred. I was never able to explain it to this date, the words took me beyond the words. The words made me still. As I had a feeling of sacredness, profound fullness where no direction can be pointed where no words can explain, or no intellectual inquiry can understand. I immediately felt Bhagavan is the truth and the path. If anybody wants to interpret this can be interpreted as the positive part in comparison to the negation part, the missing piece or the essential piece which takes you beyond the mind and intellect.
I do not know how to analyse this but in simple terms: neti, neti inquiry did not satisfy me, maybe unconsciously I was looking for what really is [popular Buddhism does not have much of a concept of what really is, so to a certain degree I was concept free and I always rejected the concept of all-powerful God (as I knew those days)]. Maybe, doing neti, neti practice for quite some time helped me to immediately feel the awareness from which Bhagavan’s words arose, I do not know.
What I can honestly say is, if you are a devotee of a true master, particularly Bhagavan, and if you are honest as much as you can including honesty about your own dishonesty, if you read his words close to your heart, always without a doubt the pure awareness of your true nature will be discovered. This may be just a smell at the beginning or may be very subtle, but you will never miss it. The deeper it happens, any questions of self-inquiry or any other will disappear. The egotistic urge to get enlightened [which serves a purpose] will disappear. Life will become incredibly normal and self-inquiry will start happening to you. You will start to feel how correct the words of Jesus when he said [“Be still and know “I am” God”], [“I am” that “I am” ] and [“I am” the way and the Goal].
Ultimately, in my experience, it is so simple. Whatever the means you have, try honestly without creating an ego around it or trying to be the correct person. Somewhere along the line, you will meet a great master. After that most of your job is done, your master will take care of you, so let it happen, don’t look for knowledge outwardly. Then enjoy the ride, you can not do much other than enjoy. As “I am” consciousness came spontaneously, it will also go “spontaneously”.
So in my experience, I do not know whether there is a right or wrong way to do self-inquiry. If you are honest about the purpose of the inquiry, it will happen to you according to your character or you will do it according to your character [both these things are same]. I may be wrong in saying this, but this is so far my experience.