James: If I tell you that I can show you the way to verify Vedanta’s counterintuitive assertion that you are unborn immortal whole and complete existence shining as awareness/consciousness you will probably be inspired to learn the method of Self inquiry.
MT: As an aside, FWIW Self Inquiry (at least as far as I have understood and practised it) hasn’t (so far?) persuaded me of a grand ontological truth about my self (or Self).
It (alongside reflection, meditation etc) has put a gap between me and things that had been so close to me I would once have described them as ‘mine’ (passing thoughts, self-perceptions, judgments, feelings etc). So much of the messy bundle that constituted that psychological ‘me’ entity now seems to be flotsam flowing past (along with the world at large). I still get tugged along with it at times, but seem to more readily emerge.
James: A gap is good, like an early warning system that gives you time to shoot down enemy missiles before they land. Or time to think about the fears and desires that are pressuring you to do something to complete yourself before you go off half-cocked.
MT: But what is it that the mental and emotional flotsam passes? If someone asked me “what precisely do you think you are?”, my answer would still be “I don’t know”. I don’t know whether such knowledge is possible for humans, whether by mere introspection or that plus reasoning and/or empirical investigation. Many claims are made, of course. As they conflict, most must be false.
James: The flotsam flows by you, existence shining as unborn awareness/consciousness. There is no other option. The “What” that is the subject of the sentence is the correct word. Normally people say “who.” Who always refers to a person, whereas what is impersonal so it applies to the impersonal you. The flowing thoughts are also impersonal, although if you think you are a who you will tend to identify with them. You will think they are “my” thoughts.
So the next issue is why you aren’t certain that you are the What. If you think about it, nobody ever informed you that you exist or that you are conscious because it is obvious. And nobody has two selves. If they did, they wouldn’t know which one was real.
So you know there is only one of you, you know you exist and you know you are conscious, which means that you “borrowed” your awareness from impersonal awareness/consciousness, the real you. But there is one thing about yourself that you probably don’t know, that accounts for the doubt about your identity.
You don’t know that the real you is unaffected by the passing flotsam, which means you are free. If you know that, you will become very interested in claiming your ever-free identity. So Vedanta points out this fact.
