There's a question that has the power to undo everything you think you know about yourself.
It's not a complicated question. A child could ask it. In fact, children do ask it, in their own way, before they're taught to stop wondering. The question is simply: Who am I?
But here's what makes this question different from all other questions. Every other question you ask takes you outward—toward information, toward objects, toward the world. This question turns attention back on itself. It asks the looker to look at the looking. And when this is done sincerely, something extraordinary begins to happen.
The separate self you've taken yourself to be your whole life starts to become transparent.
Ramana Maharshi, who lived on the slopes of Arunachala mountain in South India, is perhaps most associated with this inquiry. When seekers came to him with their problems—their anxieties, their spiritual questions, their longing for liberation—he would often respond with a disarming simplicity. "Find out who is having this problem. Find out who wants to be free." Not as a deflection, but as the most direct possible pointing to what they were actually looking for.
The method, if we can call it that, is deceptively simple. When a thought arises, when a feeling comes, when the sense of being a separate person doing something surfaces, you ask: To whom does this arise? Who is experiencing this?
The answer that comes is: To me. I am experiencing this.
Then comes the real inquiry: Who is this "I"?
Not "what do I know about myself"—not your history, your personality, your roles, your beliefs. But this bare sense of "I," this feeling of being someone—what is it? Where is it? Can it be found?
Most of us have never actually looked. We've assumed. We've taken for granted that there's a "me" at the center of experience, the one to whom everything is happening. But have you ever checked? Have you ever turned attention toward this assumed self and looked for it directly?
This is the heart of self-inquiry.
When I first encountered this practice, I made it far too complicated. I turned it into a mental exercise, a kind of philosophical puzzle I was trying to solve with thought. I would ask "Who am I?" and then my mind would produce answers: I am consciousness. I am awareness. I am not the body. These answers felt sophisticated. They felt spiritual. And they were completely useless.
Because the point of the question is not to find a better answer. The point is to dissolve the questioner.
Let me try to say this more directly. Right now, there's an experience happening. Reading. Seeing words. Perhaps thoughts arising in response. And there's a sense—very subtle, very familiar—that all of this is happening to someone. There's a feeling of being a "me" who is at the center of this experience.
This sense of being a separate self is so fundamental, so ever-present, that we don't even notice it. It's like asking a fish to notice water.
Now, without trying to change anything, without trying to get anywhere, simply ask: What is this "me"? This sense of being someone—where does it live? If you look for it, can you actually find it?
You might notice sensations in the body—perhaps a contraction in the chest, a feeling of density behind the eyes. You might notice thoughts that refer to "I" and "me." You might notice emotions, memories, preferences.
But is any of this the self itself? Or are these all objects appearing to something?
When you look for the looker, what do you find?
This is where the inquiry gets interesting. Because if you're honest, if you actually look rather than just think about looking, you don't find a thing there. You don't find an entity. You find... openness. Awareness. Presence. But not a separate someone who possesses these qualities.
The sense of being a separate self, when examined, turns out to be more like a mirage. From a distance, it looks solid, real, substantial. But when you approach it directly, it shimmers, thins out, and reveals itself to be something quite different from what you assumed.
I want to be careful here, because this can easily become another concept. "There is no self"—just another idea to adopt, another belief to add to the collection. That's not what we're after. We're not trying to convince ourselves of anything. We're looking. We're checking. And what we find—or don't find—must be discovered fresh, not borrowed from a teaching.
Ramana sometimes used the analogy of tracing a river back to its source. Thoughts and feelings are like the flowing water. We usually get caught up in the flow, carried downstream by the content of experience. Self-inquiry is like turning around and moving upstream, following the sense of "I" back to where it comes from.
And what you find at the source is not another thought, not another object, not another experience. You find the source itself—aware, open, present. Not something that can be grasped or known as an object, because it's what you are.
This doesn't mean the personality disappears. It doesn't mean thoughts stop or feelings vanish. The character continues—the preferences, the quirks, the particular way you move through the world. But the identification with it loosens. There's a lightness where there was once a heaviness. The drama of "me" and "my life" and "my problems" continues to play out, but you're no longer so convinced by it.
It's a bit like watching a movie. The story can be gripping, the emotions intense. But there's a knowing, in the background, that it's a movie. This knowing doesn't diminish the experience. If anything, it allows you to enjoy it more fully, because you're no longer frightened by it in the same way.
The question "Who am I?" is not a one-time practice. It's not something you do once, get the answer, and then you're done. It's more like a gentle but persistent returning—a willingness to keep looking, keep checking, keep not-knowing. Because the mind is very clever. It will co-opt the inquiry. It will turn "I am awareness" into a new identity. It will make enlightenment into another project for the self to achieve.
But the self cannot achieve its own absence. The "me" cannot find what it is when the "me" is dissolved. This is why the inquiry must be fresh each time—not mechanical repetition, but genuine looking. What am I, really? Not yesterday. Now.
There's a beautiful passage in the Ashtavakra Gita: "You are not the body. You are not the mind. You are the witness of all this." But even this can become a trap if it's taken as a conclusion rather than an invitation. Because ultimately, you're not the witness either—not if by "witness" you mean a separate observer standing apart from experience. That subtle duality also dissolves in direct looking.
What remains when even the witness is seen through?
I can't tell you. Not because I'm withholding something, but because it's not something that can be told. It can only be discovered. And discovered not by the mind, but by what you are.
The beauty of self-inquiry is that it requires nothing external. No special conditions, no particular place, no teacher present. The question is always available. In the midst of suffering—who is suffering? In the midst of confusion—who is confused? Not to deny the suffering or confusion, but to see what it's made of, to see who it's happening to.
When I suffer and believe I am the one suffering, the suffering is total. It swallows everything. But when I suffer and look for the one suffering, something shifts. The suffering may remain, but the sufferer becomes questionable. And in that questioning, there's space. There's breathing room. There's the possibility of something other than being crushed by experience.
This is not a technique for feeling better, though you may feel better. It's a way of discovering what you've always been, underneath the layers of assumption and identification and story.
Who are you?
Not your name. Not your history. Not your thoughts about yourself.
What is this awareness that has been present through every moment of your life, unchanged by time, untouched by experience?
Don't settle for an answer.
Keep looking.