Mind-Inquiry versus Self-Inquiry an introduction:

As long as we are identified with the mind as a separate sense of self, we make everything about us and that is when we suffer our personal problems. Self-contraction, as taught by Adi Da Samraj, is the root cause of our pain as we feel separated from life around us. From this contraction, from this ego we seek a way out, a way to liberate ourselves, not understanding that all seeking just reinforces this feeling of separation. All remedial paths for liberation in fact just cause more suffering. What we need to do is to recognise that this contraction is an activity we maintain ongoing and all we have to do is let go of this contraction from its core. This letting go is not easy as it kind of requires a death of the person we believe we are who is doing this. We will see that there was never a separation nor a dilemma in the first place. This process of release can be done through meditation and self-inquiry, through direct recognition of who we really are. We are freedom, that which is always already the case, we just believe we are not, through this delusional self-contraction. By asking the question “who am I?”, we come to the understanding that we are that from which everything arises, us included. This recognition itself pulls us out of identification with the misunderstanding that we are our mind only and the false construction collapses like a mirage. Now it is not always easy to do that as some traumas we have believed to be true and on which we based our conviction that we are who we are the way we are, and that this is just the way it is.

This is where mind-inquiry comes in to help to lift deeper wound/convictions. I believe that this can be a very important step in the process before self-inquiry can be effective. As long as traumas (samskaras) are active they will pull us back or keep us in this misunderstanding and they need to be healed. Not with psychiatric medication but through meditation. During mediation we can dive deep in the contraction of then unconsciousness, the shadow and dig out the root seeds of these traumas, go back to the root impression that caused the trauma. this impression is stored like a bullet in flesh. By actively pulling the specific bullets out we can free the mind in order then to be freed from the mind. In other words fist mind inquiry: “what is this trauma, where is it, when did I let it define my person?”, then Self Inquiry: “Who am I?“

It is important not to dwell in mind inquiry as we are full of bullets and we can go on for a long time trying to clean out these bullets (ex 10 years psychoanalysis). We can go with a screwdriver around a house and try to fix all small parts for ever, yet in reality the whole house has to go. So we cannot waste our time doing this is we take the risk to identify even stronger with they victim. Yet in order burn down the whole house (egoic self-contraction) some big parts must be repaired until we have the strength and courage to go out of the house and light the whole thing on fire.