Question: How can I know who I truly am?

Sri Chinmoy: Ramana Maharshi, who was one of India’s Himalayan spiritual Masters, had only one question: “Who am I?” He followed the yoga of knowledge or wisdom. No matter how anyone answers this question, the answer will be called wrong or inadequate by his devotees, and even by me, for it cannot be answered with mere words.

If we try to answer this question for ourselves with our human mind, with our human intellect, with our human wisdom or perception, then we will always be mistaken. In our lives we have encountered so many discouraging and disheartening experiences. If we live in the mind, we think, “I have not achieved this and that. I have not grown into this or that. On the way to my destination, I have made millions of blunders. So how can I claim to be a child of God?”

But if our answer comes from the heart, we will say, “I belong to my Lord Beloved Supreme only. He is my heart’s aspiration, He is my life’s realisation, He is my All.” At that time we are not using our mind to see, to measure and to limit the Creator, whom we call the Transcendental Self. We are using our heart to feel, to expand and to grow into our own Highest, which is at once our own Transcendental Depth and our own Universal Length. So if at every moment my disciples can answer this question, “Who am I?”, using the sweetness of the heart, the devotedness of the heart, the self-givingness of the heart, then they are bound to be illumined and fulfilled.