BHAGAVAN ON SELF-INQUIRY AND VISIONS

Bhagavan: All that is needed is to give up thinking of objects other than the Self. Meditation is not so much thinking of the Self as giving up thinking of the not-Self. When you give up thinking of outward objects and prevent your mind from going outwards and turn it inward and fix it in the Self, the Self alone will remain.
At this point, K.M. Jivrajani interposed, “Has one necessarily to pass through the stage of seeing occult visions before attaining Self-realization?”
Bhagavan: Why do you bother about visions and whether they come or not?
K.M. Jivrajani: I don’t. I only want to know so that I shan’t be disappointed if I don’t have them.
Bhagavan: Visions are not a necessary stage. To some they come and to others, they don’t, but whether they come or not you always exist and you must stick to that.
K.M. Jivrajani: I sometimes concentrate on the brain center and sometimes on the heart — not always on the same center. Is that wrong?
Bhagavan: Wherever you concentrate and on whatever center there must be a 'you' to concentrate, and that is what you must concentrate on. Different people concentrate on different centers, not only the brain and the heart but also the space between the eyebrows, the tip of the nose, the tip of the tongue, the lowermost chakra, and even external objects. Such concentration may lead to a sort of laya in which you will feel a certain bliss, but care must be taken not to lose the thought ‘I Am’ in all this. You never cease to exist in all these experiences.
K.M. Jivrajani: That is to say that I must be a witness?
Bhagavan: Talking of the ‘witness’ should not lead to the idea that there is a witness and something else apart from him that he is witnessing. The ‘witness’ really means the light that illumines the seer, the seen and the process of seeing. Before, during, and after the triads of seer, seen and seeing, the illumination exists. It alone exists always.
Again today a visitor put questions: I do not understand how to make the inquiry ‘Who am I?’
Bhagavan: Find out whence the ‘I’ arises. Self-inquiry does not mean argument or reasoning such as goes on when you say, “I am not this body, I am not the senses,” etc.: all that may also help but it is not the inquiry. Watch and find out where in the body the ‘I’ arises and fix your mind on that.

18. and 19.4.46, Day by Day with Bhagavan