D.: Please tell me how I am to realise the Self? Am I to make an incantation of ‘Who am I?’
B.: No. It is not intended to be used as an incantation.
Self-enquiry is a different method from the meditation ‘I am Siva’ or ‘I am He.’
I rather lay stress on Self-knowledge,
because you are first concerned with yourself before you proceed to know the world and its Lord.
The ‘I am He’ or ‘I am Brahman’
meditation is more or less mental but the quest for the Self of which I speak is a direct method and is superior to the other.
For, as soon as you undertake the quest and begin to go deeper and deeper, the real Self is waiting there to receive you and then whatever is done is done by something else and you have no hand in it.
In this process all doubts are automatically given up just as one who sleeps forgets all his cares for the time being.
Although the scriptures proclaim ‘Thou art That,’ it is only a sign of weakness to meditate ‘I am That, not this,’ because
you are eternally That.
What has to be done is to investigate
what one really is and remain That.
Only if the thought ‘I am a body’ occurs will the meditation
‘I am not this, I am that’ help one to abide as that.
Why should you forever be thinking ‘I am That’?
Is it necessary for a man to go on thinking ‘I am a man’?
Are we not always That?
~ The Teachings of Bhagavan
Sri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words
Edited by:ARTHUR OSBORNE
My viewpoint
However self inquiry done with the mind trying to understand will fail.
Self inquiry is by stilling the mind, and see where it arises after the mind is stilled
Criticism for mediation is because no one makes an effort to sell the mind. Make it thoughtless. There are some great people who can still the mind effortlessly. For them mediation is not needed. But they still go into isolation. Not talk with anyone. Remain there. Without food etc for a long time
Now reading these things those who are desperate to be called a guru often make up stories like this and publicize. A real guru will not announce and no one well know the truth of their practice
Bhavin