The practice of Self-Inquiry associated with Ramana Maharshi arose directly from a single, radical inner event in his youth. At about sixteen years of age, while alone in a relative’s house, he was suddenly overwhelmed by an intense fear of death. Rather than seeking external reassurance, he lay down as if a corpse, stiffened the limbs, and imagined the body as dead. In that deliberate enactment of death, he turned attention inward and examined what, if anything, truly perishes. There was a clear seeing that the body and mind are objects known, while an unchanging awareness stands as their witness. This witnessing consciousness, experienced as the pure “I” or Self, revealed itself as untouched by the death of the body. That recognition did not appear as a passing insight but as a permanent shift, which he later described as final realization.

In this crisis, the essential movement of what would later be called Self-Inquiry was already present, even before it was framed as a formal question. There was a spontaneous discrimination between the mortal elements—body, breath, personality, and mental activity—and the immortal, deathless awareness that knows them. From that point onward, life unfolded as an abiding in this Self, and for years he remained largely silent, absorbed in this inner realization at Arunachala. During that early period, there was no consciously devised “method”; his very presence and state of being functioned as the primary teaching. Only when seekers began to gather and ask how to realize what he had realized did he start to articulate the inner process that had occurred.

Out of these dialogues emerged the more systematic form of *ātma-vichāra*, or Self-Inquiry, centered on tracing the “I”-sense back to its source. He explained that when thoughts arise, one may ask, “To whom has this thought arisen?” and, seeing that it is “to me,” then inquire, “Who am I?” The point of this inquiry is not intellectual analysis but a steady turning of attention toward the origin of the “I”-thought, resting in the awareness from which it springs. Over time, this teaching was refined through sustained interaction with devotees, sometimes expressed through slight variations in phrasing but always returning to the same essential movement of returning the mind to its source. The short work “Nan Yar?” (“Who am I?”) arose from answers he gave orally to a devotee, later compiled as a concise statement of this practice. Although its language resonates with the distinctions found in Advaita Vedānta, he emphasized that the method did not originate from scriptural study or a guru’s instruction, but from the direct and spontaneous realization that unfolded in that youthful confrontation with death.