In the vision articulated by Ramana Maharshi, the ego is the central knot of bondage, the basic misidentification of pure awareness with the body, mind, and personal history. This ego is often described as the “I-thought,” the mixed sense of “I am” entangled with roles, experiences, and mental activity. Self-Inquiry, framed by the question “Who am I?”, is directed precisely at this “I-thought,” not at the countless secondary thoughts and experiences that arise around it. Rather than attempting to refine or improve the ego, the method turns attention away from objects—thoughts, feelings, sensations—and back toward the subject that claims them as “mine.”

The practice unfolds by repeatedly tracing every arising thought back to its apparent owner. When a thought appears, one silently asks, “To whom has this thought arisen?” and recognizes that it has arisen to “me.” The inquiry then shifts to the more radical question, “Who am I?” or “What is this ‘I’?” In this way, attention is drawn away from the content of the mind and gathered into the bare sense of “I,” and then further back toward the source from which this “I-thought” itself emerges. Through sustained application, the personal “I” is seen as a mental construct without independent substance.

As this investigation deepens, the ego does not undergo a transformation into something more refined; rather, it loses its apparent solidity and subsides. The “seeker” who seems to be doing the practice is eventually recognized as another appearance within awareness, another modification of the same “I-thought.” When the ego thus dissolves under scrutiny, what remains is not a new attainment but the recognition of what has always been present: pure, objectless awareness, the Self or Atman. Liberation is described as abiding as this Self, where no separate center of “I” is felt and the illusion of an individual ego has been seen through as never truly real.