The ultimate aim of Self-Inquiry as taught by Ramana Maharshi is Self-realization: the direct and abiding recognition of one’s true nature as pure Awareness, the Self or Atman. Through this realization, the habitual identification with the body, mind, emotions, and personality is seen as a superimposition upon a deeper, unchanging reality. What had been taken to be “I” is revealed as a transient construct, while the real “I” is understood as formless Being-Consciousness. This Self is not merely an inner object of experience, but the very ground and substance of all experience.

The method of asking “Who am I?” functions to trace the sense of “I” back to its source, thereby exposing the “I-thought” as the root of the illusion of individuality. As this root thought is examined, its apparent solidity weakens, and the ego-mind, or ahamkara, begins to dissolve. When the “I” that imagines itself to be separate is seen through, what remains is pure, undifferentiated Consciousness, which was never actually bound or limited. This is described as moksha, liberation from ignorance and suffering, and as sahaja samadhi, the natural state of effortless absorption in one’s own true Being.

In this realization, the distinction between seeker, seeking, and sought falls away, revealing that they are expressions of the one Self alone. The goal is not the acquisition of a new state, but the clear recognition of the ever-present reality that underlies all passing states. Abidance in this Self, free from the rise of the separate “I”-thought, is the culmination of the path: a stable, irreversible freedom in which the sense of being a separate individual has dissolved into the recognition of being the infinite, eternal Self that is the substratum of all existence.