‘Who am ‘I’?- inquiry is an egocentric inquiry based on the individual. The individual has no reality in Atmic-awareness.+

The question "Who am I?” - is a religious, not a spiritualistic question. ‘Who am ‘I’?- inquiry is an egocentric inquiry based on the individual. The individual has no reality in Atmic-awareness. 

Without knowing this ‘I’ supposed to be in actuality it is impossible to realize the ‘Self’ hidden by the ‘I’.

People say Aham Brahmasmi -- I am God, I am Brahman. But when Brahman is, how can "I" remain? - Only Brahman remains, not the ‘I’ because the ‘Self’ is the witness of the ‘I’.

 Self-inquiry is to find out the ‘Self’ which is hidden by the illusory world, in which we exist. By inquiring ‘Who am I?’, the ignorance will not vanish because the ‘I’ itself is illusory.

Bhagavad Gita: ~ “You must first see the ‘I’ as illusory before you see others as illusory. ~ CH.2 v.16

Sage Vasistha: ~ ‘We contemplate that reality in which everything exists, to which everything belongs, from which everything has emerged, which is the cause of everything and which is everything.

Sage Vasistha: ~ ‘This world's appearance is a confusion, even as the blueness of the sky is an optical illusion. I think it is better not to let the mind dwell on it, but to ignore it.

Only the serious seeker can lift their thoughts above ego and ask "What is the universe?"

The seeker must inquire~ "What is the individual experience of the birth, life, death, and the world as a whole?" "What is this universe?"- to unfold the mystery of the ‘Self’ hidden by the universe.

Sage Sankara says in the commentary in the Vedanta Sutra that what is accepted without a proper inquiry will not lead a person to the final goal. On the contrary, such acceptance will result only in evil, in something detrimental to our spiritual progress.

Seekers of truth should not believe blindly in traditional orthodox nonduality without verifying all the facts from every angle. One has to reflect through reasoning over and over again without getting tired of the process.

Sage Sankara says: - VC-65~As a treasure hidden underground requires (for its extraction) competent instruction, excavation, the removal of stones and other such things lying above it and (finally) grasping, but never come out by being (merely) called out by name, so the transparent Truth of the Self, which is hidden by Maya and its effects, is to be attained through the instructions of a knower of Brahman, followed by reflection, meditation and so forth, but not through perverted arguments.

People refuse to accept anything other than religious inherited beliefs. For them, their Guru's words are the ultimate truth. They do not accept anything else other than their accepted truth. There is no need to convince such a mindset.

Such a mindset is not fit to acquire Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana. The seekers of truth accept only the truth nothing but the uncontradictable truth.

Chandogya Upanishad: ~ One who meditates upon and realizes the Self discovers that everything in the cosmos-- energy and space, fire and water, name and form, birth and death, mind and will, word and deed, mantrams and meditation--all come from the Self.

Sage Sankara says: ~ V.63 ~ "Without knowing and examining the external world, one can’t know Truth, as the idea that the external world exists, won't go. It can go only by an inquiry into the nature of the external world.

To say the universe is an illusion without first examining it and inquiring into its nature thoroughly is to delude oneself. This world is common to every one of us; therefore the seeker of truth must begin his inquiry with it. 

It is only after he has inquired into the nature of the objective world, that he realizes the universe which through ignorance appears as of diverse forms, is nothing else but the Soul which is present in the form of consciousness is absolutely free from all the limitations of Maya.

Sage Sankara says:~ VC-47 All the effects of ignorance, root, and branch, is burnt down by the fire of knowledge, which arises from discrimination between these two—the Self and the not-self.

Until you think you are an individual separate from the world and world that existed prior to you and you are born in it afterward ignorance will prevail as a reality. Until ignorance is there the universe prevails as reality. :~Santthosh Kumaar