The inner journey begins when you become aware that the Self is not the ‘I’ but the Self the Soul.+

The inner journey begins when you become aware that the Self is not the ‘I’ but the Self the Soul, the witness of the ‘I’.

The ‘I’ itself is ignorance. Ignorance keeps the Soul in the domain of the illusory world which is external.

The Soul is hidden by the illusory world. The Soul is the subject and the illusory world is an object to the Soul.

People who think, the " I " in everyone and everything is the Self, without realizing the Self. is not the 'I'. The ‘I’ is not within you but you are within the ‘I’. The ‘I’ is present in the form of the world.

The ‘Self’ is not the body.

The ‘Self’ is not within the body.

You are not the ‘Self.

You are bound by the form, time, and space.

You are bound by the experience of birth, life, death, and the world.

You are never free because the world in which you exist is the product of ignorance.

The world in which you exist is created out of single clay. That single clay is the Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness. The Soul is the Self. The Soul is not ‘I’. The Soul is the witness of the ‘I’ which appears and disappears.

The Soul is the only permanent thing and the ‘I’ is merely an illusion. If you do not understand this truth you will never be able to cross the ‘I’, which is the dualistic illusion.

The seeker has to make sure what is this ‘I’ supposed to be? The seeker has to make sure of the unreal nature of the ‘I’ which comes and goes.

That is why Bhagavad Gita: ~ The permanent is always there, only the transient ‘I’ comes and goes. (2.18)

The ‘I’ hides the truth of the whole.

People think the ‘I’ without the body is the Self. The seeker has to understand the fact that the fact that ‘I’ is not the Self, but the witness of the ‘I’ is the true Self, which is eternal.

That is why Ashtavakra Gita 16:10:~ If you desire liberation, but you still say 'I', if you feel the ‘Self’ is the ‘I’, you are not a wise man or a seeker. You are simply a man who suffers.

People are stuck with the reality of the ‘I’, which they take as real because some Gurus have propagated that the Self is the ‘I’. is no need to convince such mindsets. The seeker of truth accepts only the truth nothing but the truth.

That is why 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 comes 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 their Guru's words. For them, their Guru's words are the ultimate truth. They do not accept anything else other than their accepted truth.

Such mindsets are 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. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar