Question and answer 5

Does self-enquiry remove only the sense of 'I' fixed on the gross body — or does it remove that same sense from the subtle and causal bodies too?

The other two bodies only go on living by leaning on the gross one, and in the very notion 'I am the body', all three — the five sheaths together — are already folded in. So when the sense of self clinging to the gross body is destroyed, that is itself the destruction of the sense of self clinging to the other two. Enquiry, then, is the means for removing the sense of 'I' from all three bodies at once.

Is enquiry a means for removing only the sense of self that is in the gross body? Is it also a means for removing the senses of self that are in the subtle and causal bodies?

Since the other bodies live only by depending on the gross body, and since, in the notion 'the body is I', all three bodies in the form of the five sheaths are themselves already included, and since the destruction of the sense-of-self in the gross body is itself the destruction of the sense-of-self in the other bodies — enquiry is a means for removing the sense-of-self existing in all three bodies.