Sri Ramana's insistence that awareness of the "I"-thought was a prerequisite for Self-realisation led him to the conclusion that all spiritual practices which did not incorporate this feature were indirect and inefficient:
"This path [attention to the 'I'] is the direct path; all others are indirect ways. The first leads to the SElf, the others elsewhere. And even if the latter do arrive at the Self it is only because they lead at the end to the first path which ultimately carries them to the goal. So, in the end, the aspirants must adopt the first path. Why not do so now? Why waste time?"
That is to say, other techniques may sometimes bring one to an inner state of stillness, in which self-attention or self-awareness inadvertently takes place, but it is a very roundabout way of reaching the Self. Sri Ramana maintained that other techniques could only take on to the place where self enquiry starts and so he never endorsed them unless he felt that particular questioners were unable or unwilling to adopt self-enquiry.
