Yes it seems that before I could tell intellectually (from reading various information) that ‘I’ was doomed, that ‘I’ would have to die. But I hadn’t yet arrived at this realisation experientially, so there was always some kind of way out, the slightest of hopes that ‘I’ would survive it all. It seems the only way was to progressively exhaust all these possibilities.
Srinath actually summarised this very well in his report, towards the end he wrote :
The triumphal tone of an impending self-immolation was replaced then by a deep sincerity at the import of what had to happen. I thought of the old biblical tale of Moses being forbidden entry into the promised land and being able to gaze at it only from a distance.
…
‘I’ would roar back into full existence creating havoc for this body and every body, given half a chance. I had to ‘die’ so that this body and every other body could live peacefully. I would need to truly die. The enormity of this dawned on me suddenly like it never had before. The enormity of what I had to give up. It took my breath away. Suddenly I felt a twinge of sadness that emerged from me like a thin pungent streak. But it cut-off abruptly as if in mid-air, still-born.
So ‘I’ was on board this train and triumphantly proceeding forwards until it hit a wall that it can never get past. Here the ideas ‘I’ had about what self-immolation would entail were progressively shown to be dead ends, because all those ideas had a ‘me’ coming out the other side.
So now it is an interesting place, because all possibility for hope has ran out, without going into despair either, there is only hints of this “deep sincerity at the import of what had to happen”. As weird as it sounds this “doomed” place seems the one from which ‘I’ can altruistically sacrifice ‘myself’.
I cannot shake this thought though that it must be easy, that all ‘I’ have done so far was the difficult part.