Ramana Maharishi

One of the most beautiful men of this century was Maharishi Raman. He was a simple man, uneducated, but he did not accept the ideology, the religion in which he was born. When he was only seventeen years of age he left his home in search of truth. He meditated for many years in the hills of Arunachal in south India, and finally realized himself.
After that his whole teaching consisted only of three words, because those three words had revealed to him the whole mystery of existence. His philosophy is the shortest. What are those three words? Whoever came to him -- because as he became slowly slowly known, people started coming to him from all over the world -- his whole teaching was to sit silently and ask only one question: "Who am I?" and go on asking that question.
One day the question will disappear, and only you will be there. That is the answer.
Not that you will find the answer written somewhere; you will find yourself. You just go on digging with this question -- this question is like digging -- but do you see the question? It is a doubt: Who am I? It does not accept the spiritualist who says you are a soul. It does not accept the materialist who says there is nobody, don't waste time; eat, drink and be merry. He doubts. Those three words are followed by a question mark: Who am I?
And he says this is enough. If you can go on and on and on patiently, one day the question suddenly disappears and what is left is your reality. That is the answer.
And the moment you know yourself you have known everything that is worth knowing.