A discriminating inquiry seeks resolution and clarity when two or more things are mixed up. To undertake a discriminating inquiry, the student must to be able to engage in unfettered thinking. Serious mental and emotional disorders and the consequences of individual developmental difficulties and interruptions may not be curable and can obstruct the requirements of this inquiry. A discriminating inquiry means one wants to know exactly who he is, both in terms of his past and in terms of the present - the ever present. Emotional maturity and mental health are the foundation of the mind that can appreciate the truth of immediate freedom.

Many psychological problems are mix ups. The mix ups may be the unavoidable result of inadequate or problematic communication and interaction between a child and his or her caregivers. Conclusions an individual formed as a child - about himself and about the world - can dictate or colour his perception as an adult. A person may come to see that he has mixed up his world as a child with his adult world. As an adult, one may experience apprehension, fear, shame, sorrow, and regret. These negative feelings may emerge automatically; they may be unwanted intrusions from one’s past. Their effects can be diminished when a person sees where they come from and the part they played in the making of his personality. When one sees they have no meaning and no value for him, they may lose their power to adulterate his perceptions.

To study Vedanta, the student learns to make a discriminative inquiry that is emotionally neutral. The student analyzes what comes up for him, in his mind, and he sees the mix-up. He understands what is what. He may come to recognize that he has ingrained patterns of self-conception that do not serve his self-esteem or his growth. There are things he thinks about himself that are not true. He may come to release himself from the fear that surrounds recurring doubts about himself and his capacities. A discriminative inquiry can promote the student’s seeing things as they are. With that, his choices are more likely to help him get what he wants. The student’s cognitive appreciation of the truth and his objectivity about his past play an important role in his emotional well-being.

There is a further mix up - one which is the product of being born as a human rather than the result of the specifics of a person’s genetics, his parents, and his environment. The individual has mixed up self and world, self and not-self. A person is not born with the knowledge that he and the world are one. Every human is connected to the world through actions, thoughts, relationships, interests, needs, and so on, but how does one explain the connection between the realm in one’s mind and the world beyond one’s skin? What is the connection between a person’s desire and ability to conduct his life and the ability of the world to govern him? What does it mean to be a human? What is meaningful for a human? Is there freedom from feeling small and dependent in a vast universe of space and matter?

There is freedom. There is liberation from the problem of self-non-acceptance, the problem based on one’s conclusion, “I am a limited being.” For the seeker of truth, this freedom is the main thing. Whether one approaches this teaching because he or she senses a brilliant freedom that is somehow available or because of some emotional pain from which he or she wants to be free, it is a matter of unconditional freedom. Someone else may think that liberation is useless, but uncompromising discrimination shows that it is everything else that is useless. If a person loses the most important thing, all else is useless. Liberation is equal to the knowledge, “I am whole and I am the whole.” A discriminative inquiry can resolve the confusion in life, and it is the means to liberation in the form of knowledge. To have this knowledge, the student must possess a certain maturity. He must be psychologically stable and emotionally secure. He must be capable of reason that is unfettered by emotional commitments to ideas or people and that is free of the habit of editing knowledge to fit his own ideas. Without these, the knowledge stays in the book.