tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7345918888953765241.post4183787283660156416..comments2023-10-16T13:06:42.360+01:00Comments on Happiness of Being: The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi: Contemplating 'I', which is the original name of GodMichael Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460943269122289281noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7345918888953765241.post-61365196515203997402009-11-02T15:31:46.694+00:002009-11-02T15:31:46.694+00:00How to Know "I Am"
Despite assertions t...How to Know "I Am"<br /><br />Despite assertions that knowing "I Am" is easy because "one always knows oneself", "one never doubts one's existence", etc., there is undoubtedly confusion about what this practice is and how to do it properly. Some blog participants voice their difficulty directly, others ask whether certain techniques "are it", and at least one (there must be others) admits giving up practicing because of uncertainty about whether what he was doing was correct. I’m confused, too, and hoping for clarification.<br /><br />The gist of the difficulty is that, while unexamined the feeling of "I" seems very natural (i.e. it feels substantial), when one tries to find it, it slips away leaving nothing to grasp. Unfortunately, this slipping away doesn't lead (me) to Self-knowledge but only to a sense of the futility of searching. <br /><br />One intuits and can agree with the blog author that the difficulty stems from the fact that "I" is not an object and cannot be objectified. This identifies the problem but does not provide a solution. It leaves us with the hand-trying-to-grasp-the-hand conundrum, which doesn't appear to have any solution that I can see, unless we take giving up to be the solution. Experience suggests that knowledge is always of an object. So instead of "Though our consciousness 'I am' is not an object, it is nevertheless something that we always know", the truth seems to be closer to, "Since our consciousness 'I am' is not an object, we therefore cannot know it". In fact if we substitute "know" for "objectify", the author seems to be admitting this when he says, "we cannot objectify our first-person consciousness 'I'". So what are we to do? (Don’t say, “just BE”; that prescription seems just words without any meaning unless there is instruction on how to “be”. Must we not conclude that we always “are”. Nevertheless, does that satisfy?). <br /><br />How does one attend to what is "non-objective"? Yes, I can, in the words of one blog contributor "sense [as subject] that I am alive and present", but if were true, as another contributor replied, that that was enough, then we should all have been fully Self realized long ago. For haven't we all been living with this sense all our lives, and is it not dissatisfaction with this very sense that impels us to a deeper (and seemingly futile) questioning? <br /><br />In another article, the blog author writes,<br />‘I’ is not an object, so being self-attentive is quite unlike attending to any object. Instead of focusing our attention upon any object, as we are habituated to doing, we have to turn it back on itself — to attend to nothing other than itself, the attending consciousness. <br /><br />Fine enough to say, "Being self-attentive is quite unlike attending to any object". But what is it LIKE? The "non-objectifiable" 'I' seems very much of the nature of the "inferred experience" of deep sleep. Of what benefit--indeed, how real--is an inferred experience? Likewise, how substantial/real is an 'I' that 'stands behind' everything and thereby defies being experienced? Or (as the questioner in 'Talks' asked the Maharshi) must we grow some new faculty to be able to perceive this?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com