Moller/ Questioning 'I am not the feelings/thought..I am That'

[Guest guest]

Moller wrote:

<<discover

the nature of Awareness that looks through the eyes as this passage is

read... >>

 

(M) What is this awareness that is looking out through the eyes? Has

anyone ever come upon it? Or is it simply the play of the deluded

'I'-conscious state which takes itself as the fundamental center of

all experience and presents itself to the deluded mind as the

observer/awareness/I am/I-exist notion. Can we not become real and

discriminate factually between the deluded self-conscious state of the

separate 'I', presenting itself as the 'self-evident' awareness

looking out through the eyes, and perhaps something categorically

other than this to which Maharshi might point? I do not know if

Maharshi means anything else. I merely say 'perhaps' he means

something deeper, something real, something really conscious as a

principle of life beyond the confines of the contracted state of the

false 'I'.

 

Dear Moller,

 

By coincidence, I just happened to read an article about this on the web last

night. Perhaps you might want to read the whole article, but due to copyright, I

just selected a part (most..) quoted below. Referring to the *source* of the I

thought, not the I, as indivisibilty of space ( no me here, you there), would

pretty much indicate this "cause of the I" isn't meant to be understood as a

separate self, as an ego entity. I think you are right tho, that often the

phrase "I am that" is mistakenly understood, or identified with the ego or mind.

I don't know actually what goes on in these advaitin satsangs, never been to

one. The word at issue here in Tamil is "aham-vritti" if anyone speaks Tamil.

>From reading Ramana, it has always sounded to me more like he emphasizes the "I"

in Who am I, mostly as a means to get to the root of all other ego and mind

thoughts, and what you have called "the deluded self-conscious state of the

separate I" is obviously not the *That*.

 

 

But reading all of page 50 in Be As You Are with this different translation in

mind is helpful. For example, "Personality-idea or thought is also the root or

stem of all other thoughts, since each idea arises only as someone's

thought..the ego therefore exhibits thought activity. The second and third

persons [he, you, that, etc] do not appear except to the first person ( I ).

Trace then the ultimate cause of 'I' or personality.

From where does this 'I' arise? Seek for it within; it then vanishes."

 

The where refers to the place...source OF, not ego/mind itself.

Yes , he says *vanishes*............

Gloria

--------------------------------

Excerpt from webpage:

 

Thanks to a footnote in a book called The Path of Sri Ramana, Part One by Sri

Sadhu Om, I just discovered why the saying went over my head. It turns out that

something got lost in translation.

 

Sadhu Om points out that Ramana expressed this idea in Tamil, his native

language, not English. In Tamil, these grammatical categories aren't called

persons; they are called places. What Ramana actually said, literally, was that

the second place and third place arise after the first place.

 

Now, this makes sense to me. When the ego illusion arises in me -- when I think

of myself -- what am I really thinking? I'm thinking of here. I'm thinking of

inside my body. Everything on this side of that geographical line is me;

everything on the other side is you or them.

 

Ego requires the bifurcation of space; it only exists when the world is cut up

into here and there. I can see this happen. And seeing it happen brings the day

closer when it happens no more.

 

 

1. Be As You Are, edited by David Godman, page 50; taken from Talks with Ramana

Maharshi, article 26. Back to text.

 

Copyright 2000 Elena Gutierrez.

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Elena Gutierrez is a frequent contributor to Realization.org.

 

http://www.realization.org/page/doc0/doc0057.htm