Pure intransitive awareness alone is real consciousness and what actually exists

In section 16.1 of A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications Robert Lawrence Kuhn quoted some extracts from personal communication I had with him regarding what Bhagavan taught about consciousness or awareness, so this article is a copy of what I had written to him (with references added in the body of the text instead of in footnotes):

With regard to consciousness, Bhagavan Ramana highlighted the distinction between transitive awareness (suṭṭaṟivu in Tamil) and intransitive awareness (suṭṭaṯṟa aṟivu). Transitive awareness is awareness that knows objects or phenomena, whereas intransitive awareness is awareness that knows nothing other than itself. In classical Advaita Vedanta intransitive awareness is called pure consciousness (śuddha caitanya), because it is consciousness devoid of any content, and being-consciousness (sat-cit), not only because it is conscious only of its own being, ‘I am’, but also because it is the consciousness (cit) that is itself pure being (sat), meaning that it is what alone actually exists, so it is the one real substance (vastu) from which all other things derive their seeming existence, just as gold ornaments derive their existence from gold (as he implies in verse 13 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu). Transitive awareness, on the other hand, is called cidābhāsa, meaning that it is an ābhāsa (semblance, likeness or reflection) of consciousness (cit), because it is not real consciousness, since it is consciousness of things that do not actually exist but merely seem to exist, like all the things seen in a dream. Only consciousness of what actually exists is real consciousness, and since what actually exists is only pure consciousness, it alone is real consciousness (as he implies in verse 27 of Upadēśa Undiyār and verse 12 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu).

However, these are not two separate consciousnesses, but two forms of the one and only consciousness, one form of which is consciousness as it actually is, namely intransitive awareness, and the other form of which is an unreal appearance, namely transitive awareness (as he also implies in verse 13 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu). Intransitive awareness is real because it is permanent, unchanging, self-existent and self-shining. It is self-existent because it exists independent of all other things, and it is self-shining because it shines by its own light of consciousness, underived from anything else. Transitive awareness, on the other hand, is impermanent and constantly changing, and it is neither self-existent nor self-shining, because it derives its seeming existence from the real existence of intransitive awareness and it shines by the light of consciousness that it borrows from intransitive awareness. Intransitive awareness is therefore the reality that underlies and supports the illusory appearance of transitive awareness, just as a rope is the reality that underlies and supports the illusory appearance of a snake. That is, we cannot be aware of anything without being aware, but we can be aware without being aware of anything, so intransitive awareness is primary and fundamental whereas transitive awareness is secondary and emergent.

As Bhagavan explained, intransitive awareness is our fundamental awareness of our own being, ‘I am’, whereas transitive awareness is ego, the false adjunct-conflated awareness ‘I am this body’, in which (as he clarifies in verse 5 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu) the term ‘body’ refers not only to the physical body but to the entire bundle of ‘five sheaths’ (pañca-kōśa), namely the physical body, life, mind, intellect and will, which are what we collectively experience as ourself whenever we rise and stand as ego, as we do in waking and dream. The two defining characteristics of ego are that as ego we are always aware of ourself as ‘I am this body’ and we are consequently aware of the seeming existence of other things. We can understand this from our own experience. In both waking and dream we experience ourself as a person, a body consisting of five sheaths, and we consequently experience the seeming existence of other things, whereas in sleep we are aware of nothing other than our own being, ‘I am’, so we do not experience ourself as a person, nor do we experience the seeming existence of anything else.

In all three states (namely waking, dream and sleep) we are always aware of our own being as ‘I am’, but whereas in sleep we are not aware of anything other than our own being, in waking and dream we are aware not only of our own being but also of an ever-changing appearance of numerous other things, one set of which, namely a body consisting of five sheaths, we mistake to be ourself. None of these five sheaths can be what we actually are, because they appear only in waking and dream, but we exist and are aware of our existence not only in waking and dream but also in sleep.

Some people may object to this, arguing that we were not aware of anything in sleep, so it is not correct to say that we were aware of our existence then. It is true that we were not aware of any phenomena in sleep, not even of the passing of time, but we were nevertheless aware of our own existence, because if we were not aware of our existence while we were asleep, we would not now be so clearly aware of having been in a state in which we were not aware of anything else. That is, if we were not aware of our existence in sleep (in other words, if we were not aware of being in that state, in which we were not aware of anything else), we would not now be aware that we were ever in such a state, so what we would now be aware of experiencing would be a seemingly uninterrupted succession of alternating states of waking and dream without any gap between them. Therefore, since we are now clearly aware of having experienced frequent gaps between alternating states of waking and dream, gaps that we call sleep, in which we were not aware of anything other than ourself, we must not only have existed in such gaps but must also have been aware of existing then. In other words, if sleep were a state in which we were not aware of our existence, we would not now be aware of ever having existed in such a state.

Therefore, since we are aware of our being in sleep without being aware of any of the five sheaths, none of these five sheaths can be what we actually are. It follows, therefore, that ego is a false awareness of ourself, because it is an awareness of ourself as a body consisting of these five sheaths, which is not what we actually are. Therefore, since it is only as ego that we are aware of anything other than ourself, and since ego is a false awareness of ourself, it is reasonable for us to conclude that awareness of anything other than ourself is not real but a mere illusory appearance, like everything that appears in a dream. The conclusion of both Advaita Vedanta and the teachings of Bhagavan, therefore, is that transitive awareness (awareness of anything other than ourself) is an unreal appearance, and that the only real consciousness is pure intransitive awareness (awareness of nothing other than our own being).

However, even if we understand and are convinced by this philosophy, we are still aware of ourself as ‘I am this body’ and consequently aware of the appearance of other things, so this philosophy would be of little use to us if it did not provide us with a means by which we can be aware of ourself as we actually are. Therefore the core of Bhagavan’s teachings is the practice of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), which he defined in the sixteenth paragraph of Nāṉ Ār? as ‘always keeping the mind on oneself’ (sadākālamum maṉattai ātmāvil vaittiruppadu). As he made clear, keeping our mind on ourself means keeping our attention fixed firmly on what we actually are, namely our fundamental awareness ‘I am’, which is our very being, so he also called this practice ‘awareness-investigation’ (jñāna-vicāra), as in first paragraph of Nāṉ Ār? and verse 19 of Upadēśa Undiyār.

That is, consciousness or awareness is not an object but the reality of the subject, so no objective investigation can enable us to know consciousness as it actually is. Since we ourself are consciousness, in order to know ourself as we actually are we need to turn our entire attention back on ourself, away from all other things, as he implies in verse 16 of Upadēśa Undiyār: ‘Leaving external phenomena, the mind knowing its own form of light [namely the light of pure awareness, which is its real nature and what illumines it, enabling it to be aware both of itself and of other things] is alone real awareness’.

Since consciousness can never be an object of awareness, we can know it as it is only by being as it is, as he points out in verse 26 of Upadēśa Undiyār: ‘Being oneself alone is knowing oneself, because oneself is devoid of two’. Knowing anything other than ourself is a mental activity, because it entails a movement of our mind or attention away from ourself towards that other thing, whereas knowing ourself is not a mental activity, because as consciousness we know ourself merely by being ourself, so we always know ourself. However, though we always know ourself, as ego we do not know ourself as we actually are, because we mistake ourself to be a body consisting of five sheaths. Therefore, to know ourself as we actually are we need to be as we actually are, and to be as we actually are we need to cease rising as ego.

We seem to be ego only when we are aware of anything other than ourself, so as Bhagavan pointed out (as for example in verse 25 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu), the nature of ourself as ego is to rise, stand and flourish by attending to anything other than ourself, but to subside and dissolve back into our being (our fundamental awareness ‘I am’) by attending to ourself alone. Therefore, in order to cease rising as the transitive awareness called ‘ego’ and thereby to be as we always actually are, namely pure intransitive awareness, we need to attend to ourself so keenly that we thereby cease to be aware of anything else at all. In order to gain the all-consuming love to do so, however, requires patient and persistent practice, because this is the only means by which we can wean ourself off all our desires for and attachments to anything other than ourself, including all that we now mistake ourself to be.