Hello, welcome to The Silent Way, if this is your first visit you may want to start by reading the first post first - here - http://advaitaramana.blogspot.com/2007/02/silence-is-beyond-doubt.html
Duality and Non-Duality
We generally see the world in a dualistic way, i.e. 'I am here looking at the world out there'. How does this duality arise? It arises from the habit we have of looking at ourselves as if we were two people.If you fix your attention on the sensation of 'I', you will notice that in addition to the sensation of 'I' there is the notion that there is a 'witness', someone watching the sensation of 'I'. This is clearly nonsense, as it implies that there are two 'Is' - one (unseen) watching the other. We also have the mistaken notion that we must get rid of the 'I' we can see to find the 'real I' that we cannot see.
You are not two people. The thought that there is one 'I' watching another 'I' is just that - a thought, and an erroneous thought at that. In reality there is no other 'I' watching the first 'I'. There is only one 'I' and its nature is awareness. 'I' is self-aware, it is aware of itself, it does not need any other 'I' to be aware of it.
4 comments:
An interesting post and subject. But how can you say that this is an 'erroneous thought' in an authorative way?
We all have differing beliefs and opinions. It is only an erroneous thought to those who believe it is such.
There is, after all, no reality. There is only our own realization as to how things are.
Best wishes,
Mike.
P.S. Thanks for your comment on my blog. I've been blogging for 36 weeks. M
Hi Mike,
Thanks for dropping by and thanks for the comment. You are the first person to laave a comment on this particular blog!
The 'erroneous thought' I referred to is the thought 'I am two people, one of which is a witness watching the other one which is the witnessed'. In which case we might wonder which 'one' we are, given that we can't be two people. That is why I say that it is a thought which has no basis in reality, it is just a thought, we are only one person, and this one person does not require another one to watch it, as it is self-aware.
I say it in an 'authoritative way' for two reasons, 1 I have discovered it to be so, so I feel I should say what I believe to be the truth, 2 - It's my blog ! :-)
Thanks for the info. too about how long you've been blogging. 9 months is a bit longer than me (4 months), so there is hope yet, at the moment it all seems a bit hit and miss, but I think I need to concentrate more on getting RSS subscribers and 'networking' more.
Best wishes,
Vic
Interesting!
I am one, but have many thoughts, simultaneously.
Where is the ego in all of this, is the ego the same as the real 'I', or is it the ego that complicates matters?
I don't know a lot about this philosophy but would like to know more. I will come back and read more.
Hi Dizzy,
Sorry it's taken me a month to answer your comment, for some reason I received no notification of it (probably my fault).
'Ego' 'real I' 'mind' etc... are all concepts - silence is beyond doubt - the clearest teacher I have found, apart from ramana Maharshi himself, is John Sherman (see links on the left)
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