Sri Ramana’s Self as Pure Consciousness

The modern Hindu sage Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi clarified the fundamental principles of Advaita Vedanta, as explained by philosopher/translator Michael James, an expert on Sri Ramana.

Transitive and Intransitive Awareness

With regard to consciousness, “Sri 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.

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” (James, 2012, 2024).

However, according to James, “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. 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” (James, 2024).

Self-Investigation and Its Rationale

Sri Ramana concluded 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). 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”—a practice Sri Ramana called self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), which 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)” (James, 2012, 2024).

According to James, one of the most important and widely accepted insights found in ancient Indian philosophy is the fundamental distinction between consciousness (in the sense of what is conscious or aware) and phenomena, which are all objects of consciousness. Since all phenomena appear and disappear in consciousness, or more precisely, in the view of what is conscious, what is conscious is distinct from all phenomena and exists independently of them.

This simple but profound insight gave rise to one of the major systems of Indian philosophy, namely the dualistic system of Sankhya, which is not a mind-body dualism but a subject-object or consciousness-phenomena dualism, and it is also one of the fundamental principles not only of Yoga (the metaphysical foundation of which is largely based on Sankhya) but also of Vedanta in general and Advaita Vedanta in particular. However, unlike Sankhya, Yoga and some forms of Vedanta, which attribute an independent ontological status to prakṛti (the source and totality of all phenomena), Advaita Vedanta (at least in its deepest and purest form as taught by Sri Ramana) does not accept that phenomena exist independent of transitive awareness, which in turn does not exist independent of intransitive awareness, so Advaita Vedanta is non-dualistic (James, 2025).

Because of the antiquity and prevalence of this insight in Indian philosophy, and because the practical application of its insights is a central concern and focus in all systems of Indian philosophy, in India since ancient times the approach to investigating consciousness has been almost diametrically opposite to the approach in modern science and philosophy, which seem to have overlooked this fundamental distinction between consciousness and phenomena, and which consequently has been seeking to locate consciousness among phenomena or to explain it in terms of them. Contrary to this modern approach, the Indian systems of philosophy that are most concerned with consciousness, such as Sankhya, Yoga and the various forms of Vedanta, have each in their own way attempted to investigate consciousness by focusing on the knower rather than any of the phenomena known by it.

As clarified by Sri Ramana, Advaita Vedanta takes this approach most rigorously and uncompromisingly. Whereas Yoga aims to stop all mental activity and thereby isolate consciousness from all contact with phenomena, Sri Ramana argues that this is necessary but not sufficient, because we stop all mental activity every day when we fall asleep, but the resulting isolation of consciousness from all contact with phenomena is only temporary.

Whenever we are aware of ourself as a body, as we are in waking and dream, we are transitively aware (aware of phenomena), and whenever we are not aware of ourself as a body, as in sleep, we are not transitively aware. Since we are aware of ourself as one body in waking and as another body in dream, but as no body at all in sleep, in which we are aware of nothing other than our own being, no body can be what we actually are, so being aware of ourself as if we were a body is a false awareness of ourself, and hence this false awareness can be removed only by awareness of ourself as we actually are. In order to be aware of ourself as we actually are, we not only have to withdraw our attention from all phenomena but also have to focus our entire attention on ourself alone.

What we actually are is pure intransitive awareness, but how to be aware of ourself as such? Pure awareness can never be an object of awareness, so we can know it only by being it, because it knows itself not by any act of knowing but just by being itself. But since it is what we always actually are, why do we now seem to be not aware of ourself as such? We seem to be so only because we now mistake ourself to be a body, which is not what we actually are.

So long as we are aware of phenomena, we seem to be a transitive awareness, so in order to be aware of ourself as pure intransitive awareness, we need to attend to ourself so keenly that we thereby cease to be aware of anything else whatsoever. If we do so, we will cease to be a transitive awareness and instead remain as the pure intransitive awareness that we always actually are (James, 2025).

Advaita Vedanta as Radical Monism

James notes that, in his view, Sri Ramana’s teachings are misrepresented by classifying them as an idealism rather than a monism. Though, he says, “there are idealistic elements in Advaita Vedanta—of which Ramana’s teachings are a very pure expression and clarification—Advaita Vedanta is primarily monistic, because it maintains that the ultimate reality is pure consciousness (intransitive awareness), which is one only without a second (ēkam ēva advitīyam), and that the mind (transitive awareness) is not real but just an illusory appearance. A philosophy that denies the reality of the mind cannot be an idealism, even though it may include idealistic elements” (James, 2025).

In fact, James continues, any school of Vedic/Hindu philosophy that is not primarily monistic cannot be called Advaita Vedanta, “because ‘Advaita Vedanta’ means ‘non-dualistic Vedanta’ and is so called because one of its fundamental contentions is that there is ‘one only without a second’ (‘ēkam ēva advitīyam’, a term used in the Chāndōgya Upaniṣad 6.2.1-2).”

That is, James says, according to Advaita Vedanta, “what actually exists is one only without a second, and it is pure being (sat), which is pure awareness (cit), so this one being-awareness (sat-cit), which is infinite (being beyond all limits, including the limits of time and space), indivisible and immutable, is what we actually are, and hence all multiplicity and differences are just an illusory appearance. As clarified by Sri Ramana, all multiplicity and differences seem to exist only in the view of what is transitively aware, namely ego, which is the knowing element of the mind (as opposed to all mental phenomena, which are objects known by ego), and ego itself is unreal, because it appears in waking and dream but disappears in sleep. What exists in all three states (waking, dream, and sleep) without appearing or disappearing and without ever undergoing change of any kind whatsoever is pure intransitive awareness, which is our fundamental awareness of our own being, ‘I am’, so this alone is what is real.”

How then the seeming existence of all phenomena? Reflecting Sri Ramana, James contends that “since all phenomena seem to exist only in the view of ourself as ego, they derive their seeming existence from the seeming existence of ourself as ego, and ego derives its seeming existence from the real existence of ourself as the one pure being-awareness (sat-cit), which is the sole reality underlying the seeming existence of ego.”

James explains that “what Advaita Vedanta means by ‘real’ is what actually exists, and what it means by ‘unreal’ is what does not actually exist even if it seems to exist, so it does not accept anything as real that is not permanent. As Sri Ramana said, ‘Whatever exists at one time but not at another time does not actually exist even when it seems to exist’, and the same idea is implied by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gītā 2.16: ‘Of the non-existent there is not [ever any real] existence; of the existent there is not [ever any] non-existence’. The reason for this is that, just as what is hot at one time but not at another time is not intrinsically hot but has borrowed its heat from some source other than itself, whatever exists at one time but not at another time is not intrinsically existent but has borrowed its existence from some source other than itself. Therefore, only what exists permanently and without ever undergoing any change is intrinsically existent, so it does not depend for its existence on any other thing, whereas all things that are impermanent or subject to change do not exist independently but derive their existence from something else. Hence, since their existence does not belong to them, they do not actually exist but merely seem to exist.”

Following this logic, James argues, “Therefore, since transitive awareness and all the phenomena it is aware of are not permanent, they do not actually exist but merely seem to exist, so what actually exists is only pure intransitive awareness, because it alone is what exists permanently and therefore intrinsically and independently. Pure intransitive awareness is therefore the ultimate source from which all other things derive their seeming existence, so since it is the only real existence, it is ‘one only without a second’ (ēkam ēva advitīyam).

“Since this is the central contention of Advaita Vedanta, it is the most radical of all forms of monism. In its deepest form as taught by Sri Ramana, it is a form of idealism only insofar as it maintains that no phenomena, whether mental or seemingly physical, exist independent of ego, the transitive awareness in whose view alone they seem to exist, but unlike most other forms of idealism, which take the mind to be real, it does not take either the mind or its root, namely ego, to be real. What is real is only pure intransitive awareness, which is the one source and substance of ego and hence ultimately of all other things” (James, 2025).