'I' and 'I-I' - A Reader's Query

(First published in The Mountain Path, 1991, pp. 79-88.)

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Sri Ramana Maharshi

Sometime last year I received a letter from Professor James E. Royster of Cleveland State University, USA, which contained the following interesting question: 

     My reason for writing is to raise a question with you that has long puzzled me. I have been reading Ramana Maharshi for about twenty years and frequently find him using the expression. 'I-I' but I'm not clear on his meaning. Why 'I-I' rather than simply 'I'? I can think of many possible meanings but I am not at all sure what Ramana intended. Is it to suggest that the sense of separate self (or self-consciousness) arises only in relationship to another sense of separate self? Or that the individual atman is derived from (''subtracted'' from) the Absolute Atman, Brahman Nirguna? Does 'I-I' refer to the ego or the Universal Self? My guesses and interpretations go on and on. 

     If you can shed some light on this issue I will be most appreciative. Perhaps there has been an article in The Mountain Pathor elsewhere that takes up this question. 

     This question has not, to my knowledge, been discussed in any great detail in either The Mountain Path or any other ashram publication. I therefore sent the following detailed reply to the professor. Since I suspect that some devotees may disagree with some of my conclusions, I should say in advance that this is not intended to be a definitive explanation. It merely reflects my own views. 

* * * 

     Bhagavan never used the term 'I-I' to denote the mind, the ego or the individual self, nor did he intend it, as Professor Royster speculates, to indicate that there is any relationship between the individual 'I' and the Self. On the contrary, Bhagavan makes it clear on many occasions that 'I-I' is an experience not of the ego but of the Self. Verse thirty of Ulladu Narpadu is quite emphatic about this: 

Questioning 'Who am I?' within one's mind, when one reaches the Heart, the individual 'I' sinks crestfallen, and at once reality manifests itself as 'I-I'. Though it reveals itself thus, it is not the ego 'I' but the perfect being the Self Absolute. (1) 

     Verses nineteen and twenty of Upadesa Undiyar describe the same process in almost identical terms: 

19. 'Whence does the 'I' arise?' Seek this within. The 'I' then vanishes. This is the pursuit of wisdom. 

20. Where the 'I' vanished, there appears an 'I-I' by itself. This is the infinite.(2) 

     Although Bhagavan is here clearly equating the experience of 'I-I' with the experience of the Self, one should be wary of jumping to the conclusion that he is saying in these three verses that the 'I-I' experience occurs after the final realisation of the Self. Why? Because on many other occasions Bhagavan told devotees that the 'I-I' experience was merely a prelude to realisation and not the realisation itself. I shall return to the question of whether the 'I-I' experience can be equated with Self-realisation later in this article, but first I feel that it would be more profitable to examine some of the quotations in which Bhagavan gave detailed descriptions of the 'I-I'. 

     Bhagavan frequently used the Sanskrit phrase aham sphurana to indicate the 'I-I' consciousness or experience. Aham means 'I' and sphurana can be translated as 'radiation, emanation, or pulsation'. When he explained what this term meant he indicated that it is an impermanent experience of the Self in which the mind has been temporarily transcended. This distinction between the temporary experience of the 'I-I' and the permanent state of Self-realisation that follows it is well brought out in the question-and-answer version of Vichara Sangraham (Self-Enquiry): 

Therefore, leaving the corpse-like body as an actual corpse and remaining without even uttering the word 'I' by mouth, if one now keenly enquires, 'What is it that rises as 'I'? then in the Heart a certain soundless sphurana, 'I-I', will shine forth of its own accord. It is an awareness that is single and undivided, the thoughts which are many and divided having disappeared. If one remains still without leaving it, even the sphurana - having completely annihilated the sense of the individuality, the form of the ego, 'I am the body' - will itself in the end subside, just like the flame that catches the camphor. This alone is said to be liberation by great ones and scriptures.(3) 

     This answer can be taken to be an amplification of and a commentary on the three verses already quoted, for the same sequence of events is described, but at greater length; after the source of the 'I'-thought is sought for, the 'I'-thought subsides, disappears and is replaced by the aham sphurana. What this longer quotation makes clear is that even this sphurana of 'I-I' has to subside before the final and permanent stage of Self-realisation is attained. 

     Bhagavan's use of the word sphurana in this quotation once puzzled Devaraja Mudaliar. He therefore asked Bhagavan about it and received a detailed, illuminating answer: 

I have always had doubt about what exactly the word sphuranameans [in question three of Vichara Sangraham]. So I asked Bhagavan and he said, 'It means… 'Which shines or illuminates''.' I asked, 'Is it not a sound we hear?' Bhagavan said, 'Yes, we may say it is a sound we feel or become aware of'. He also referred to the dictionary and said, 'The word means ''throbbing'', ''springing on the memory'', ''flashing across the mind''. Thus both sound and light may be implied in the word sphurana. Everything has come from light and sound.' I asked Bhagavan what it is that 'shines', whether it is the ego or the Self. He said that it was neither the one nor the other, but something in between the two, that it is something that is a combination of the 'I' (Self) and the 'I'-thought (ego) and that the Self is without even this sphurana.(4)