Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj were contemporaries in the wisdom tradition known as Advaita Vedanta. However, both entertained profoundly different philosophy of Self, and of what exists, otherwise known as ontology.
Many people believe that all enlightened people have exactly the same experience and merely express it differently depending on their background, education, and the people around them. However, this is just an assumption. No one can really know the mind of another or the experience of another except by speculation, or in the cases of some very empathic individuals, by direct experience. However, even if I were to have a direct experience of Ramana Maharshi’s experience, it would still be filtered through my body-mind apparatus, and therefore would never be pure Ramana.
Instead of assuming that both of these two great gurus spoke identically in terms of ontology, or more importantly, about the Self, or “Truth,” let us look at what they actually said.
The keywords in exploring the ontology of both of these teachers are as follows: ‘I’, ‘self’, ‘Self’, ‘Consciousness’, ‘Turiya’, and ‘Turiyatata’.
One of the key differences between Nisargadatta and Ramana, was that for Ramana there was only Consciousness. For Nisargadatta, there was Consciousness and the witness behind Consciousness, the absolute, the noumenal, which was entirely separate from Consciousness. Sometimes it appears he uses "witness" almost like pointer towards an entity. However, and entity would have to be in existence or Consciousness. At other times, he refers to it as the "principle" that knows both knowingness and non-knowing, or nothingness.
For Ramana there were two I’s, the I of the mind that is destroyed by self inquiry, and the “true” I of the heart, which is experienced when the mind is silent and one rests in one sense of presence in the area of the heart in the body. The locus of concentration/energy, drops from the brain, face, and mouth into the thorax and heart area, entirely quieting the mind. This is called abiding in the Self.
For Nisargadatta, in essence, there were three I’s: the I thought; the I of Atman or the witness of the three states of Consciousness found in Turiya; the absolute witness, the noumenal Self, the Self that does not exist in Consciousness, and therefore “exists” prior to Consciousness.
For Nisargadatta, following the lead of his teacher Siddharameshwar, enjoined the student practitioner to focus on the inner sense of I am, which usually is first experienced as energy in the area of the heart, and with concentration thereon, grows into a sense of presence.
Nisargadatta has the student focus on the sense of I am, then turn around and rests in the sense of I am or abides there in the sense of I am, with a sense of love and acceptance of that I am sense.
Eventually, Nisargadatta states that that sense of I am, almost as a physical presence, disappears, leaving one in the absolute, which is beyond Consciousness, and is the ultimate witness of Consciousness.
Ramana somewhat differently has the student concentrate on the I-thought, watching where it arises and where it passes away.
If one actually practices this way for a long time, one will actually see the thought as an entity arising out of emptiness and disappearing into emptiness, which he calls Self, Turiya, or the real I as opposed to the false I of the I-thought.
That is, for Ramana, the real I is the ground state, feeling of Turiya, which is the basic essence of sentience, or the conscious life force. I believe this is what Nisargadatta calls “beingness.”
If we meditate deeper, and watch that I thought disappear into the emptiness, one will find that emptiness is really filled with knowingness, sentience, or a sense of presence. It appears as a lighted presence within oneself, within the empty space that is our inner void, and which, after a time, one takes to be oneself. Ramana calls this the true I.
For Nisargadatta, at least in his experience, even Ramana’s true I of Consciousness is illusory, and his true I is the witness which is entirely beyond Consciousness, and which is the noumenal, the absolute, and which can never know itself as object. In other words, the true I is entirely a mystery, and the source from which all of Consciousness arises and passes away.
For Ramana, it is different. For him there is only Consciousness.
Ramana stated after he had an experience of death and realized that the body dies but Consciousness is not touched by death:
“I” am immortal Consciousness. “I” [that is the true I or Self] was reality, the only reality in this momentary state. All conscious activity that was related to my body flowed into this “I.” From that moment all attention was drawn as if by powerful magic to the I or “Self.” The fear of death was permanently extinguished. From this time I remain fully absorbed in the “Self.”
You have to realize that Ramana did not actually die. He pretended to die. A fear of death came to him and instead of running from the fear, decided to introspect into it, and pretended to die. He held his breath. He clenched his eyes. I he laid down as a corpse and imagined it was ready to be burned in the fire of cremation.
Then it dawned on him that the full power of his own beingness continued to exist unabated. He realized in this moment the separation of Consciousness from the body, and that Consciousness had its own separate life force from the body. It is because of his terrible fear that this experience that “ordinary Consciousness” was so meaningful. Other people find out that they are not their bodies in other ways, and with somewhat different experiences.
For Ramana there was only Consciousness. It was not conceivable to him that there was a noumenal unknowable witness that existed prior to Consciousness. For Ramana there was only Satchitananda, existence-knowledge-bliss. There was nothing outside of existence-knowledge-bliss. That is there was no prior to Consciousness; all that there was, was Consciousness.
Nisargadatta would agree that all that there is, is Consciousness. But he would posit the existence of a principal beyond Consciousness that was aware of the coming and going of Consciousness, which he called the Absolute, or the Witness, equivalent to the Western concept of noumena, the unknowable subject of existence, which was not in existence, but beyond it, or prior to it.
One might use an analogy of en entity from another dimension who stuck his head into our 4-dimensioanl universe, witnessed it, but was not of it.
In his life as a matter of fact, Nisargadatta retreated more and more into this witness state the older and sicker he got, but he stated that for the aspirant who wants to attain Jnana, one cannot ignore Consciousness, which he called “knowingness.”
On page 53 of Consciousness and the Absolute he states:
“the absolute state cannot be explained by words. You are that absolute, the unchanging.
“Consciousness, or the knowingness, is homogeneous and one only. When you were in that state of Consciousness, it is all one, all the same, only the expressions are different.
“Everything which gets consumed, exhausted, is unreal. Your knowingness will, in due course, be consumed, will disappear, so it can’t be real; but you can’t just dismiss it, you must understand it fully.”
In other words, Nisargadatta is saying that Consciousness is unreal in the sense of being temporary, and also dependent on the existence of the body, and becomes burnt up by life after period of time, but for the purposes of Jnana, self-realization, it cannot be ignored, for it is the gate to awakening.
Self-realization for Nisargadatta meant something entirely different from self-realization for Ramana. For Ramana self-realization is the recognition that you are the entirety of Consciousness arising from your recognition that your essence is the Satchitananda of the Turiya “state,” and also all experiences that arise from and disappear into Turiya. In other words, you are that expanded sense of presence that comes from dwelling in the silence of the heart with the mind held silent, the beingness or presence that experiences everything, and which remains during sleep, waking and dream states. For Ramana everything in the world, everything in your body and mind, reside in that sense of presence, Satchitananda or the real I, or Turiya.
But not for Nisargadatta. He identifies himself with the witness of Consciousness, the witness of I am. In a sense he appears to be identifying with the witness or the real I that Ramana calls Turiya, but Nisargadatta objectifies Consciousness, the object, while the absolute is the noumenal subject.
Concerning this, Robert Adams rejected Nisargadatta’s assumption of the split between the absolute and Ramana’s real I of Turiya, saying that Nisargadatta added unnecessary complications to Ramana’s pure theory.
Nisargadatta’s absolute in a sense is initially a speculation based on the assumption that there must exist a principal which recognizes Consciousness and also the absence of Consciousness which is beyond Consciousness. One can never experience this prior to Consciousness “existence” because it is entirely outside of Consciousness. As Nisargadatta states, one can never witness the witness, one can never witness the absolute, one can only be the absolute. Therefore there can never be any experiential proof of the Absolute, but only a conviction.
When one becomes that witness for Nisargadatta, one has attained a level beyond existence and nonexistence, which he states as is one’s true nature, and it is this which he called self-realization.
(In fact, as I explain elsewhere, it is more than conviction. One develops a faith that is beyond the intellect, beyond conviction because of the continuity of Se;f even through unconsciousness states. Ramesh Balsekar called with "apprehension.")
For Ramana on the other hand, self-realization is the experience of Satchitananda, or identification or immersion in Turiya, the real Self, “the only reality.” He stated that “all conscious activity that was related to my body flowed into this I (Turiya). From that moment, all attention was drawn as if by powerful magic to the “I” or the “Self.”
For Ramana, self-realization was entirely experiential. He felt the power of the self within, of Turiya, of Satchitananda, and from that moment on was always aware that he was the self. This was the true I. The I did not dissolve as for Nisargadatta, although the false I of the mind did. All things in the world arose from and subsided into the Self. For Nisargadatta, all things arose from and disappeared into the absolute, the noumena.
One reconciliation is possible between these two concepts of self-realization is to join them both together, and make Turiya the flip side of the absolute witness, and the absolute witness the flip side of Turiya or essence of Consciousness.
Nisargadatta appears to be suggesting the same in Consciousness and the Absolute. In one paragraph he calls the ‘Self’ the “feeling ‘I-Am’,” which is love to be, while in another paragraph he says the ‘I’ is the Absolute unmanifested, while Consciousness is the manifested world, Consciousness, which is experienced the same by all.
Nisargadatta: Now, understand the subtle difference, what are you and what do you understand to be you? The body is not you. The body is the food you have consumed, the taste of the body is the knowledge "I Am". That is Self, the feeling "I Am", that is the love to be. That love to be is all-pervading.
Everything happens out of our own Self. Thi consciousness is spontaneously felt in the Self only. This "I" is not an individual. What is, is the Absolute unmanifested. What appears, as if in a dream, is the manifested, relative world, and this experience of the dreamlike state is the same, an identical state, for everyone.
In fact, for me this is an essential assumption to explain my own experiences, the first of which was to experience myself as totally separate from the states of Consciousness which came to me, and enveloped me, but did not touch me. This is what Robert Adams acknowledged as self-realization in me.
In this experience I myself was unknowable; all that “I” knew was the coming and going of states of Consciousness. Without the coming and going of states of Consciousness there would be no awareness of myself as the absolute, apart from Consciousness. It was only through witnessing Consciousness that I had an existence as a total mystery, as some principle or thing beyond Turiya.
In my third awakening experience, I felt an explosion of life force, energy, and bliss arising from within my presence in a constant eruption, with a deep, deep knowing that this was my Self. There was utter and total certainty that this energy, light, bliss and self-recognition was myself. The knowledge was unshakable. Because of the simultaneous presence of visual light, bliss, a sense of profound grace, self-acceptance, surrender, and love, I call this Christ or Krishna Consciousness. This is the complete opposite of my second awakening stated in the previous paragraph.
In the second awakening I identified with the untouchable absolute witness just observing Consciousness. In the third awakening, I became the explosion of the light force, of Turiya, Satchitananda, Consciousness on steroids. And I found this awakening far more powerful, riveting, and “enlightening” than either my first or second awakening recognized by Robert Adams.
However, exploring Nisargadatta’s works, one reads his first book, Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization, and finds that he is a true Bhakta, filled with love, devotion, and divine energies, and experiences Krishna Consciousness. In fact he talks about Satchitananda and the constant feeling of bliss, surrender to his group, love of his guru, and love of that basic life in a state which he calls the child Consciousness.
Thus it may well be that Nisargadatta originally experienced the same awakening as Ramana to the life force, to Turiya with all of his attention fixated on it, and eventually it disappeared, and his identification was no longer with Consciousness, but more and more with the absolute experienced as a profound conviction (apprehension). He did strongly feel the lessening of his own life force along with the severe pain of his cancer, and practically begged Consciousness to leave him. Not so Ramana.
This may be the case, or it may be the case that Nisargadatta was just tired of life in the world and chose to begin to ignore Consciousness and the happenings in Consciousness, and cleaved to the conviction/apprehension of That which knew the coming and going of Consciousness which was prior to Consciousness, and which was immortal.
Nisargadatta: My present state is such that this consciousness and all this physical suffering are unbearable. I am prepared to dispose of it right now. Nevertheless, people come here and these talks emanate out of the consciousness. I am addressing you as consciousness; you are the Godly consciousness.
I am telling you about the consciousness. In my true state, if I had been aware of consciousness at the moment the body formation was taking place, I would have rejected it. But at that highest state such knowledge is not there and this body formation and consciousness are both spontaneous.
For me, I think I have come to express in my own teachings the primacy of Ramana’s saying YES to Consciousness and the life force, as opposed to Nisargadatta more or less dismissing Consciousness and fading away into the noumena, into the hypothetical subject beyond Consciousness.
For me, the constant burning explosive awareness that runs through my sense of presence and my body is so powerful, so commanding and inviting at the same time, that my previous existence up until two years ago, and which included 15 years of awakening in a Nisargadatta style, was all just a dream.
Only now when I burn and explode with life energies, my body is acutely attentive to everything, my sense of presence fills my body and the space around me with a different kind of knowing, a knowing through the heart directly rather than through the mind and the brain. To me this is true awakening peace that passeth all understanding, far beyond the (almost unbearable/almost annoying) bliss.
