The Primary Object I or I Am

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#1 Ramana has stated that the " I Thought " or " I Am " sense of

conscious presence is the primary object by which all other objects

arise. Without the " I " or " I Am " no objects can appear on the screen

of consciousness.

Please offer your views or other philosophical views on the

aforesaid.

 

Answer from a philosophy professor friend who shall remain un-named

because I did not ask for permission as he is over his head in

teaching phenomenology. We also meditated with him for years at the

Viet Zen center here in Honolulu so he is a seeker also.

 

Professor: It is said within the Hindu and Buddhist traditions that

the eye cannot see itself, the tip of the finger cannot touch

itself, the blade of the sword cannot cut itself. So for the eye,

there is no eye. Anything that presents itself with any form of

presence at all is object, and not subject. Experientially, there

is no subject, and therefore, no subject-object duality. So the " I

Thought " is precisely that … a thought, and thus, an object of

consciousness, and not consciousness itself. But to say that the

world and its objects are founded in the " I Thought " implies that we

cannot conceive the world except in relationship to the " I. " This

may, in fact, be a conceptual truth. But it's not an experiential

truth, since the " I " (subject) is not present (as a subject) in our

experience. So here we have a case of the mind " outsmarting "

consciousness. If there is no " I " in experience, but the " I " is a

necessary part of our thinking, then thinking is necessarily

unfaithful to experience.