my article

During the past few weeks I have written many comments about ahaṁ-sphuraṇa and related subjects in reply to comments that others have written on some of my recent articles, and since Sanjay Lohia suggested in one of his recent comments that I should gather together all such comments and make them available as an article, I decided to compile and adapt them (along with one email on the same subject) as this article, which I hope will serve as a useful supplement to my previous article, Demystifying the term ‘ sphuraṇa ’ . Since this is a long article that discusses various different but related issues, I have divided it into the following ten sections: ‘I’-thought, ‘I’-feeling and ahaṁ-sphuraṇa நான் நான் ( nāṉ nāṉ ) means ‘I am I’, not ‘I-I’ The exact meaning of sphuraṇa is determined by the context in which it is used When we try to attend only to ‘I’, it shines more clearly Aham-sphurana is an experience that cannot be described adequately in words தன்னுணர்வு ( taṉ-ṉ-uṇarvu ) mean...

Three significant Tamil words that Sri Ramana often used in his own writings and in his oral teachings are தன்மை ( taṉmai ), which literally means ‘self-ness’ ( taṉ-mai ) or ‘selfhood’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the first person’, முன்னிலை ( muṉṉilai ), which etymologically means ‘that which stands in front’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the second person’, and படர்க்கை ( paḍarkkai ), which etymologically means ‘that which has spread out’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the third person’. Of these three words, the most significant is of course தன்மை ( taṉmai ), the first person, the subject ‘I’, but in this article I will focus more on the other two words in order to clarify their meaning in the context of Sri Ramana’s teachings. Though these words are all grammatical terms, in his teachings Sri Ramana did not use them in their usual grammatical sense but in an epistemological sense. That is, தன்மை ( taṉmai ), the first person, is the epis...