2023-10-28 Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK: Understanding solipsism as taught by Bhagavan Ramana
eka-jīva-vāda Means the contention that there is just one jiva, one ego. This is very fundamental in Bhagavan’s teachings; it is implied in so many of Bhagavan’s teachings. For example, this one example out of many, it is implied throughout Uḷḷadu Nārpadu (Reality in Forty Verses), but one place where it is particularly clear is in Verse 26:
If ego comes into existence, everything comes into existence; if ego doesn’t exist, everything doesn’t exist. Ego itself is everything. Therefore, investigating what it is, is giving up everything.
This verse would make no sense if there were multiple egos, because the multiplicity of egos should be part of the «everything» that Bhagavan refers to when he says «If ego comes into existence, everything comes into existence». So, we can make sense of this verse, and so many other teachings of Bhagavan, only if we are willing to accept that a fundamental principle of Bhagavan’s teachings is that there is just one ego. This teaching that there is just one ego is what in western philosophy is referred to a solipsism. However, the solipsism taught by Bhagavan is a very much deeper and more nuanced solipsism. […]
In a Zoom meeting with the Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK on 28th October 2023, Michael James talks about solipsism as taught by Bhagavan, and answers various questions about Bhagavan’s teachings. The analytical set of premises and inferences that he offers for consideration at the beginning this meeting is:
1. We are the experiencer of all that we experience.
2. As the experiencer, we always experience ourself as a person.
3. As the experiencer, we perceive a world that is full of other people, who are just like the person we seem to be.
4. Since we, the experiencer, always experience ourself as a person, every other person seems to us to be an experiencer, just like us.
5. All the other people and their experiences are no less real than the person we seem to be.
6. So long as we seem to be a person, we experience suffering, and every other person seems to us to experience suffering in the same way.
7. So long as we are firmly convinced that this person whom we seem to be is what we actually are, then our suffering and the suffering of all other people will inevitably seem to us to be real.
8. But are we this person? In other words, is this person what we actually are?
9. If this person is not what we actually are, our experience of ourself as ‘I am this person’ is an illusion, and hence unreal.
10. Everything that we (as the experiencer) experience is based upon our experience of ourself as a person, because we experience things other than ourself only when we experience ourself as a person (namely in waking and in dream).
11. Therefore if our experience of ourself as ‘I am this person’ is an illusion, our experience of everything else must be equally illusory.
12. If our experience of everything else is illusory, the person we seem to be and all the other people are a part of that illusion, and hence unreal.
13. If the person we seem to be and all the other people are unreal, their suffering and everything else that they seem to experience must also be unreal.
14. Therefore, since the appearance of multiple experiencers exists in the view of ourself as an experiencer who experiences itself as a person, if we are not this person, then the entire appearance of multiple experiencers is an illusion, and hence unreal.
15. Since there can be no appearance without an experiencer of it, the root cause of the entire appearance of multiple experiencers is the experiencer of it, namely ourself.
16. Therefore, before we can reliably judge the reality of the appearance of multiple experiencers, we first need to investigate and find out the reality of ourself, in whose view all those multiple experiencers seem to exist.
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