What did Sri Ramana Maharishi mean by the I-Thought?

Sri Ramana Maharishi Introduction

For those who don’t know, Ramana Maharishi (30 December 1879 – 14 April 1950) was one of India’s greatest sages and taught in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta. He awakened to his true nature at the age of 16 after having a death experience. He spent the rest of his life near the holy mountain Arunachala, in Tiruvannamalai. His most two most famous books are Ulladu Narpadu, (40 verses on the Nature of What-Is) and Nan-Yar, (Who Am I?).

Misunderstandings Regarding the I-Thought and Self-Inquiry

The most common misunderstanding is that the I-Thought means, the thought “I-AM” and that self-inquiry is either fixing your attention on the I-AM or even worse, recognizing that the I-AM is a just a thought, and this recognition is equivalent to enlightenment. Many teachers have deluded themselves into thinking that they are enlightened based on these misunderstandings, and caused a lot of confusion to sincere seekers of truth. Another common myth is that the I-thought corresponds to the default-mode network (DMN), and suppressing the DMN or a thought free state is equivalent to enlightenment. While I agree that quietening the mind to some degree is useful in any spiritual path, conflating a quiet mind with enlightenment is a gross misunderstanding of Sri Ramana Maharishi’s teaching.

Most people claiming inspiration or lineage to Ramana Maharishi haven’t actually studied Ramana Maharishi’s teachings in any great depth, picking and choosing statements that suits their viewpoints. Also, Ramana Maharishi never appointed any successors so the idea that there is an unbroken lineage going back to Ramana Maharishi is ludicrous.

So what did Sri Ramana Maharishi Mean by the I-Thought or Aham-Vritti?

So what did Ramana Maharishi mean by the I-thought? According to Ramana Maharishi, the I-thought is nothing other than Ego. According to Sri Ramana Maharishi, the Ego, is an emergent phenomenon that arises when Infinite Awareness conflates itself with this body, thereby causing an inherent sense of limitation in ourselves that manifests as subject-object duality. Because of this conflation our experience of this world is temporal and is restricted by space and time. This conflation, he calls Chidabasa (semblance of awareness) or Chit-Jada-Granthi (the knot connecting the insentient body (jada) & chit (awareness). In other words, the I-thought or Ego is a knot that is formed when awareness that is infinite and unbounded, contracts into the spatio-temporality that we experience as the body-mind. Also, when Ramana Maharishi means body, he does not only mean the physical body but also the subtle body (Mind-Intellect-Ego) and the causal body (unconscious).

Don’t believe me, here are a few references from his own writings that explain this idea in more detail.

Verse 18 of Upadēśa Undiyār:

Mind [is] only thoughts. Among all [the countless thoughts that we form in our mind], the thought named ‘I’ alone is the mūla [root, base, foundation, origin, source or cause]. [Therefore] what is called ‘mind’ is [in essence just this root thought] ‘I’.

Verse 2 of Āṉma-Viddai :

The thought ‘this body composed of flesh is I’ indeed [is] the one thread on which [all our other] various thoughts are strung …

Alert, Sri Ramana is clearly stating that our identification with the physical body is what causing the primal misidentification. The root I-thought is the first thought from which all other thoughts arise, and he is clearly stating that it is the identification with our body that is causing the problem.

Maharshi’s Gospel (13th edition, 2002, page 89):

the ego [our mind or primal thought ‘I’] has one and only one [relevant] characteristic. The ego functions as the knot [granthi] between the Self[,] which is Pure Consciousness [chit][,] and the physical body[,] which is ... insentient [jaḍa]. The ego is therefore called the chit-jada granthi [the knot between consciousness and the non-conscious]. In your investigation into the source of aham-vritti [the thought ‘I’], you take the essential chit [consciousness] aspect of the ego; and for this reason the enquiry must lead to the realization of the pure consciousness of the Self.