Is the world we experience truly real, or is it more like a dream we haven’t yet woken up from? Michael James, a leading scholar and translator of the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, explores how Ramana’s philosophy challenges our most basic assumptions about the self, the world, and the nature of reality.
Michael James has spent nearly 50 years studying, practicing, and translating the works of Sri Ramana Maharshi. He studied under Sri Sadhu Om, a direct disciple of Ramana, and is the author of Atma-Vidya: The Science of Knowing Oneself. He is regarded as a leading authority on Ramana’s primary sources and experiential practice.
This is the first in a series of conversations with Michael James on Closer to Truth.
Explore Michael James’s entry on Sri Ramana in the Landscape of Consciousness: https://loc.closertotruth.com/theory/sri-ramana-s-self-as-pure-consciousness
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Closer To Truth is hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn. The series presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions — fundamental issues of existence, consciousness, and meaning. Discover new ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
#SriRamanaMaharshi #AdvaitaVedanta #Consciousness #Nonduality #CloserToTruth
0:00 Cold open
0:35 Introduction — Michael James and Sri Ramana
1:07 What is Ramana’s most counterintuitive teaching?
2:27 What first drew Michael James to Ramana?
3:49 Bio — Michael James
4:45 Overview of Ramana’s philosophy — world, reality, value
5:06 Are we the body? Waking, dream, and sleep
7:26 The significance of the dream state
8:15 Is there awareness in deep sleep?
11:49 What does this mean for the nature of phenomena?
13:15 The logical steps from pure awareness to selfhood
15:07 Beyond skepticism — the one thing we cannot doubt
16:43 Ego, consciousness, and the nature of the mind
17:10 Is there an external world?
19:15 Waking state as dream — the analogy explored
21:10 Do we share the same world?
24:28 What does “Bhagavan” mean?
27:04 Ramana’s contribution to Advaita philosophy
28:07 The nature of ego — Ramana’s key clarification
29:04 Self-enquiry — turning attention inward
30:25 Sleep, self-knowledge, and infinite being-awareness
33:09 Closing — upcoming segments
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