What is pure awareness?

In a Zoom meeting with the Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK on 14th October 2023, Michael answers various questions about Bhagavan’s teachings. He started with:

Question #1: In deep sleep only awareness remains. You said awareness knows awareness only. My question is why I don't know myself in deep sleep? Kindly Reply.

Question #2: What is pure awareness? If it is aware of anything, it is impure. So, if awareness is aware even of itself, being aware, that is already impure, since awareness has an object (itself). So, pure awareness is awareness of... what?

And, anyway, as soon as you notice it, it would not be pure awareness any longer, since now there is a duality: awareness (apparently of nothing) and the awareness of awareness. My point then is, what good is pure awareness, since it is aware of nothing, and cannot even know itself without disturbing its pure awareness?

If you are it, you cannot know it, and if you know it, you no longer are it. I do not see a way out of this. Has anyone ever recognized pure awareness? If so, they are separate from it. But, it also cannot be aware of itself, or for that matter anything at all. And this is supposed to be the highest knowledge no less? Knowledge of what, exactly?

Question #3: Philosophy, Sartre in particular, would deny that there is anything such as intransitive awareness. Awareness must be of something, or what is it awareness of? As soon as you are aware of even just being aware, now awareness is the object, and you are observing awareness. I do not think we are aware of our sleep. I think we infer it. We can recall our dreams, and we might say we did not dream all night, so there must have been a period of sleep, but that does not mean we were aware of our awareness. Also, the fact that we are not aware of the world while asleep is particularly unconvincing when it is argued that therefore the objective world arises when our ego arises. That is far too solipsistic for my tastes. We blink and the sun disappears, for us. No one believes the sun disappears; similarly, we sleep and the world does not disappear. Where is the evidence one can see pure awareness, or failing that, that awareness of nothing exists. And so what if we can have pure awareness of nothing at all; what does that prove, exactly?

This episode can also be watched as a video here and a more compressed audio copy in Opus format (which can be listened to in the VLC media player and some other apps) can be downloaded from here.