« Ontologically Speaking, No Such State as Self-Awareness »

The question “who am I?” can never be answered apophatically (i.e. in assertion).  It can only be answered cataphatically (in negation). 

Vivekananda says: “You cannot know your own self; you cannot move it out and make it an object to look at, because you are that and cannot separate yourself from it.”

Indeed.  There is subject and there are external and internal objects that this subject perceives.  Objects are what we perceive as separate from us.  Thus, if you are aware of something, it is not you.  We can be aware of objects outside of us.  We can be aware of the objects inside us, such as thoughts, feelings, sensations.  These objects of consciousness come and go, but we remain. 

Thus, we are not these objects of consciousness.  We are that which is aware, that which perceives, we are the subjects.  We cannot not be ourselves.  This is subject permanence.  And this subject permanence creates the blind-spot as any point-of-view.  It cannot see itself because to see itself it would have to be outside itself to see in.  But how can it?  It is self, verily. 

What are we?  For ease of reference, we are a field of awareness, we are the wax of consciousness in constant metamorphosis, we are a self-reflective proto-substrate of mind-forms which we tend to so easily confuse with ourselves.  But of course we aren’t any of these above words.  We can have any of these thoughts, we can see them emerge and pass through, and, therefore, we are not these thoughts of self-description. 

The fact that we cannot know our essential selves means that ontologically-speaking self-awareness is impossible.  Whatever we are aware of, we aren’t.  All of our awareness is externally-pivoted, deployed onto what we are not.  And that’s, of course, the gist of awareness itself.  Awareness is always “of” something that it is not. Thus, no such state as self-awareness, no such state as awareness of awareness.

Just like an eye cannot look at itself, neither can an “I” be self-aware.

Best we can do is to know what we are by knowing what we aren't.

But then, of course, I’ve been known to argue the opposite just as vehemently.