Part 4

On waking up, 
was it not the sense 'I am' that came first?
The sense 'I am' is always with you, 
only you have attached all kinds of things to it -- 
body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions, etc. 
All these self-identifications are misleading. 
Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not. 

What is mine is mine 
and was mine even when God was not. 
Of course, it is a very tiny little thing, a speck -- 
the sense 'I am', the fact of being. 

The light by which you see the world, which is God, 
is the tiny little spark: 'I am', 
apparently so small, 
yet the first and the last in every act of knowing and loving. 

Without the 'I am' there is nothing. 
All knowledge is about the 'I am'.
Outside the Self there is nothing. 
All is one and all is contained in 'I am'.


Give it all up and be ready for the real to assert itself. 
This self-assertion is best expressed in words: 'I am'. 
Nothing else has being. Of this you are absolutely certain. 

Instead of seeing things as imagined, 

learn to see them as they are. 

When you can see everything as it is, 

you will also see yourself as you are. 

It is like cleansing a mirror. 

The same mirror that shows you the world as it is 

will also show you your own face. 

The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. 

'I am' is ever afresh. 
You do not need to remember in order to be.
At present your being is mixed up with experiencing. 
All you need is to unravel being from the tangle of experiences. 
Once you have known pure being, 
without being this or that, 
you will discern it among experiences 
and you will no longer be misled by names and forms.

The 'I am' in movement creates the world. 

The 'I am' at peace becomes the Absolute.

In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, 
a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, 
thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, 
like the pen writing on paper. 
And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. 
You are that tiny point 
and by your movement the world is ever re-created. 
Stop moving and there will be no world. 

Look within and you will find that the point of light 
is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body, 
as the sense 'I am'. 

There is only light, all else appears.


The 'I am' is at the root of all appearance 
and the permanent link in the succession of events that we call life.
Human beings die every second, 
the fear and the agony of dying hangs over the world like a cloud. 
No wonder you too are afraid. 
But once you know that the body alone dies 
and not the continuity of memory and the sense of 'I am' reflected in it, 
you are afraid no longer. 

People differ, but all are faced with the fact of their own existence. 
'I am' is the ultimate fact; 
'Who am I?' is the ultimate question 
to which everybody must find an answer. 

Delve deeply into the sense 'I am' 
and you will surely discover that the perceiving centre is universal, 
as universal as the light that illumines the world. 
All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness. 

On the other hand, whatever is done, 
is done by you, 
the universal and inexhaustible energy. 

Before the mind -- I am. 
'I am' is not a thought in the mind; 
the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. 
And since time and space are in the mind, 
I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent. 

You are not this, 
there is nothing of yours in this, 
except the little point of 'I am'.
'I am this, I am that' is dream, 
while pure 'I am' has the stamp of reality on it. 

You have tasted so many things -- all came to naught. 
Only the sense 'I am' persisted -- unchanged. 
Stay with the changeless among the changeful, 
until you are able to go beyond. 

When the 'I am myself' goes, 
the 'I am all' comes. 
When the 'I am all' goes, 
'I am' comes. 
When even 'I am' goes, 
reality alone is...