You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without
you there can be neither perception nor imagination.
Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of 'I am' is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the 'I am' without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalised but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all 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.
So the "I am" could be called the essence of me, which makes myself, "the I", different from "the I" and "the "I am" of your good self? If so, what is this essence - "stripped of body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc.," - which is me as opposed to the me of you? Is it thought (I don't mean thinking). Is all thought? I came to that idea quite a few years ago now but still can't quite place "It" within the "equation", It being God Almighty which must surely be all of us and everything in the universe; the universe itself and all it contains.
ReplyDeleteI occasionally still get glimpses of....something, which pertains to reality; when this happens, I know what the something is, and when it passes there is no way to describe the experience of understanding at that time, let alone understanding. All I know is, part of the something is to know I exist in reality becomes quite overwhelming.
This post - 1. The Sense of ‘I am’ - is the first thing I've read so far on your website; maybe my questions will be answered by my reading "I Am That". I look forward to it with much interest, thank you.
:-)