M: 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.
Q: Then what am I?
M: It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know
what you are. For as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is
already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing as
self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as total negation.
All you can say is: ‘I am not this, I am not that’. You cannot meaningfully say
‘this is what I am’. It just makes no sense. What you can point out as 'this'
or 'that' cannot be yourself. Surely, you can not be 'something' else. You are
nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither
perception nor imagination.
