When you are in deep sleep and you feel that you are awake, the dream world appears simultaneously. With the ‘I am’, the world appears in the waking and dream states.

Concepts come into the sense of being ‘I am’ because of the vital breath that causes the mind flow. Mind means words, so thoughts are there – they are the concepts. Look at your root, the child consciousness, and finish it off.

It is only during the duration of the beingness that the world and creation is. This power is the faith in the primordial concept ‘I am’, and that is the concept that weaves the web of creation. The entire manifestation is an appearance in this concept.

You must come to a firm decision. You must forget the thought that you are the body and be only the knowledge ‘I am’, which has no form, no name. Just be. When you stabilize in that beingness it will give all the knowledge and all the secrets to you, and when the secrets are given to you, you transcend the beingness, and you, the Absolute will know that you are also not the consciousness. Having gained all this knowledge, having understood what is what, a kind of quietude prevails, a tranquility. Beingness is transcended, but beingness is available.

When you got yourself separated from the Absolute with this identity ‘I am’, you felt fragmented, isolated, and that is why your demands started. In the Absolute there are no needs, Only the Absolute prevails. The truth is total Brahman only, nothing else but Brahman. In a total Brahman state arose the touch of beingness, ‘I am’, and with that, separation started, otherness has come. But this ‘I amness’ is not just a small principle, that itself is the ‘moolmaya’, the primary illusion.

The ‘Maya’ is so powerful that it gets you completely wrapped up in it. ‘Maya’ means ‘I am’, ‘I love to be’, It has no identity except love. That knowledge of ‘I am’ is the greatest foe and the greatest friend. Although it might be your greatest enemy, if you propitiate it properly, it will turn around and lead you to the highest state.

Death is considered to be a traumatic experience, but understand what happens. That which has been born, the knowledge ‘I am’, will end. That knowledge, which was limited by this body, will then become unlimited, so what is to be feared?

This illness that I have got is not separate from what exists as the body, breath and the knowledge ‘I am’. This is one bundle, which has been created; whatever happens is contained in that bundle. I have been separate from it before conception, and will continue to be separate from what has been created.

What was conceived has grown physically, and some of the expressions of this knowledge ‘I am’ have achieved tremendous things. At the end of the time span the magnificent personalities, and whatever they have achieved – both have disappeared, however long the time, there is an end to it.

What is wrong is that you consider yourself to be limited to this body and shape. What knowledge I try to give is given to the knowledge ‘I am’ in each of you, which is the same. If you try to get the knowledge as an individual you will never get it.

Understand that it is not the individual that has consciousness; it is the consciousness which assumes innumerable forms. That something which is born or which will die is purely imaginary. It is the child of a barren woman. In the absence of this basic concept ‘I am’, there is no thought, there is no consciousness.

Any embodied person with the knowledge ‘I am’ carries on his activities in the world with the name only. That inner core, the ‘I am’ has no shackles. Once it is understood that I am that ‘I am’ only, and not this shackled form, then no liberation is called for, that itself is liberation.

In this spiritual hierarchy, from the grossest to the subtlest, you are the subtlest. How can this be realized? The very base is that you don’t know you are, and suddenly the feeling of ‘I amness’ appears. The moment it appears you see space, mental space; that subtle sky-like space, stabilize there. You are that. When you are able to stabilize in that space, you are space only. When this space-like identity ‘I am’ disappears, the space will also disappear, there is no space. When that space-like ‘I am’ goes into oblivion, that is the eternal state, ‘nirguna’, no form, no beingness. Actually, what did happen there? This message ‘I am’ was no message. Dealing with this aspect, I cannot talk much because there is no scope to put it in words.

Courtesy: http://www.maharajnisargadatta.com/