April 1, 2025
This body is supposed to be ‘me' or mine. This is already a problem. Is it me or mine? There is a confusion between what is me and what is mine. When you pinch the body, are you pinching me or what is mine? Suddenly you realize that because you have considered this body to be ‘This I am', it appears to be true. Is this body mine? If it is, then I must be able to do what I like with it. If I tell the body, “You are mine. You must obey me," and it doesn't want to, then how can I call it mine? Then I see that if I am to die today, the body is left behind. So it is not mine, it is neither me nor mine.
It is then that you begin to impersonally observe how this body came into being. A cell from somebody's body fertilizes another cell, then it divides and subdivides and so on; the rest of it being supplied by food. So it is merely a food chain which keeps going from parent to child. This is the physical chain of immortality. This is the body.
Then there is something within which thinks, which feels, ‘This I am'. The question is: Is there an entity prior to the thought ‘This I am' which thinks ‘This I am' because it is already there? Or is it the other way around? A thought arises ‘This I am' and then there is a feeling ‘This I am'. (At least one mighty scripture, The Yoga Vasistha, adopts the second view.)
When you are asleep, there is no feeling 'This I am' at all, though the body exists and functions. Because the thought 'This I am' does not exist, there is no personality — there is neither the world nor a thing called ''I'. It is only when you begin to think 'This I am" that you come into being, the world comes into being.
The problem is insoluble until you attain enlightenment and directly perceive that only as long as the feeling, 'This I am', is there can 'I' be presumed to exist. That is the declaration of those who have realized the truth.
Life is an opportunity, but ignorance converts it into a burden.
God created a lot of work for man to do; but ignorance transforms it to worry.
Man has his duty to his fellow man, but ignorance makes it a millstone around his neck, weighing him down with cares and anxieties.
Wealth and wisdom God entrusted to man to serve his neighbor with; but ignorance bound him with them in the fatal ties of possessiveness.