"Small ‘k’ for Conceptual knowing, Large ‘K’ For Knowing Itself, Awareness" - 6 April 2016

Bhagavan, when I say, ‘I Am That’…, I neither find ‘I’ nor I find ‘That’.

Yes. [Laughs]

So, is it only an expression, the way of expressing; I Am That? Because there is neither That nor I. There is nothing.

Let’s look at this together. This is a beautiful contemplation. So, like I like to say, the sense ‘I Am’ is a two-way portal, is a door which goes both ways. And we have been used to using it in the outward way. We have been attaching ideas to this ‘I Am’…, ‘I am this way, I am that way, I am good, I am bad, I am honest, I am lying.' So, this I-Am-ness…, we explored how using our power of belief, we attach false attributes to this I-Am-ness. Now, what is happening in Satsang is that these attributes are being dropped away or dropped off or dissolving and just this sense of ‘Am-ness’, ‘I Am-ness’ remains; Beingness remains. But like I said, we can also look at: Who is the ‘I’ that is Being? Who is the ‘I’ that is ‘Am’? Whose Presence, whose Being is this 'I AM'? And we also know that ‘Am’ goes away. ‘Am’ goes away. In deep sleep, there is no ‘Am’, there is just ‘I’. Now, some would say that there is no ‘I’ also, and we would say, ‘I know there is no ‘I’ in sleep state, and I can talk to you about it for a long time.' But this ‘I’ that knows there is no ‘I’, this Knowingness Itself, is the ‘I’. So that which knows there is nothing; there is no ‘I’…, there is no ‘That’ and there is no ‘I’, there is a Knowingness of this, isn’t it? It is not just a mental concept. It is not just a belief. There is a Seeing, there is a Knowing, there is an Awareness that there is no ‘I’ and there is no ‘That’. And this You know. Therefore, there must be Knowingness. Why this is a bit confusing is because for most other things, we have a phenomenal manifestation of that to be able to say, ‘Yes, this table is there, I see the table; this glass is there, I see the glass.' But for this ‘I’ that is ‘That’ you cannot see it in this way, phenomenally. Yet you know the existence, that ‘I exist’…. ‘I’. Even if you say, ‘I know that there is no I’… already there is an ‘I’…, the Knowingness.

Bhagavan, this knowingness is again a phenomena. Because the Absolute…, if I close my eyes, there is no need to know either, and there is no knower, there is no knowing.