Q: This puzzles me. Ramana Maharshi says you can’t deny yourself because you are here, true enough but after you are not here [body dies] how are you to know the self or where is the self then.

C: Well, who is this asking the question? What is this "me" that is puzzled and where is it located? To paraphrase Zen – confusion (being “puzzled”) and paradox are the guardians of the gateless gate to Paradise.

Sit with the dilemma, the paradox:

There is NO self and yet you ARE. But you believe you are a separate entity that has additionally identified itself as a body – believed to be “MY body”. The conviction (mental belief) "I am the body" is the delusion of the false self center, the idea of I, I AM, I AM ME. And this ME IS this body that “I” seem to OWN.

All of that is based on that seeming solid belief, “I am ME”, and all that is, is language, energy, formed into a seemingly solid “entity” -- yet the pointer is ALL of that is ASSUMED and NOT real on direct evidence.

That false self-center known in the mind as "me" dies into deep dreamless sleep, wakes into dream during sleep as a self-centered witness watching and identifying as a character in the sleep-dream, dies into the sleep dream into deep dreamless sleep, wakes after sleep and dream into this seeming persistent waking-state dream... what wakes up and takes itself to be that "me"?

There is no answer to the question who am I?. Asking that to get an answer - and asking a clearly unanswerable question about "what happens" to "me" when that body dies?, is a futile quest! It will lead only to more and more frustration as the question only produces confusion. This is the ego's never-ending story of a false self with no substance or actual independent existence or power apart from the Whole of this play of Consciousness.

So let that confusion bubble and boil and perhaps the false self center will boil away leaving what already IS right here right now, timeless awareness, being itself with no alteration, unmodified, infinite, with no add-ons … just … I AM … Awake. Not “I am this or that”. Just – I AM. Not the conceptual thought-feeling-sense but the Beingness POINTED to by the concept I, I Am. As the ancients said it I Am That I Am. Period. Stop.

Give this one from Bob Adamson a look and listen. Repeat it a few times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyhSsSvs110

Where is a "body" with a name and a self concept, a self image, a personality (persona - mask!) - without words, ideas thoughts - i.e. language? You are the Truth, the Light, PRIOR to Consciousness, Prior to the assumptions that go “I am – I am me – I am the body so when body dies I die”. So your question is coming out from a false paradigm, a false context, the assumptions “I am separate from Totality and this body is who I am”.

So your question is coming out from a false paradigm, a false context, the assumptions “I am separate from Totality and this body is who I am”.

Have a look and listen to this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZQtJp0biww

Finally: What is the actual Being-You-Are? Bob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIgNrxScYCs

Ponder on these things and write again if and when the Spirit moves you to.

With Love,

I Am That I Am.

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