The Swami then asked, “What is the best means for Self-realisation?”
Bhagavan: ‘I exist’ is the only permanent, self-evident experience of everyone. Nothing else is so self-evident (pratyaksha) as ‘I am’. What people call ‘self-evident’ viz., the experience they get through the senses, is far from self-evident. The Self alone is that. Pratyaksha is another name for the Self. So, to do Self-analysis and be ‘I am’ is the only thing to do. ‘I am’ is reality. I am this or that is unreal. ‘I am’ is truth, another name for Self. ‘I am God’ is not true.
The Swami thereupon said, “The Upanishads themselves have said ‘I am Brahman’.”
Bhagavan replied, “That is not how the text is to be understood. It simply means, “Brahman exists as ‘I’ and not ‘I am Brahman’. It is not to be supposed that a man is advised to contemplate ‘I am Brahman’, ‘I am Brahman’. Does a man keep on thinking ‘I am a man’ ‘I am a man’? He is that, and except when a doubt arises as to whether he is an