world of the born, the developed, the made, the formed.13
We know that our body had a beginning and is destined one day to perish. Yet this has no effect on our true self, which is unbounded and unlimited, and thus untouched by changes that occur in the phenomenal world to which the body and all physical things belong. The Katha Upanishad says:
This realized self is not born,
Nor does it ever die.
It comes from nowhere and is nobody.
Unborn, eternal, imperishable, original,
It is not killed, though the body be destroyed.14
The following words of Meister Eckhart (14th century) read almost like commentary on the above passage:
Therefore I am my own cause according to my essence, which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is temporal. Therefore I am unborn, and according to my unborn mode I can never die. According to my unborn mode I have eternally been, am now and shall eternally remain. That which I am by virtue of birth must die and perish, for it is mortal, and so must perish with time.15
In deep sleep we are unaware of our being as "I am." Nonetheless, we know that we have not ceased being. The self of this morning when we awoke is no different from the self of last evening when we went to sleep. Although we were not aware of its continuity during sleep, it did not cease being. This self is the eternal, self-existing original essence of divine being, which is the foundation of the three states of existence (waking, dream, and dreamless sleep). It is the being from which all things emanate and constantly change themselves, and to which they return at the end; as is written in the Mandukya Upanishad:
It is the lord of all, the all-knowing,
The inner guiding force, the womb of all things,
The origin and end of all beings.16
I AM THAT I AM
The self is not dependent on nor is it supported by anything other than itself, for it has no purpose apart from itself since there is nothing else besides it. For that reason, the Chandogya Upanishad says:
I am below, I am above, I am behind,
I am before, I am to the right, I am to the left.
I am truly all this! . . .
He who realizes this ... is perfectly free,
He possesses unlimited freedom in all worlds.17
Everything that we in our experiential world call being only has being insofar as it exists of, through, and to the absolute being; for "of him, through him, and to him are all things" (Romans 11:36). The absolute being gets its being from itself and is thus the pure reality above being. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century), one of the ancient fathers of Christian mysticism, says:
Nothing at all perceived by the senses or viewed by the intellect has true being except the essence above being, which is the ground of the universe, and upon which all things depend.18
All of our questions regarding the self and being are ultimately about our self-nature. Yet these questions can only be answered if we surpass the realm of distinction and recognize our true self as the self common to all beings. For if the same essence is the heart of selfness of every individual, then there cannot be a separate, self-sufficient individuality. Consequently, a totally separate, self-determining individuality is nothing more than an illusion stemming from the reciprocal identification of body and psyche and their numerous activities and abilities. The illusion of a psuedoself is simply a complex grounded in ignorance that has no exis tence of its own. That is why Meister Eckhart says, "All creatures are nothing in themselves." And Buddhism says, "All things are emptiness [sunyata]."
That all things are "emptiness" does not mean that beings and their perceived world do not exist, but rather that they are only pure phenomena without reality. In other words, they are not nonexistent, but unreal. These two concepts have different basic meanings and should not be used interchangeably. It is, for example, impossible for us to imagine a round triangle, which thus is nonexistent. A mirage, on the other hand, belongs to existent things although it has absolutely no reality, which is to say it is unreal.
The Buddhist view of the emptiness of all phenomena is not nihilistic. Its purpose is to make clear that all things lack basic substantiality. All things are governed by the principle of dependent arising and therefore lack self-nature (svabhava). The term "dependent arising" (pratitya-samutpada) means that there are no final realities that are independent and cannot be traced to something else. Hence, everything we perceive in the world, including our own skandha-conditioned personality, is a relative phenomenon of a transitory nature.
The truth behind all phenomena can only be imparted to us through a dissolution of ourselves, or a depersonification of the personality. To experience the emptiness of all objective phenomena in the universe is simultaneously to awaken to our true self.
As long as we continue to cling to the transitory through our identification with external appearances, we will be unable to experience our true state of unlimited, universal mind. Hence, we seek the eternal in the transitory without recognizing that the original source of all being, as the sole being and foundation of all experience, is present within us at all times. This source of all life finds expression in the divine relevation of the burning bush: "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14), as imparted to Moses on Mount Horeb.
Divine being, the eternal "I am," shines in the light of pure consciousness The final mystery of all existence is experienced as the "I am" of the absolute self of which we become aware in the depth of our own being. "You will know that 'I am' " says Christ (John 8:28). He also says, "If you do not believe that 'I am,' you will die in your sins" (John 8:24). What this means is that we will die in our separation from the divine ground of being, which is the source of all life. For sin means "separation."
Separation from the source is an estrangement from the true self, in which the ego behaves autonomously because it has forgotten that it comes from this true self. The ego wants to be its own master and to realize itself. However, "ego-realization" is not the same as true self-realization; it is best likened to a self-estrangement that leads to the senselessness and waywardness of a poor, world-bound existence. That is why Augustine (5th century) writes, "How poor he must be, he who is without that without which he cannot be." And Christ says, "Abide in me, and I in you, for without me you can do nothing" (John 15:4-5).
Separation from the divine original source is also a separation from life. It is the original sin that stems from our ignorance of the presence of the divine self at our center. Our liberation from the cycle of birth and death, which is at the same time a release from our attachment to the world, can hence only be achieved by a radical turning inward, by a true "conversion" (metanoia). When we turn within ourselves and in our innermost unbecome ourselves and all things, we will then become what we have sought, aware only of "is"—in itself.
In the search for divine being, the soul disappears from itself. For "no one shall see God without dying" (Exodus 33:20). As paradoxical as it may sound, we can only experience our true self when there is no self left to experience it. Those who relinquish everything will regain everything as the divine truth itself, which all the time lay hidden as the eternal "I am" beneath the phenomena they used to pursue.
"I am" is the eternal divine WORD that says of itself, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). It is the truth in everything that is. It is pure being, the original source from which all life flows forth in unending profusion. It is the all in everything,
