I am never born.
I am not the body. I am not the ten senses.
I am not the intellect. I am not the mind.
I am not even an eternal ego.
I am without prana, the vital breath of life.
I am without mind.
I am ever the pure self-nature.
I am ever the witness beyond intellect.
I am eternally consciousness itself.
About this there is no doubt.

The real “I am” can only be talked about when the I is eliminated. We are acquainted with one I, and this I that we know is nothing but the sum total of all our illusions. We create this I, we nourish, feed, enrich and strengthen it and make it powerful. But because it is false and our own creation we are troubled by it, we become worried, anguished, because that which is not our nature always becomes a burden.

Scientists say that tens of millions of years ago, animals with huge bodies existed all over the earth. An elephant is nothing compared to them, they were ten times larger than an elephant. Researchers investigating the evolution of life are having great difficulty in finding out why those animals became extinct. There are no apparent clues to some great calamity on the earth that would show the cause of their extinction. Their complete disappearance would have been impossible, even if there had been an earthquake or a volcanic eruption affecting the whole earth. So what happened?

Recently, during the last fifty years, a new clue came to their minds. It is possible that these animals enlarged their bodies so much that they died under the weight of their own bodies. There is no other apparent reason that might have been the cause of their death. The bodies of these animals became so huge – bodies which were their means of life – these bodies grew beyond the limit and became the cause of their death. It became difficult even to move with such a weight and to feed this body became even more difficult as the demand for food increased. This demand for food went on increasing with the growth of their bodies. So the body is, in a way, a means for the continuance of life, a vehicle for life, but only to a limit; it can become fatal beyond that extent.

I have told you this to help you to understand that the ego, our I, is also an essential part and parcel of the system of our life. But it goes on growing and we forget that what we chose to use as a means is now using us as a means. What we wanted to use is using us, and what we created for our protection, we are now protecting at the cost of our lives. But it is very difficult to know when the boundary has been crossed, when the master becomes the servant to his servant, when the leader becomes the follower of his own followers. But it happens – it happens because the seed of this is intrinsic to its system.