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long as you are filled with the knowledge that "I am", you will remain in ignorance, because, the very sense of the "I", the ego, is ignorance. The day you are filled with the soul, the 'am-ness' will remain but the 'I-ness' will disappear. From "I am", the 'I' will drop and simply 'am' will remain.
You can experiment with this. Sometimes sit quietly under a tree and look within yourself, see where is the 'I'? You won't find it anywhere. The 'am' you will of course find everywhere in the existence, but never the ego. The ego is your creation, it is of your making, it is false, untrue. There is nothing more unauthentic than the ego itself. It comes out handy.
Although it is required in the world, as such it nowhere has any place in truth.
So, there is this knowledge that 'I am', which is the cause of bondage. The awareness that I have of the 'am-ness' is pure and limitless. When you say 'am', can there be any distinction between your 'am-ness' and the am-ness of a tree? Would there be any difference between your am-ness and my am-ness? When you only are, then you, the rivers, the mountains, the trees all become one. However, as soon as you say "I", you become separate from the whole. The moment you say "I", you break away, you alienate yourself, you disconnect yourself from the existence.
Am-ness is Brahman and "I" is man's state of ignorance. When you know simply that you are, then there is no separate center within you. Then you become one with the existence. Then you become like a wave which is lost in the ocean. Right now you are like the wave which frozen into ice, which has broken itself away from the ocean.
Gyanam bandaha So the first thing is: KNOWLEDGE IS BONDAGE -- the knowledge that "I am." The other kind of bondage is all the knowledge that you have gathered from outside, which you have stolen from the scriptures, the knowledge which you have borrowed from the great Masters, the knowledge which is stored in your memory -- all of this is bondage. You won't be able to free yourself from it. That's why you cannot find a man more enslaved than the pundit.
All kinds of people come to me -- all kinds of patients.
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