Hi White Feather-

I like Sai Baba's sense of humor, but I'm more familiar with other yogis. However, in any case the message is the same.

As an example, Ramana Maharshi suggested that each person should ask, "Who am I?" until finally there was an ultimate answer past which it was impossible to go. Initially this means stripping off "I am my job" and "I am my clothing" and "I am a man" and so on. Then we get rid of "I am a body" because you can lose body parts without ceasing to be you. We can keep on removing attachments long after we get rid of gross matter.

There is a very old traditional yogic exercise to this effect, in which the yogi looks at everything and says, "Nyeti, nyeti." meaning "Not that, not that."

Obviously, we an't get rid of ourselves, since we're the one doing the "not that" routine. Thus, we go deeper and deeper until we have exhausted all the ways that we label ourselves. In this sense, each of us is No-Thing and No-Body, meaning not a contingent being. Hence, what could we be if we are non-contingent? (Isn't that the problem of one hand clapping?)

In the end we wind up with the same idea as New Age thinking. Ramana would call it the True Self. New Age calls it God. If everything is God, then God is us, and we are God, so we arrive at Swami Muktananda's favorite expression, "God dwells within you as you."

The trick is to not only understand that this makes sense intellectually, but also to sense it emotionally, in the same way that we sense the wetness of water, except tthat there's no-thing there.

dave