The Self that is not a product of time || On Narayana Upanishad (2016)
Questioner: “I am not born in time; time is born in me.” Just how is time born in me? And similarly, the Rishi then says, “*Aham*”, is he meaning to say 'consciousness' when he says the word, 'Aham'? I am beyond time?
Acharya Prashant: ‘Aham ’ is something that anybody can utter, anybody can announce. You may say, “I am a father”, you may say, “I am a body”, you may say, “I am a learned man”, still you are saying, “Aham ”. Then there is somebody who is talking in the negativa – he is saying, “Naham ” – No, not this. No, not this. In the beginning, one starts with what appears to be, because one has no option. It appears to you that you are the body, so you start with it. You start with it and then you go into the fact of it and then you go into all the suffering related to it. That is the movement from saying Aham to Naham. But when you say, 'Naham', that is an emptiness but not an elimination in the nihilistic sense. The Truth has not gone anywhere. With the false eye disappearing, what remains is then called as Aham. It is not Aham in the usual sense in which anybody uses it.
When the Upanishad says, “Aham Bhramasmi ”, that Aham is really not the same Aham which says, “*Deho Aham*”. Are you getting it? In some sense, it is a limitation of language – you have to refer to yourself. But this ‘yourself’ that you are referring to has itself changed, so do not take the two Aham’s to be the same. You see, the ego is an incompletion, it is clamoring for completion. Getting it? One way for it to find completion is to get attached to objects here and there.
