Even a Good Teaching Must End

If you still have any residual impulse to do or practise something, then, as a concession, sound the divine name ‘I am’ once in your mind and be drawn into that which it signifies. As the self we seem to be sinks ever deeper into that, it loses the qualities or limitations temporarily borrowed from experience and stands revealed as the infinite that it eternally is, that I eternally am. And there, all practices and pathways – even the Pathless Path – come to an end. Were the infinite to say something true about itself, all it would say is ‘I am’. If we explore far enough the knowledge language describes, we ultimately arrive at ‘I am’ – the first thing the infinite knows, and the last thing the finite knows. It is simultaneously the beginning and end of all knowledge. Sooner or later, even a good teaching or efficient practice must bring itself to an end.

If you still have any residual impulse to do or practise something, then, as a concession, sound the divine name ‘I am’ once in your mind and be drawn into that which it signifies. As the self we seem to be sinks ever deeper into that, it loses the qualities or limitations temporarily borrowed from experience and stands revealed as the infinite that it eternally is, that I eternally am. And there, all practices and pathways – even the Pathless Path – come to an end. Were the infinite to say something true about itself, all it would say is ‘I am’. If we explore far enough the knowledge language describes, we ultimately arrive at ‘I am’ – the first thing the infinite knows, and the last thing the finite knows. It is simultaneously the beginning and end of all knowledge. Sooner or later, even a good teaching or efficient practice must bring itself to an end.