Let’s take very seriously the nondual proposal that there is only one Reality, no real but Real, not god but God. This, necessarily, means that there is nothing else: nothing that Reality can enter into or go out of, and nothing that I can go into or come out of but This.

What, then, would be the most parsimonious way of laying out this ontology? Arguably by only using the pronoun “I.” In what follows, I’ll very quickly sketch the nondual Tantric ontology of continuity.

Top Down: Manifestation

If there is no real but Real, then that Reality must be the subject of Consciousness. But then the subject of Consciousness is I.

Call this Unmanifest I, or “I Am That I Am.”

Somehow (explanations are unnecessary in this post), I manifests Itself. Call this “Manifest I” or “I Am” (in Nisargadatta’s sense of the latter). “Manifest I” is the sense of conscious presence, the sense of simply being aware and of simply being presence.

Next, Manifest I, when turned outward (so to speak), could be termed “Witness I.” Witness I is that to which all experiences or arisings–which are also none other than I–appear.

Finally, let “ego-I” or “I-experience” be the name for apparent bondage, for the apparent belief and feeling (in the words of Francis Lucille) that I am a limited consciousness.

Bottom Up: Sadhana

The only question, according to this ontology, is the question of I, and the only “thing” that actually exists is I. There is only I and no other than I.

This means that ego-I is just a modification or limitation of Unmanifest I. The Unmanifest I appears to localize itself by means of identifying Itself with the content of experience. From this vantage point, from this seeming forgetting of Itself, there seems to be a world that’s different in substance.

When the question of the I arises, the ego-I “slides back” or “goes naturally back” to Witness I. It’s not that Witness I is one sort of thing while ego-I is another; it’s that the Witness I is the ego-I but without the limitation or modification that is none other than identification of I with the content of experience. This is just to say that there’s really no problem with regard to the appearance of ego-I and also that there’s nothing special about the “sliding back” into Witness I. Sadhana is all smooth, and it’s only the play of I anyway.

When the only I takes an interest in I-Self, I naturally involutes to Manifest I, or I Am. Then I am only conscious presence; I’m only aware of Myself qua I Am.

And when Manifest I, or I Am, returns home, it is I Alone, naked and pure I, I Itself. Then I am entirely without any limitation. Whereas Manifest I is “bound to” space and time, “I Am That I Am” is beyond space and time. Whereas I Am is still in the realm of becoming, Unmanifest I is Being.

“Self-inquiry” is the name we give to the only I returning to Pure I-ness, the Unmanifest I that I truly am.

Never is there even one “skip” or “change in substance” as the I divests Itself of any and all apparent limitations. Therefore, there can be no waiting for something else or striving after something more. To say that I can’t get IT because I am IT is fine; but far better to say that I can’t get I because, necessarily, I am I.

Really, in this so-called “journey home,” there is just a marriage of ontology with epistemology: I know that I Am That I Am.