“[T]he knowledge ‘I am,’” states Rupert Spira in Being Aware of Being Aware, “is the experience in which the finite mind and infinite awareness intersect.”

We can, in fact, find at least three privileged intersections: “I am,” here, and now.

Do You Exist?

If someone were to ask you, “Do you exist?,” then you would be taken to the self-evident experience of aware presence. You wouldn’t think of something or other about yourself. You wouldn’t think that you were young or old, wealthy or poor, successful or unsuccessful. That’s because you wouldn’t think of anything at all. Instead, you would only experience simple, wakeful being.

This is an immense clue as to what you truly are. As the extroverted tendencies (samskaras) slowly dissolve, you’ll come not just to “visit” “I am” but to abide as “I am.” You’ll recognize that you’ve always been your essential being. You’ll taste the sweetness of awareness.

Where Is It?

Ordinarily, we think of “here” and “there.” But if someone were to ask you, “Where is your current experience occurring?,” you’d say, “Here.” And what about this experience? “Here.” The plane flying overhead might seem as if it’s “over there,” but the experience of seeing is, without question, always occurring “here.” The truth is that you’ll never actually discover “there” or “over there.” Rather, what you’ll find is that “here” is spaceless being: the very same wakeful being that is present as “I am.”

When Is It?

When is the current experience appearing? “Now.” And when is this memory thought appearing? “Now.” And when is this thought about an upcoming event appearing? “Now.”

Indeed, all experiences are only ever occurring “now.” Yet if they’re only ever occurring “now,” then there is no such thing as the past as such nor is there such a thing as the future as such. To be sure, there are thoughts about the past as well as thoughts about the future, yet both of these thoughts are appearing right when all other experiences are appearing, and that is “now.”

And if there’s no past or future existing in its own right, then what is one to make of the present moment? There is no present moment if the latter is understood as an event unfolding through time. Instead, there’s only “the eternal now” (in the words of Meister Eckhart).

The eternal now is the very same essence as that which is discovered through the inquiry into “I am.”

Three Portals, One Truth

An inquiry into “I am” reveals awake, aware presence. An inquiry into “here” reveals spacelessness; that into time reveals timelessness.

Spacelessness, timelessness, and aware presence are just three different names for the same thing. And this thing is not a thing. It’s the nameless truth that puts an end to all inquiries.