ONE: What are you and how do you know it?
TWO: I am pure consciousness, and I know it because I love.
ONE: The first is so, the second is not.
TWO: Why is that?
ONE: Because you say it.
TWO: I don't understand.
ONE: Pure consciousness cannot say 'I love'.
TWO: Why not?
ONE: It cannot be said by pure consciousness, but only by an identified object.
TWO: What then can I say as pure consciousness?
ONE: Pure consciousness cannot say 'I love' even via an identified object, but it can say 'I am love'. If the answer to my question had come direct from whole-mind that is the way you would have transmitted it.
TWO: Then those teachers who use the form 'I ...', in order to reveal the truth, are wrong to do so?
ONE: It might be better to say that the form of words in question is open to objection.
TWO: Because?
ONE: They are speaking to the identified, and the identified cannot speak direct from pure consciousness. Therefore when they repeat the words, applying them to themselves, inevitably the I-concept intervenes and seeks to apply the statement to itself. It cannot be excluded as long as it is there.
TWO: By saying what I am, rather than what I do, that is avoided?
ONE: It is nearer the truth.
TWO: An example to make it clearer?
ONE: As many as you wish: the Maharshi did not love - never, never: he was love, or, more exactly, karuna-caritas/prajna-gnosis. Pure consciousness is and does not.
TWO: And that applies to Jesus also?
ONE: Did he say 'God loves' or 'God is love'?
TWO: If I have understood, then love itself does not exist, nor hate?
ONE: Of course not.
TWO: Nor impersonal, unpossessive love, asking no return and unaccompanied by jealousy?
ONE: That, too, would be a 'thing'.
TWO: Nor affectivity, knowledge, ignorance, cognition, prajna, karma?
ONE: Things, all things! The unending dualistic process of imagining entities and things!
TWO: You have been leading me astray.
ONE: Neither more nor less than those who knew so much better than I. Truth can only be pointed at - tant bien que mal. The sages often enunciated an apparent doctrine - and then casually mentioned that of course nothing of the kind really existed. At all costs they sought to avoid the danger of dogma.
TWO: The closer to the truth the less meaning words have to the many?
ONE: At first the words 'I am love' would seem nonsense: at the last they alone mean anything.
TWO: Because they alone are nearly true? Or 'I am knowledge'?
ONE: Knowledge, cognition, gnosis; love, affectivity, compassion; prajna, karuna; sat, chit, ananda, being, consciousness, bliss - none exists as a 'thing' and all are one.
TWO: Then 'I am consciousness' or 'I am being' are better still?
ONE: There is no 'better', each is an aspect of the others. But 'conscious' needs no 'ness', just as 'being' can have no article, which would make it an entity, as 'ness' would make the former a thing.
TWO: One should be content with 'I am'?
ONE: One should hold one's tongue! If you must gab - speak to someone who will understand however incorrectly you say it.
TWO: Then how can one teach?
ONE: Those who were qualified to teach, those few, like the Maharshi, said that silence was more efficacious, but in early stages teaching can only be given via a series of untruths diminishing in inveracity in ratio to the pupil's apprehension of the falsity of what he is being taught.
TWO: That is devastating!
ONE: Not at all: it is just education. Truth cannot be communicated: it can only be laid bare.
