Question: Just a clarification please. In your teaching on the Nirvana Satkam does the ‘unbroken ‘I thought” refer to ‘I am Shiva’ and could we also say ‘aham brahma asmi’?
James: Yes. The verse is chidananda rupam shivoham shivoham. I am existence shining as consciousness. The second shivoham is for emphasis. It means I exist in the form of pure consciousness.
And yes, “I am limitless.” (aham brahmasmi). Or “the I is limitless.”
Question: And does unbroken refer to continuous awareness of that thought, despite the fact that other thoughts arise and can be ignored?
Yes. It means that the I, the referent of the thought I or I am, is “continuous” even though it is out of time.
And yes, as a thought, an inquirer should value it more than other thoughts, in so far as it gives direct access to the I, not that the I (or I am) is ever experientially inaccessible. You always know (1) that you exist and (2) that you are conscious, which implies (3) your identity as consciousness because people may do things to become unconscious, which shows that they are a priori conscious, but nobody does anything to be conscious. You don’t wake up in the morning. You are awoken.
The pertinent information that inquirers need, however, is that the I is limitless. Limitless doesn’t mean big. On one hand, it means that (1) the I is unmodified by the thoughts and emotions that present themselves to it by Isvara/Maya, which is a biggie because this means (2) that you are free by nature; no actions are required for freedom, except, of course the “action” of knowledge, which is to say consciously asserting your identity as existence shining as unborn whole and complete ordinary unconcerned awareness. But it also means “I am an unborn partless whole,” which means blissful. This is a particularly important bit of Self knowledge because it motivates meditation, which is to say, taking a stand in awareness as awareness, which ideally should go on continuously until it becomes “second nature,” so to speak.
