All right. Then the Guru asked him, taking hold of the his ears, "Whom do these ears belong to?" he said, "To me." The Guru said, "All right, the ears belong to you, the ears are yours. As such you are not the ears. Similarly the nose belongs to you. As the nose is yours, you are not the nose. Then, whose body is that?"

Prince said with agitation, "The body is mine; this body is mine." "If the body is yours, Mr. Then you are not the body; you cannot be the body because you say that the body is yours; you cannot be the body. The very statement—my body, my ears, my head, my hand proves that you are something else and the body together with the ears and hands and eyes, etc., is something else. This is your property, you are the owner, the master; the body is like your garment and you are the owner. The body is like your cart and you are the owner.

Now, who are you?"

The prince was clean bowled but nonetheless understood it so far, and by putting down on paper the address of the body, I had made a mistake. "I am not the body, not the ears, not the nose, not the eyes, nothing of the kind.

Who I am then?"

Now he began to reflect, and said, "Well, well, I am the mind, I am the mind, I must be the mind."

"Is that so indeed?" asked Guru ji smiling and asked him in a very soft voice.” Now, can you tell me how many bones you have got in your body? Can you tell where the food lies in your body that you took this morning?" the prince could make no answer, and these words escaped his lips, "Well, my intellect does not reach that. I have not read that. I have not yet read anything of physiology or anatomy. My brain does not catch it, my mind cannot comprehend it."

You say your mind cannot comprehend it, your intellect cannot reach up to that, your brain cannot understand this. By making these remarks you confess and admit that the brain is yours, the mind is yours, the intellect is yours. Well, if the intellect is yours, you are not the intellect. If the mind is yours, you are not the mind. If the brain is yours, you are not the brain. These very words of yours show that you are the master of the intellect, the owner of the brain and the ruler of the mind. You are not the mind, the intellect or the brain.

Who are you? Think, think, please. Be more careful and let us know correctly what you are. Then will God be just brought to you, and you will see God, you will be introduced directly into the presence of God. Please tell us what you are."

He began to think, and thought and thought but could not go further. The body said, "My intellect, my mind cannot, reach further."

Oh, how true are these words! Indeed the mind or the intellect cannot reach the true Divinity or God within.

The true God is beyond the reach of words and minds.

The guru ji asked him to sit down for a while and meditate upon what his intellect had reached so far. "I am not the body; I am not the mind." If so, feel it, put it into practice, and repeat it in the language of feeling, in the language of action; realize that you are not the body. If you live this thought only, if you work into practice even so much of the truth, if you are above the body and the mind, you become free from all anxiety, all fear. Fear leaves you when you raise yourself above the level of the body or the mind. All anxiety ceases, all sorrow is gone, when you realize even so much of the Truth that you are something beyond the body, beyond the mind.

After that, the Guru ji helped him a little to realize who I am, and he asked me, "Brother, what have you done today? Will you please let us know the works or deeds that you have performed this morning?"

He began to relate, "I woke up early in the morning, took bath, and did this thing and that thing, took my breakfast, read a great deal, wrote some letters, visited some friends, received some friends, and came here to pay my respects to the you."

"Is that all?

Have you not done a great deal more?

Is that all?

Just see.

He thought and thought; and then mentioned a few other things of the same sort. "That is not all; you have done thousands of things more; you have done hundreds, thousands, nay, millions of things more. Innumerable deeds you have done, and you refuse to make mention of them. This is not becoming.

Please let us know what you have done. Tell us everything that you have done this morning.

It sounded so strange that he had done thousands of things besides the few that he had named, was startled. "I have not done anything more than what I have told you, sir, I have not done anything."

"No, you have done millions, trillions, quadrillions of things more." How is that?

The Guru Ji asked him once again "Who is looking at the Guru at this time?"

He said, "I"

"Are you seeing this face, this river that flows beside us?" He said,

"Yes, indeed."

"Well, you see the river and you see my face, but who makes the six muscles in the eyes move? You know the six muscles in the eyes move, but who makes the muscles move? It cannot be anybody else; it cannot be anything extra. It must be your own Self that makes the muscles in the eyes move in the act of seeing."

"Oh, indeed, it must be I; it cannot be anything else."

"Well, who is seeing just now, who is attending to this discourse?" he said, "I, it is I."

"Well, if you are seeing, if you are attending to this discussion, who is making the oratory nerves vibrate?

It must be you, it must be you.

Nobody else.

Who took the meals this morning?" he meekly said, "I, I."

"Well, if you took the meals this morning and it is you that will go to the toilet and vacate, who is it that assimilates and digests the food? Who is it, please?

Tell us if you eat and you throw it out, it must be you who digests, it must be yourself that assimilates, it cannot be anybody else. Those days are gone when outside causes were sought after to explain the phenomena in nature. If a man fell down, the cause of his fall was said to be some outside ghost.

Science does not admit such solutions of the problem. Science and philosophy require you to seek the cause of a phenomenon in the phenomenon itself."

Here you take the food, go into the toilet and throw it off. When it is digested, yourself must digest it, no outside power comes and digests it; it must be your own Self. The cause of digestion also must be sought within you and not without you."

Well, he had to admit so far. Now he was asked, "Dear, just reflect, just think for a while. The process of digestion implies hundreds of kinds of movements. In the process of digestion, in mastication, saliva is emitted from the glands in the mouth. Here is again the next process of oxidation going on. Here is blood being formed. There is the blood coursing through the veins, there is the same food being converted into muscles, bones, and hair; here is the process of growth going on in the body. Here are a great many processes going on, and all these processes in the body are connected with the process of assimilation and digestion."

"If you take the food, it is you yourself who are the cause of respiration; you yourself make the blood course through your veins; you yourself make the hair grow; you yourself make the body develop, and here mark how many processes there are; how many acts, how many deeds there are that you are performing every moment."

“Indeed, indeed, sir, in my body, in this body, there are thousands of processes that the intellect does not know, about which the mind is unconscious, and still they are being performed, and it must be I that am the cause of all that, it must be I that am performing all that; and indeed it was a mistake I made when I said that I had done a few things, a few things only, and nothing more, a few things that were done through the agency of the intellect or mind."

It must be made further clear. In this body of yours there are two kinds of functions being discharged; there are two kinds of work being done, involuntary and voluntary. Voluntary acts are those that are performed through the agency of the intellect or mind; for instance, reading, writing, walking, talking and drinking. These are acts done through the agency of the intellect or mind. Besides these, there are thousands of acts or processes being performed directly, so to say, without the agency, or without the medium of mind or intellect, for instance, respiration, the coursing of blood through the veins, the growth of hair, etc.

People make this mistake, this glaring blunder that they admit only those acts to be performed by them which are performed through the agency of mind or intellect. All the other deeds, all the other acts which are being performed directly without the agency of intellect or mind, are disclaimed entirely. They are entirely cast aside, they are entirely neglected, and by this neglect and by this mistake, by this imprisoning the real Self in the little mind, identifying the Infinity with the small brain, people are making themselves miserable and wretched. People say, "Oh, God is within me." All right, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, God is within you, but that kernel which is within you, that kernel is yourself and not the shell. Please think over it seriously. Reflect whether you are the kernel or the shell, whether you are He that is within you, or you are the shell that is without.

Some people say, "O sir, I eat and nature digests; O sir, I see but nature makes the muscles move; O sir, I hear but it is nature that makes the nerves vibrate." Mark, in the name of justice, in the name of truth, in the name of freedom, just mark, whether you are that nature or whether you are the mere body. Mark, you are that nature. You are the infinite God. If throwing aside all prejudice, waiving all preconceptions and casting off all superstitions, you reflect over the matter, discuss it, sift it, investigate it, and examine it,

The prince still did not understand it thoroughly. "Well," he said, "Indeed, I have understood it so far that I am something beyond the intellect."

"Sir, make it more clear to me, I have not quite comprehended it yet."

“When you go to bed, do you die or live?" the prince said, "I live; I do not die." "And what about the intellect?" he said, "I go on dreaming, the intellect is still there." "And when you are in the deep sleep state (you know there is a state called the deep sleep state, in that state even no dreams are seen), where is the intellect, where is the mind?"

The prince began to think. "Well, it passes into nothingness; it is no longer there, the intellect is not there, the mind is not there." "But are you there or not?" he said, "Oh, indeed I must be there; I cannot die, I remain there." Well, mark here, even in the deep sleep state, where the intellect ceases, where the intellect is, as it were, like a garment hoisted on a peg, hoisted on a post, like an overcoat, the intellect is taken off and placed upon the post, you are still there, you do not die out.

The prince said," The intellect is not there, and I do not die out. This I do not quite comprehend."

"When you wake up after enjoying this deep sleep, when you wake up, do you not make such statements, ‘I enjoyed profound sleep tonight, I had no dreams tonight.’ Do you not make remarks of that kind?" He said, "Yes." Well. This point is very subtle. All of you will have to listen closely. When after waking up from the deep sleep state, this remark is made, "I slept so soundly that I saw no dreams, I saw no rivers, no mountains, in that state there was no father, no mother, no house, no family, nothing of the kind; all was dead and gone; there was nothing, nothing, nothing there. I slept and there was nothing there."

So when you wake up after enjoying the deep sleep state and make this remark, "I did not see anything in the dream;" well, we may say that you must have been present; there was no father, no mother, no husband, no wife, no house, no river, no family present in that state, but you must have been present; the very evidence that you give, the very witness that you bear proves that you did not sleep, that you did not go to sleep, for had you been asleep, who would have told us about the nothingness of that? You are something beyond the intellect; the intellect was asleep, the brain was at rest in a way, but you were not asleep. If you had been asleep, who would have made the blood run through the blood-vessels, who would have continued the process of digestion in the stomach? Who would have continued the process of the growth of your body, if you had really fallen into the deep sleep state? So you are something which is never asleep. The intellect sleeps, but not you. "I am something beyond the intellect, mind and body."

"Sir, sir, I have understood it so far, and have come to know that I am a power Divine, that I am the Infinite power which never sleeps, never changes. In my youth, the body is different, in my childhood the mind was not the same as I have now, the body was not the same as I have now. In my childhood, my intellect, brain, body and mind were entirely different from what they are now." Doctors tell us that after seven years, the whole system undergoes a thorough change; every moment the body is changing, and every second the mind is changing, and the mental thoughts, the mental ideas which you entertained in your childhood, where are they now? In the days of childhood you looked upon the Sun as a beautiful cake which was eaten by the angels, the Moon was a beautiful piece of silver; the stars were as big as diamonds. Where are these ideas gone? The mind of yours, the intellect of yours has undergone a thorough, a whole-sale change. But you still say, "When I was a child, when I was a boy, when I shall grow up to the age of seventy." You still make such remark which shows that you are something which was the same in childhood, which was the same in boyhood, which will be the same at the age of seventy. When you say, "I went to sleep, I went into the deep sleep state, etc,"; when you make remarks of that kind, it shows that there is the true ‘I’ in you, the real Self in you, which remains the same in the dreamland, which remains the same in the deep sleep state, which remains the same in the wakeful state. There is something within you which remains the same when you are in a swoon, which remains the same when you are bathing, when you are writing. Just think, reflect, just mark, please. Are you not something which remains the same under all circumstances, unchanging in its being, the same yesterday, today and for ever? If so, just reflect a little more, think a little more and you will be immediately brought face to face with God. You know the promise was, know your-self, put down your right address on paper, and God will be introduced to you immediately.

Now, the prince had come to know that he was something unchanging, something constant, something, which was never asleep; so I wanted to know what God is.

Guru asked; "Brother, here are these trees growing. Is the power that makes this tree grow different from the power that makes that tree grow?" prince said,

"No, no, it must be the same power certainly." "Now, is the power which makes all these trees grow different from the power that makes the bodies of animals grow?" prince said, "No, No, it cannot be different, it must be the same." Now is the power, the force that makes the stars move, different from the power, which makes these rivers flow? he said, "It cannot be different, it must be the same."

Well, now the power that makes these trees grow cannot be different from the power, which makes your body grow, it cannot be different from the power which makes your hair grow. The same universal power of nature, the same universal Divinity or the Unknowable, which makes the stars shine, makes your eyes twinkle, the same power which is the cause of the growth of that body’s hair which you call mine, the same power makes the blood course through the veins of each and all. Indeed, and then what are you? Are you not that power which makes your hair grow, which makes your blood flow through your veins, which makes your food get digested? Are you not that power? That power which is beyond the intellect, the mind, indeed you are. If so, you are the same power which is governing the force of the whole Universe, you are the same Divinity, you are the same God, the same Unknowable, the same energy, force, substance anything you may call it, the same Divinity, the All which is present everywhere. The same, the same you are.

The prince was astonished and he said, "Really, really, I wanted to know God. I put the question what God is, and I find my own Self, my true self is God. What I was asking, what did I ask what a silly question I put! I had to know myself. I had to know who I am, and God was known." Thus was God known?

Note – If you want to understand, what is “EGO”… read the above story again and again till you fully understand the meaning. The whole equation of my theory is based on ego and if you miss the point then the importance of whole book is lost.

The saint wanted to convey a very simple message that our physical body and mind is a very complicated machine. Millions and millions of activities takes place without “I” factor or “EGO” playing any part in the smooth functioning.