In plain words
The antaḥkaraṇa? The Ātma? No answer comes to any of these. When he thinks, ‘I am a man,’ is it a man in form? Or a man in conduct? He does not understand even this. Today those who preach about spirituality are growing in number day by day. But practice appears to be nil. Practice is what matters, not observance and publicity. There are many who cannot understand the Sai principle. If it is the Sai principle, why do things happen like this? Who is this Sai? No one can understand this. I am no sannyāsī. I am no yogī. I am no bhogī. I am no tyāgī. I am I! This very word ‘I’ is the first name of the Ātma. If one is a sannyāsī, there are certain bounds. If I were a yogī, there would be certain limits. But I have no limit at all. Boundless Ānanda alone is Mine. My name is ‘I’. ‘Sathya Sai’ is a name that was given, not the name I was born with. If you would recognise divinity: in every single person the word ‘I’, ‘I’ is present in full. ‘Swami! I did this work,’ ‘I am going now’: in this way every person, from the pauper who begs his food to the millionaire, uses the word ‘I’, ‘I’. Ask, ‘Who is Rāmayya?’ and one man raises his hand: ‘I.’ Ask, ‘Who is Kṛṣṇayya?’ and someone raises his hand: ‘I.’ Say, ‘Who is Govinda?’ and yet another raises his hand: ‘I.’ So in Rāma, in Kṛṣṇa, in Govinda, the word ‘I’ is present equally. So the ‘I’ itself fills all places. That is ‘Ahaṃ brahmāsmi.’ That ‘I’ is itself the principle of Brahman. Today we use the word ‘I’ from dawn till night, but we do not understand who that ‘I’ is. We do not know it. First of all we must find out the ‘I’. This ‘I’ does not belong to one individual only; the ‘I’ is the very form of the whole. The world is the form of the individual. This world too lies merged in the ‘I’ itself.