In plain words
In everything this ‘I, I’ has always been there as oneness. That principle called ‘I’ is itself the meaning that matters most to us. So do not fall into these arguments for and against and waste your time. What you must know is Brahman alone. That itself is I. If anyone asks, ‘Who are you?’: ‘I am I’. I myself am the word, the form and the name,’ say. For example, ‘Who are you?’ (Who are you?): if anyone asks you this, do not say your name, ‘I am so-and-so’. This is only the name given to your body. Your true name is ‘I’. So: ‘Who are you?’ To that question you must reply, I am I. Not only that. Whomever you ask, this very ‘I’ comes as the answer. In that one, ‘I’. In this one, ‘I’. We must strive for this kind of oneness to come.
Students! Do not fall into arguments for and against and lose the sacred inner meaning. This principle of Vedānta has no end. However long you discuss it, there is no end to it. So what you must always remember is ‘I am I’. However much time passes, it is that same I am I: ‘I am I’. We keep adding many names and forms to this oneness and comparing it in many ways. This is not right. Do not give it different names and forms. The principle of Brahman is one. The principle of Brahman is the One alone. There is no second thing at all. Only when you think, ‘I am not I’, do questions of many kinds keep arising.
What remains in the end is ‘I’ alone
Students! In the very end, you must settle on just this one meaning: ‘I’. ‘I am a boy’, ‘I am a youth’, ‘I am an old man’: you must not think like this, setting up differences of age. For example, old age: what happens after it? No one knows what happens. So we cannot give old age any meaning at all. Childhood, youth, old age: however many such we compare, in the end in all of them there is only ‘I’. That underlying ‘I’, though, you must take care never to let go.