“I Am is the formula of revelation in the world of the existence of the divine essence of Jesus, such as ‘I am the door’, ‘I am the true vine’.” Meditations on the Tarot
The Kingdom Vision: No Separation
“Jesus was talking about the kingdom of heaven as a state of consciousness. It’s a way of seeing. It’s a way of seeing the world, of seeing our place in it, of seeing God at work in it. And the two major attributes of this way of seeing, if you look at it really carefully, is first of all, when you look at the world through these eyes that Jesus calls the kingdom of heaven, you see no separation between God and self. As Jesus says over and over in the farewell discourses, I am the vine, you are the branches, abide in me as I in you. As I am in God, as God is in me, so dwell in me as I in you.
“In other words, his non-separation means a very deep indwelling. You get what I mean? So that you dwell in God, God dwells in you, there is a deep sharing and exchange of being going on at the depth. I love that image of I am the vine and you are the branches, because the vine is the big thing that holds all the little parts, there is no vine apart from the branches. It’s the animating principle that runs through all the little branches and holds it all together.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Awakened Mind Awakened Heart, 3:34 Disc 1 Track 6
Divine Name: I Am That I Am
“Being is from the verb to be which signifies being. It is what you are. God is defined in the Old Testament as ‘I am that I am’. When Moses asked the name of God, the reply was: ‘I am that I am’. In life we try to be like something; we are always trying to be like something, always trying to imitate, always pretending to be something we are not. If a man were to find Real ‘I’ in himself, which lies vertically above him in the scale of being, he would no longer be like anything but would be himself, what he is.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p106-107.
Way of Inner Evolution
“Christ said: ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’ (John xiv, 6). This inner evolution is psychological. To become a more understanding person is a psychological development. It lies in the realm of the thoughts, the feelings, the actions, and, in short, the understanding. A man is his understanding. If you wish to see what a man is, and not what he is like, look at the level of his understanding. The Gospels speak, then, of a real psychology based on the teaching that Man on earth is capable of a definite inner evolution in understanding.” Maurice Nicoll, The New Man, p5.
Leveraging Being and Agency
“You can draw on the power of being, of identity, to help strengthen agency. A lot of people think, don’t I have to have an ego first before I can transcend it? That’s linear thinking. Actually, you have both, and you use them to leverage one another. So it’s the work and prayer that creates that source of confidence that cuts through the inherent anxiety of ego, and says, right or wrong, oppressed or not, … I am. And I am by participation as birthright in the Divine I am, and that cannot be taken away. But we definitely need agency.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Introductory Wisdom School May 2025, 58:29 11 Thurs am Humility 5-29-25
I Am as Spiritual Gravitation
“Two questions are implied in the fear and confusion of the disciples [when Jesus walks on the water]. ‘Who is the one who we see walking on the water?’ and ‘How is he able to walk on the water?’ Now, ‘It is I’ is the answer to the first question, and ‘I am’ is the answer to the second. For ‘I am’ reveals an esoteric truth (i.e. profound and not immediately obvious), whilst ‘It is I’ is an exoteric or factual answer. It hides and contains, as its kernel, the esoteric answer. What is, therefore, the esoteric truth that the words ‘I am; do not be afraid’ reveal?
‘I am’ is the formula of revelation in the world of the existence of the divine essence of Jesus Christ. The whole Gospel is the history of this gradual revelation, the stages of which it summarizes through the diverse aspects of the comprehensive ‘I am’, such as ‘I am the true vine’, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’, ‘I am the door’, ‘I am the bread of life’, ‘I am the good shepherd’, ‘I am the light of the world’ and ‘I am the resurrection and the life’.
“Now, the words ‘I am; do not be afraid’ spoken by the one walking on the water amount to the statement: ‘I am gravitation, and he who holds to me will never sink or be engulfed’. Because fear is due to the menace of being engulfed by elemental forces of gravitation of a lower order.
“Thus, there is another field of gravitation than that of death, and he who unites himself with it can walk on water, i.e. transcend the agitated element of ‘this world’. This message contains not only the invitation to have recourse to the ‘kingdom of heaven’, but also the solemn declaration of the immortality of the soul, in so far as the soul is capable of transcending the engulfing gravitation and ‘walking on the water’.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p310.
Enstasy: Centering in the I Am
“Jesus Christ walked on the water not by virtue of ecstasy—not by going out of his Humanity—but rather by virtue of enstasy, i.e. centering in himself, which is the active virtue of the formula ‘I am; do not be afraid’. The Humanity of Jesus Christ walking on the water did not lead to a You attracting and supporting it, but rather to the divine I of the Son of the eternal Father present in itself. EGO SUM; nolite timere—means to say therefore: I am gravitation; just as the sun in the visible world bears itself and attracts the planets, so am I the true sun of the invisible world who bears himself and attracts and supports other beings. ‘Do not be afraid, for I AM.’
“Jesus Christ walking on the water reveals still another mystery than that of the sun of the spiritual world, the centre of celestial gravitation. For not only did he stand on the water—which would suffice to reveal and demonstrate this truth—but he also walked on the water, i.e. he moved in a quite definite direction in the horizontal sense. He walked towards the boat in which his disciples rowed. There, in his walking towards the boat, is already contained in germ—essentially revealing it—his whole work, temporal and eternal, i.e. his sacrifice, his resurrection, and all that is implied in his promise: ‘Lo, I am with you always, until the end of the world’ (Matthew xxviii, 20).
“The boat with his disciples is, therefore, and will be until the end of the world, the aim of the I am walking on the water. His enstasy, his profound centering in himself, does not distance him from the navigators on the agitated sea of history and evolution, and does not make him disappear into the other sea—the calm sea of nirvana—but rather, on the contrary, it entails that he walks, until the end of the world, after the boat with his disciples.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p311.
Logion 77
Yeshua says…
I am the light shining upon all things.
I am the sum of everything,
for everything has come forth from me,
and towards me everything unfolds.
Split a piece of wood, and there I am.
Pick up a stone
and you will find me there.
Logion 108
Yeshua says…
Whoever drinks what flows from my mouth
will come to be as I am
and I also will come to be as they are,
so that what is hidden will become manifest.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man refer to Martino Fine Books, Eastford CT, 2019
Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
Read the Impression on Meditations on the Tarot.
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