Method 87 · VBT · Reps Centering §87 · Book of Secrets, discourse 59
I am existing. This is mine. This is this. Oh beloved, even in such know illimitably.
The instruction: FEEL ‘I am existing’ as a total bodily event — the pressure on the chair, the air on the skin, the breath, the subtle inner trembling of aliveness, the moods of the hands and eyes. Include everything happening within and without right now; do not think it or repeat it as a phrase. Practicable anywhere — sitting, walking, riding a bus, lying in bed.
Do NOT make it a mantra: repetition creates monotony → auto-hypnosis → deep sleep. Even Raman Maharshi’s ‘Who am I?’ was reduced to a mantra by disciples and missed the point. Sleep refreshes the body; it is not meditation.
Why total feeling stops thinking: thinking requires an ‘other’ to address — mind is a social activity. When you are fully rooted in pure being with no other present even in imagination, mind dissolves on its own. You remain perfectly alert but wordless — being without the mind.
The sutra unfolds in four steps: (a) I AM EXISTING — feel it as total phenomenon; (b) THIS IS MINE — gratitude: this whole mysterious existence belongs to you, you are its flower; (c) THIS IS THIS — suchness; stop being a beggar, you are the emperor; (d) KNOW ILLIMITABLY — set no boundary; existence has no beginning and no end, and neither do you.
Death-fear dissolved: mind begins around age two (earlier you cannot remember) and will end. Your being does not begin and does not end. When you feel yourself illimitable in meditation, the root fear — death — dissolves. Only then is real love possible; all love before that is two frightened people clinging to each other for warmth against death.
Q&A (Q2) — why THIS not THAT: tantra says ‘this is this,’ not ‘that is Brahma,’ because it is only interested in the here and now. Thinking about THAT — the distant God, the absolute — is an escape: it demands no change in behavior and can go on forever. The near, the intimate, the ordinary is as completely unknown as the far. The wife, the beggar passing the gate, the tree you pass daily — you do not know them. If THIS is known, THAT is included automatically; THAT is hidden inside THIS.
Q&A (Q5) — what to do when inner sounds arise: when this technique is working, inner sounds may appear (like a flowing river or stream). This is nada, the inner sound — a good sign, not an obstacle. The sequence is: words → sound → silence. Do not think about the sound, do not name it, do not try to get rid of it — doing so throws you back to the verbal layer. Sit near it as a witness on a riverbank, neither knowing where it comes from nor where it goes. It will deepen and dissolve into silence on its own.
Where it reappears
variantAdvaita Vedanta (Nisargadatta Maharaj / Navnath Sampradaya) · Abiding in the sense 'I Am' — staying with the bare feeling of beingness directly, not as a thought or repeated phraseGenuine shared core: the locus is the same (the bare sense of existing/being), the gesture is the same (feel it directly, do not verbalize), and there is a strikingly specific shared teaching — both Nisargadatta and method 87 explicitly warn that mechanically repeating 'I Am' degrades it into auto-suggestion and misses the point. The mechanism (rest in bare being and thought subsides) and the aim (recognize oneself as boundless being) coincide. It is a VARIANT rather than equivalent because the entry differs in WHAT is attended to: Nisargadatta says hold the I Am 'to the exclusion of everything else,' stripping away body and world to isolate bare presence, whereas method 87 does the inverse — it feels 'I am existing' as a TOTAL bodily-sensory event that INCLUDES the chair-pressure, breath, skin, and everything within and without. Inclusive total-feeling vs. exclusive distillation is a real twist on the same essential abidance.
equivalentAdvaita Vedanta · Nididhyasana (Unbroken Felt Contemplation of the Mahavakya -- feeling 'I am Brahman' rather than thinking it)GENUINE. Method 87 instructs to FEEL 'I am existing' as a total event and explicitly forbids making it a mantra -- the catalogue names Ramana Maharshi's 'Who am I?' being wrongly reduced to a mantra by disciples. The four steps (I am existing -> this is mine -> this is this -> know illimitably) are felt abidance in pure being expanding to limitlessness = Aham Brahmasmi felt, not merely thought -- the precise function of nididhyasana (paroksha becoming aparoksha).
equivalentGurdjieff's Fourth Way · Body Sensing (deliberate whole-body sensation / 'sensing of self')Genuine match. Method 087 instructs feeling 'I am existing' as a total bodily event — 'the pressure on the chair, the air on the skin, the breath, the subtle inner trembling of aliveness, the moods of the hands and eyes' — felt, not thought, anywhere (sitting, walking, on a bus). This is the Work's sensing exercise: grounding presence in concrete somatic sensation as the anchor for the 'I am.'
equivalentJainism (Preksha) and Quaker silent worship · Sharir Preksha (body-sensation perception)CORRECTED from 11. VBT 11 is a forced fit: its actual mechanism is to SEAL the senses / 'become a stone statue' so the sensation loses its medium -- a withdrawal technique that cuts off sensation (and overlaps Kayotsarga/VBT 9), not the sustained perception Sharir Preksha is built on. VBT 87 is the genuine home: 'FEEL as a total bodily event the pressure on the chair, the air on the skin, the breath, the subtle inner trembling of aliveness, the moods of the hands and eyes... do not think it.' That is exactly Sharir Preksha -- sustained, non-reactive, present-moment perception of actual bodily sensations throughout the body. VBT 87 layers an 'I am existing' recognition the Jain version does not stress, but the operative technique (dwelling in the felt body) is identical.