Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Quotes on the Absurd Proposition of the "I am God" Philosophy

The chief historical proponent of such “I am God”ism philosophy was Sripad Shankaracharya. Shankaracharya lived and preached throughout India in the eighth century. The preaching of Shankaracharya and his followers was so strong that, practically speaking, it drove Buddhism out of India. Today, throughout India and the world, Shankaracharya's teachings (or slight variations of them) are still having a tremendous influence on people.

In Calcutta, India, for example, we can see the ridiculous sight of a starving, sore-infested man meditating on the side of the road: “I am God. I am God.” In America and Europe, you'll find many so-called yogis and gurus who are directly or indirectly in Shankaracharya's line of “I am God” ism teachers.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

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Rajneesh, infamous for his advocation of “free sex” among his thousands of Western disciples, writes:

The word “brahmacharya” means that you have come to attain, you have come to know that you are the Brahman, the ultimate, the divine, that you are God Himself.1

Satya Sai Baba, India's most famous contemporary mystic and “holy” man, says:

You have not heard Me fully; I say I am God; I say also that you are God. The difference is that I know it and you do not know it.²

The idea of the “I am God”ists is that each of us is actually the Supreme Spirit, but that somehow we forgot our true identity as God and came under the spell of ignorance. So you are supposedly God, the Supreme Being, but you are now caught under the laws of material nature. You are supposedly the Supreme Lord, but you are now bound on the wheel of birth and death. It is an absurd proposition.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

1Rajneesh, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, vol. 3, p. 36.
2Andrew Shaw, Words of Truth: A Second Compilation of Sayings by Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Ltd., 1998), p. 7.

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The impersonalist “I am God”ist Swami Muktananda advised his students:

Meditate on your Self. Honor and worship your own Self. Kneel to your Self, because the supreme reality, the highest truth lives within you as you.*

Obviously, such an “I am God”ist or impersonalist can be very dangerous to others and society. Many of these “I am God”ists end up as the most extreme of all hedonists—having illicit sex with their disciples, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking, eating meat, and engaging in all kinds of debauchery. They declare that they can do so without being contaminated karmically because they are so “spiritually advanced.” At the moment, the Western world (as well as India) is crawling with such charlatans.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

*Swami Muktananda, Getting Rid of What You Haven’t Got (Oakland: S.Y.D.A. Foundation, 1978), p. 43.


~ Jagad Guru (Jagad Guru Chris Butler)
© 2009 Science of Identity Foundation