Matt 22:32: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

The God which Christ is referring to is a “living” God. ‘I am’ is the living God that we experience when realizing our true nature. Before that we are as good as dead and seemingly trapped in the cycle of birth and death, i.e. samsara.

The problem is not that we die but that we don’t “really” die as an ego. If we would just die as a rule of nature when the body vanishes, that would be the end of it, then there wouldn’t be any problem. But, because we identify ourselves as some separate being, namely ego, we rise again to experience another dream, we call “my life”.

All the great prophets and Masters have recognized their self and thus they are free from the illusion of an individual being, a particular ‘I’. They have realized that ‘Tat Twam Asi’, That you are ‘is true and there is no other but Brahman.

We, on the other hand are still convinced that there is an ‘I’ in me, somewhere inside my body that has an existence of its own. It was born and someday it will die along with the body. That is why we must investigate and know who we really are. Who am I? That’s the first and only question that needed answered according to Sri Ramana. Otherwise, we are as good as dead.