Within a few weeks of being in India, in the autumn of 1996, my Guru Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji held up a pen and said to me, “You are not this pen.” I laughed.

“Yes, Swamiji” I said, trying to restrain my giggles at the seeming absurdity of his statement. He did not laugh and his eyes generated a light which seared straight into my chest.

“You laugh,” he said, “because you know you are not this pen. But you still think you are that body. You think you are all the experiences it’s having, all of the beauty it encompasses, all of the emotions, the pleasures and pains. You still think that is you.”