Nick also deals with problems of everyday living which could be said to be the interruption in the Enlightened state. Nick's own path involved consciously facing and dissolving emotion, steadily becoming increasingly self-aware and less emotional with each and every challenging situation. 

The only thing between you and Enlightenment (your own self-knowledge) is the emotion within you. Therefore the talks might explore in some depth how to dissolve emotion, freeing you of its unconscious control.

Questions can be asked at any point if anything is not clear.

It is true that some of those chanting this mantra have done little more than get the idea, and it is such a simple concept and yet is so commanding that, with no prior knowledge, anyone with a half decent level of intelligence can seemingly vanquish even the most informed comeback with a swift one liner. I personally have found myself tied up in knots (relatively speaking) by these people on the forums, when I first started sharing/teaching. And therefore, since then, I simply stayed out of their way. I even put a disclaimer on the contact page of our website telling people not to make contact if they wanted to try to teach me; and when I have received emails telling me I am wrong to say 'I am here', after a polite period I soon suggest we are wasting each other's time.

However, despite my statement above (and elsewhere) that most people who repeat this have little or no real knowledge or experience in this area (besides their frequent 'arguments' online about it), there are also some very 'spiritual' people (both now and historically) who do, and this has confused me. It is so extremely contrary to my own experience that when speaking with one such person who truly is living it, who simply said that it is just a different way of explaining the same experience, I still could not accept this. This heightened experience of 'being' that is my life now is so much 'Me' that to claim otherwise is totally ludicrous...  

So, what is it that I seem to have 'got'?

In hindsight I surprised myself as to why it took me so long to see it: The explanation, as I saw/see it, is in the path or journey the individual took to reach the state... 

It came about when I was describing to my good friend Nitin Trasi that I had spent 20+ years practising, fighting even, to hold onto the space within, and from the beginning this was done with the instructed knowledge that the 'space', the awareness, was 'Me', my true 'being' or Self. And thus, when everything else had gone, been dissolved, and this space was/is all that is left, the knowledge in this is that 'I' am all that is left...

And then I saw it: Most people identify with their self all their life, in the sense of the emotional, unhappy, angry, frightened, jealous, wanting self. And the 'spiritual life' (as I know it) is the process of this aspect or entity being dissolved or disintegrated until there is 'nothing' (of this) left, and all that then remains is the awareness that has been watching and experiencing throughout...

So, as you can see from the above, for someone whose journey or process involved dissolving the emotions in the knowledge that they were the awareness 'watching', they will state, when the awareness is indeed all that is left, "'I' am all that is left, everything that is not 'Me' has gone".

While, for those whose journey or path involved seeing through their self (in the belief that it is them) to the Truth beyond, they will have no option but to state they have indeed 'gone' and there is nothing and nobody here, once only the awareness remains.

So, the end result is that they are indeed the same state; opposite sides of the same coin, so to speak. And whether you claim to be all that is left, or you claim that you have gone and there is nothing left, will be as a direct result of which aspect you identified with during and after the process.

Finally, it feels like I can let this one go. 

Nick Roach  

(Ps. I consider this to be a new insight, at least, when looked at and described this way (supported by the numbers of people arguing the point). (I certainly have not read it before). But with the Truth being universal, if it is the Truth, then it is everyone's.)