There is a simple sequence of Sanskrit phrases that can function as a complete path of yoga when approached not as philosophy, but as lived experience. Each line names a recognition that unfolds naturally when awareness is allowed to inhabit the body from within.

Aham śarīram.
I am the body.

This is where everything begins. Our perception, the body rising in our field of consciousness. The body is often treated as something we have, something we train, correct, or eventually leave behind. In the Yoga of the Inner Body, the body is not an object of practice but the primary object which fills with with awareness in our field of precence. To say “I am the body” is not to reduce experience to matter, but to stop abstracting awareness away from sensation. Weight, contact, temperature, pressure, subtle vibration, all of these are not distractions from consciousness, they are its most immediate expressions. When the body is truly felt from within, it ceases to be a thing we observe and becomes a lived space.

As attention settles into that space, another recognition arises on its own.

Aham prāṇam.
I am the life breath.

Breath reveals itself not as something we do, but as something that moves through us. In inner sensing, breathing is no longer a technique but a felt rhythm that animates the body continuously. Prāṇa here is not a concept or a substance, but the direct experience of aliveness itself. The quiet expansion of the ribs, the soft descent of the diaphragm, the subtle pulsation that runs through tissues. Awareness and breath begin to move together.

Aham pṛthvīm.
I am the earth.

This is not a poetic metaphor but a somatic fact. Bones, fascia, fluids and gravity obey the same laws as soil, stone and water. When the body is fully inhabited, weight is no longer resisted. It is received. The sense of being held replaces the need to hold oneself together. The nervous system recognises support beneath existence itself. Ground is not only something we stand on. It is something we are made from.

Aham viśvam.
I am the universe.

Perception expands, not outward but in all directions at once. Sensation is no longer confined by the skin. Space itself begins to feel inhabited. Inner and outer soften their boundary. In the Yoga of the Inner Light, this widening is often accompanied by diffuse luminosity, subtle light fields or a sense of open clarity behind closed eyes. Nothing is visualised. Nothing is imagined. Awareness simply recognises that it was never contained inside the body. The body was contained within awareness.

As expansion matures, even the sense of expansion dissolves.

Aham brahmāṇḍam.
I am the cosmos.

Brahmāṇḍa, the cosmic egg, refers to the totality in which all forms arise, exist and return. Here there is no centre claiming identification. The sense of “I” no longer points to a location. It becomes the field itself. Inner light is no longer something perceived. It is the condition of perceiving. Silence and luminosity are no longer opposites.

This sequence is not a ladder to climb. It is a cycle. Awareness moves from body to breath to ground to space to totality, and then returns again to the body, now transparent, alive and inhabited. This is why the phrases are repeated. Not to convince the mind, but to allow recognition to deepen.

In this movement, the Yoga of the Inner Body and the Yoga of the Inner Light meet naturally. Inner sensing anchors awareness in lived embodiment. Inner light reveals the boundlessness of that same awareness. Nothing is excluded. The body is not left behind. The cosmos is not placed elsewhere. Both are recognised as expressions of one continuous field.

The mantra can also be spoken as a flowing chant, allowing sound to carry meaning beyond thought:

aham śarīraṃ prāṇo’ham
aham pṛthvī aham jagat
aham viśvaṃ aham brahma
aham brahmāṇḍam eva ca

I am the body; I am the life-breath.
I am the earth; I am the world.
I am the universe; I am Brahman.
I am indeed the cosmos itself.

This is not a declaration of belief. It is an invitation to feel where you already are. Body, breath, earth, universe, cosmos, not as ideas, but as lived presence rising in our uniform non-dimensional awareness. That recognition is yoga. Shunyam Adhibhu