[9] Field Report on the Beginnings of the Village of I

The Root Tongue Dust Letters

During our inquiries we were able to piece together some of the early history of the Village of I and how they have maintained their history and developed their culture.

The Awakening of the First I

It is told that long before there was a village, there was a single person in whom the great Being awoke. This person saw what no one else around them could yet bear to see: that all things, all beings, all moments, were only I. Not a scattered multitude, not a world of others, but a single presence reflected in countless forms.

The elders were troubled. They had built their lives on a lattice of ancient beliefs that depended on separation—on gods above and people below, on the difference between the self and the other. The First I’s seeing threatened this structure. It was not that they rejected the elders, but the clarity in them was too strong to bend. Their words struck like bells in the minds of the listeners, dissolving familiar shapes and beliefs.

So trouble arose. Arguments sharpened. The First I did not wish to destroy anything, but the truth they carried could not be unsaid. Finally, they left. Many others, whose hearts had already begun to shift, followed.

They walked together until they reached a quiet valley encircled by soft hills, a place where the echoes seemed to return not as an answer but as the same voice repeated. There, they stopped. There, they began to live and speak differently.

This was the beginning of the Village of I.

They reconsidered their words. The old speech was full of illusions of distance: they, them, those. All of it taught separation. Slowly, with patience, they stripped away what confused them in their new understanding. Their sentences grew spare and clear. Children born into the new language learned to speak without “others,” without the shadow of distance between one being and another.

At first it was hard. The tongue resisted. Even those who had followed the First I found themselves slipping into the old ways. But the children - the children understood. They spoke I to I as if it were natural because it was natural.

And so, through one person’s seeing, through many people’s practice, the Village of I began.

The First Conflicts in the Valley

Life in the valley was not without struggle. Though the elders of the old place were left behind, their voices still echoed in the minds of the villagers. Sometimes, in the heat of labor or the tension of hunger, old words slipped out. Someone would say “they did this” or “those people caused that.” The moment such words were spoken, a fracture appeared. Faces stiffened, doubt crept in, and quarrels stirred.

The First I reminded them gently: “There are no they here. Only I. If we divide what cannot be divided, confusion will return. Confusion becomes sorrow, sorrow becomes enmity. And enmity is the shadow of forgetting.”

But not everyone agreed. Some whispered that the old language was easier. Some missed the world of “we” and “they,” because it gave them someone to blame when things went wrong. They argued that right and wrong could not be distinguished without us and them.

So the First I sat in silence and listened. It was not his nature to argue. Out of that silence a new sound began, simple and resonant:

“I . . . I . . . I . . .” With hand gestures he pointed to his own heart then to the heart of another I and with a third long I he spread out his arms as if to point to the whole world as I.

Each villager repeated it, not as many voices, but as one voice flowing through many mouths making the same gestures. The chant began with separation, each I spoken alone. Then it stretched and turned until the sound itself began to bend:

“I—We . . . I—We . . .”

The villagers felt their breath loosen, their chests open. The distinction dissolved. It was not the old “we,” which was a gathering of separate selves, but a new kind of togetherness. I and We became the same sound.

From then on, whenever conflict arose, they would gather in the center of the village, around the fire or beneath the sky, and begin the chant. They called it the Unifying Breath. Children learned it before they learned to count. It became the rhythm of planting seeds, of carrying water, of greeting the dawn. In this way the villagers came to see themselves and all the world around them near and far as one single living thing.

The chant did not erase hardship. But it gave the people of the valley a way to return, again and again, to the truth they had chosen to embody.

This was how the Village of I endured its first storms: by weaving language and breath into a single current, by remembering together what it meant to speak as One.

Then another elder offered a slightly different version of the story…

At first the chant of I—We was enough. It bound the people together, dissolved quarrels, and carried the memory of the First I through the generations.

But over time, some began to sense that something was missing. The chant returned them always to the center, but did not always help them reach outward. It spoke of unity, but not of difference, of flow, of the play of life.

One night, during a gathering around the fire, a child began to play with the sound. Instead of the steady I—We, the child laughed and cried out:

“Ah!”

The sound startled everyone. It was not against the chant, but it was wider, like an opening of the mouth to the sky. Then another child joined:

“No!”

And another:

“You!”

The elders frowned, uncertain if this was dangerous, if separation was returning. But the First I, who was very old by then, smiled. They raised their hand and said:

“Let it be so. For I alone is the root. But Ah, No, and You are its flowering. Without them, the unity is mute. With them, it sings.”

From then on, the people began to weave the vowels together into a cycle. First came the ground chant of I. Then We, then the opening cry of Ah. Then the refusal and boundary of No. Then the turning toward relation: You.

They called this the Vowels of Remembering.

• I was the root: the one being in all.

• We the recognition of many as one

• Ah was the wonder: the breath of awe at existence.

• No was the guard: the reminder not to fall into illusion or harm.

• You was the mirror: the face of I encountered in another form.

This expansion did not undo the Village of I. It deepened it, gave it branches and leaves. The chant grew long and cyclical, and children learned to walk in rhythm with it. The sound You came to be used only in a sacred sense, a reference to the I beyond all ‘I’s.

Vowels of Remembering

The Resonances of the Chants

• I—We
  Tone: A steady note, carried on the breath, often low and resonant.
  Center: Root and solar plexus. It grounds the people in the earth and in shared strength. “We” is felt not as plurality, but as the body of I in communion.

• Ah
  Tone: An open vowel, rising with breath like a sigh of wonder.
  Center: Heart. The chest expands, ribs loosen, and the chant flows upward like a fountain. It is the vowel of awe, gratitude, and the widening sky.

• No / Know
  Tone: No - A sharper sound, sometimes chanted in a firm, pulsing rhythm. Know – distinguished by a long resonant sound
  Center: Throat and third eye. It cuts through illusion, clears the channel of speech and vision. No You denies separation, while Know You affirms the awakening of the hidden unity. Both point to the same clarity, resonating in the place of seeing.

• You - Crown Chant (Silent Breath)
  Some later lineages of the Village carried the chant upward still further. After the cycle of I—Ah—No/Know You, they sat in silence. Out of that silence, a long, soft sound of “You” was drawn upward into the crown. Sometimes it was only breath, no word, felt as light and breath above the head that opened to the stars. This was known as the Unuttered Chant.
  
  Some elders whisper that according to the First I later known as - I Am that Remember I Am - we live in a Divine Manifestation that is an infinitely unfolding dream – the Divine dreaming of Itself. ‘You’ represents the great Being on the other side of the Threshold of Becoming, the gate of naughtiness through which nothing from this side can pass except emptiness itself represented by the silent exhale of breath. The great Being dwells there alone in an un-manifest eternal singleness of being beyond time or place.

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The villagers may have walked the valley chanting these vowels in sequence, feeling how each awakened a different resonance in the body. Children learned not only the words but where to place them—belly, chest, throat, brow, crown. It was said that the chant aligned the human being with the great Being, just as the village aligned itself with the valley and sky.

The First Naming

In the beginning, the First I had no title. They were simply the one who saw, the one who spoke the truth. But when their hair turned white and their voice softened, the people realized that their presence was no longer only personal - it had become symbolic, ceremonial.

So at a gathering by the fire, the villagers asked: “What shall we call you, now that you have carried us from the old land to this valley, from the speech of separation to the speech of unity?”

The elder sat long in silence. At last, they spoke slowly, so that every word landed like a stone in water:

“I am that remembered I am.”

The villagers bowed their heads, for they felt in those words both the weight of the ancient mystery and the freshness of their own valley. It was not only a name, but a vow: that the Village of I would never forget the awakening that had begun in a single person.

From then on, all elders took their ceremonial names in a similar cadence, binding the truth of I to the act of remembering. It was taught that to forget was to fall back into the illusion of “you” and “them,” but to remember was to return to the One.

Thus the naming tradition began, not with birth, but with the ripening of memory.

From that day forward, this became their ceremonial name. It marked not just an individual, but an office: the elder who carries the memory of the awakening.

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The Tradition that Followed

This moment established the rhythm of names in the Village as previously described in an earlier report.

It was said that each ceremonial name was less a mark of individuality and more like a lamp lit for the village, a reminder of the qualities needed for balance and survival.

Over generations, the elders’ ceremonial names formed an oral scripture. People would recite them as a lineage: Rememberer of I, Keeper of Breath, Walker of Silence, Listener of Sky… and so on.

The First Line of Elders

1. I am that remember I am
   (the First Elder, who carried the awakening into the valley; memory as the foundation of unity)

2. I am that spoke I am
   (the Elder who gave shape to the first chants and taught the rhythm of I—We, voice as vessel of remembrance)

3. I am that breathed I am
   (the Elder who carried the practice of chanting into breath and body, aligning the villagers with the rhythm of life itself)

4. I am that sees I am
   (the Elder who taught vision, clarity, and the refusal of illusion, anchoring the chant Ah, No You into the third eye)

5. I am that silently I am
   (the Elder who established the practice of the Unuttered Chant, guiding the people into crown-centered stillness, beyond sound)

6. I am that carried I am
   (the Elder who reminded that the burden of unity is borne in daily life: planting, building, raising children, carrying water. This elder embodied the ordinary as sacred.)

7. I am that opened I am
   (the Elder who expanded the circle, teaching the inclusion of Ah, No, and You as part of the living language of I)

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These names would be recited in sequence, like a genealogy of remembrance. Over time, each Elder’s teaching became not just a phrase but a tone carried in the chants: memory, voice, breath, vision, silence, labor, openness.

The people gathered each season to chant the lineage:
I am that remember I am… I am that spoke I am… I am that breathed I am…
Each phrase would be felt in the body, resonating in root, heart, throat, third eye, crown.

The Chain of I

The First Elder planted the root: I am that remember I am.
From this root grew a living chain, each link a word, each word a life.

The Chain of Continuity was not written on parchment but chanted in the body. Each Elder received the name not from their own invention but in recognition of what the people had seen manifest in them. The name was both gift and vow.

When a new Elder rose, the lineage was recited aloud, one voice passing into the next:
I am that remember I am.
I am that spoke I am.
I am that breathed I am.
I am that see I am.
I am that silently I am…

The villagers said: “This is the Chain of I. It binds us not by law but by breath. Each name is a jewel in the necklace of remembrance. When we chant the names, the past and the present chant together.”

In this way, the Chain of Continuity of the Village of I was not about authority but about continuity. It was the remembrance that every Elder was a new face of the same One, a new articulation, a new perspective, a new insight of the same “I am who first remembered I am.”

To be continued…