In 162 of the song's reading entries the speaker says I — aham · mām · mayi · mat- · me · asmi — 381 times in all. It is not one voice repeating itself. The same "I" speaks as a friend at the reins, as the Self in the heart, as the origin of everything, as Time, as the one an offering is handed to, and as something past all of those. This page is for walking between them.
The gathering is computed from the word-by-word division of all eighteen books, and restricted to the Lord's own speech. The sorting into six is our own reading.
Counted from the word-by-word division, one row per pada, grouped reading entries counted once. Book I holds none at all — the Lord has not yet begun to speak. The density climbs to Book X, where nearly every verse is a sentence beginning I am, and settles again as the song returns to the man it is being spoken to.
Standing in their own selfhood, I destroy the darkness born of unknowing with a shining lamp of knowing.