In the initial stage, it is all right for you to understand that everything potentially is this food value (body – mind – ego). You start with this food value and vital breath, this combination and that “I Amness”; but later on, you have to investigate and understand how this “I Amness” has come. You have to go to the root, root means mula, mula means a child. How has that child formation taken place? In the process, when you go to the source itself, you will realize that “I Amness” contains this manifested universe, like a seed. To understand more clearly, take the example of the dream world. You are in deep sleep and suddenly you feel “I Am,” and that “I Amness” creates a dream world. Similarly this manifest world is created by that “I Amness.” You will realize this later in the search for the truth. The last progress will be for you to transcend this “I Amness” also and get stabilized in the Ultimate.
Don’t presume that having understood all this wordly knowledge you are full of wisdom. To think that will be something like being severely constipated. Whatever I have expounded to you is to be realized by the Self.
Before this beingness came to you, you were all the time there, but you were not conscious of it. The Absolute doesn’t know Itself at all. Our true state is not of knowledge, but prior to knowledge.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj