To know others, you need to rely on your memory, but to know own being you don’t need to rely on anything. Your knowing of own being is so instinctive and spontaneous that even prior to your memory your knowing of your being exist instinctively. This phenomenon is so natural and lucid that all the beings, wise or ignorant, without doubt or ambiguity, with or without memory, have a core certainty of their own existence that they exist, which they express in words as ‘I am’.
~Sw. Chidananda Tirtha