What is the use of knowing that I am not the body?

Recently I have been reading the book “I am That”. Here is a question that is very hard to digest for people just learning to walk the path of knowledge (e.g. me).

 

Q: What benefit is there in knowing that I am not the body?

M: Even to say that you are not the body is not quite true. In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more. Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of ‘I am’ is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the ‘I am’ without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalized but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it — body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.

 

Well that is a very hard pill to digest as-is. Here is my sugarcoating to facilitate a bit of digestion. A Very crude metaphor
J

When I was a kid we used to have Jack fruits in the nearby forest. When you break the fruit from the tree, it oozes a white gooey substance. If you are not careful it can stick to your hand and give you rashes. It seems like the author is suggesting that “body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc.“ are like that white gooey substance. They are sticking to our souls. We already have rashes from it (that’s why the suffering). We think we are that gooey substance instead of the hand.