I AM THAT

523 Pages·2012·7 MB·English

by  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This electronic edition of I AM THAT has been prepared with the greatest of love and
respect for Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj and his teaching, as well as for all those involved in
bringing Maharaj’s teaching to the world. It is hoped that this edition will enable even
more to have access to Maharaj’s profound, indeed, enlightening teaching.

For ease of use and reference, each page has a link to the Table of Contents which has
hotlinks to each Chapter and Appendix. In addition, each word in the Glossary is
hotlinked to that word in the text. Great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of
this edition compared to the hardcopy, however, if a question arises please defer to the
hardcopy. It is highly recommended that everyone own a hardcopy of this book
as it is one of the great spiritual texts of our time, containing the highest
teaching of the Truth.

Note: A number of photos have been added that are not found in the hardcopy.

Go to Table of Contents
2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTE: Each page number is a hotlink to that page of this document.

Forward
10

Who is Nisargadatta Maharaj?
13

Translator’s Note
15

Editor’s Note
16

Chapter 1 - The Sense of ‘I am’
18

Chapter 2 - Obsession with the Body
20

Chapter 3 - The Living Present
22

Chapter 4 - Real World is Beyond the Mind
25

Chapter 5 - What is Born Must Die
27

Chapter 7 - The Mind
31

Chapter 8 - The Self Stands Beyond Mind
34

Chapter 9 - Responses of Memory
39

Chapter 10 - Witnessing
41

Chapter 11 - Awareness and Consciousness
44

Chapter 12 - The Person is Not Reality
46

Chapter 13 - The Supreme, the Mind and the Body
49

Chapter 14 - Appearances and the Reality
54

Chapter 15 - The Gnani
58

Chapter 16 - Desirelessness, the Highest Bliss
62

Chapter 17 - The Ever-Present
68

Chapter 18 - To Know What You Are, Find What You Are Not
70

Chapter 19 - Reality Lies in Objectivity
75

Chapter 20 - The Supreme is Beyond All
79

Chapter 21 - Who am I?
84

Chapter 22 - Life is Love and Love is Life
89

Chapter 23- Discrimination leads to Detachment
93

Chapter 24 - God is the All-doer, the Gnani a Non-doer
99

Chapter 25 - Hold on to ‘I am’
104

Go to Table of Contents
3

Chapter 26 - Personality, an Obstacle
109

Chapter 27 - The Beginningless Begins Forever
114

Chapter 28 - All Suffering is Born of Desire
119

Chapter 29 - Living is Life’s only Purpose
123

Chapter 30 - You are Free NOW
128

Chapter 31 - Do not Undervalue Attention
132

Chapter 32 - Life is the Supreme Guru
137

Chapter 33 - Everything Happens by Itself
142

Chapter 34 - Mind is Restlessness Itself
149

Chapter 35 - Greatest Guru is Your Inner Self
155

Chapter 36 - Killing Hurts the Killer, not the Killed
161

Chapter 37 - Beyond Pain and Pleasure there is Bliss
167

Chapter 38 - Spiritual Practice is Will Asserted and Re-asserted
173

Chapter 39 - By Itself Nothing has Existence
179

Chapter 40 - Only the Self is Real
183

Chapter 41 - Develop the Witness Attitude
187

Chapter 42 - Reality can not be Expressed
191

Chapter 43 - Ignorance can be Recognized, not Gnana
196

Chapter 44 - ‘I am’ is True, all else is Inference
201

Chapter 45 - What Comes and Goes has no Being
205

Chapter 46 - Awareness of Being is Bliss
210

Chapter 47 - Watch your Mind
214

Chapter 48 - Awareness is Free
217

Chapter 49 - Mind Causes Insecurity
225

Chapter 50 - Self-awareness is the Witness
229

Chapter 51 - Be Indifferent to Pain and Pleasure
232

Chapter 52 - Being Happy, Making Happy is the Rhythm of Life
238

Chapter 53 - Desires Fulfilled, Breed More Desires
241

Chapter 54 - Body and Mind are Symptoms of Ignorance
244

Chapter 55 - Give up All and You Gain All
249

Chapter 56 - Consciousness Arising, World Arises
253

Chapter 57 - Beyond Mind, there is no Suffering
258

Chapter 58 - Perfection, Destiny of All
262

Chapter 59 - Desire and Fear: Self-centered States
266

Go to Table of Contents
4

Chapter 60 - Live Facts, Not Fancies
270

Chapter 61 - Matter is Consciousness Itself
274

Chapter 62 - In the Supreme the Witness Appears
280

Chapter 63 - Notion of Doership is Bondage
285

Chapter 64 - Whatever Pleases you, Keeps you Back
288

Chapter 65 - A Quiet Mind is All You Need
293

Chapter 66 - All Search for Happiness is Misery
298

Chapter 67 - Experience is not the Real Thing
304

Chapter 68 - Seek the Source of Consciousness
308

Chapter 69 - Transiency is Proof of Unreality
311

Chapter 70 - God is the End of All Desire and Knowledge
317

Chapter 71 - In Self-awareness you Learn about Yourself
323

Chapter 72 - What is Pure, Unalloyed, Unattached is Real
329

Chapter 73 - Death of the Mind is Birth of Wisdom
337

Chapter 74 - Truth is Here and Now
343

Chapter 75 - In Peace and Silence you Grow
350

Chapter 76 - To Know that You do not Know, is True Knowledge
355

Chapter 77 - ‘I’ and ‘Mine’ are False Ideas
362

Chapter 78 - All Knowledge is Ignorance
366

Chapter 79 - Person, Witness and the Supreme
371

Chapter 80 - Awareness
376

Chapter 81 - Root Cause of Fear
382

Chapter 82 - Absolute Perfection is Here and Now
387

Chapter 83 - The True Guru
393

Chapter 84 - Your Goal is Your Guru
399

Chapter 85 - ‘I am’: The Foundation of all Experience
405

Chapter 86 - The Unknown is the Home of the Real
410

Chapter 87 - Keep the Mind Silent and You shall Discover
417

Chapter 88 - Knowledge by the Mind, not True Knowledge
421

Chapter 89 - Progress in Spiritual Life
426

Chapter 90 - Surrender to Your Own Self
430

Chapter 91 - Pleasure and Happiness
437

Chapter 92 - Go Beyond the I-am-the-body Idea
441

Chapter 93 - Man is not the Doer
445

Go to Table of Contents
5

Chapter 94 - You are Beyond Space and Time
449

Chapter 95 - Accept Life as it Comes
454

Chapter 96 - Your Goal is Your Guru
458

Chapter 97 - Mind and the World are not Separate
463

Chapter 98 - Freedom from Self-Identification
470

Chapter 99 - The Perceived can not be the Perceiver
476

Chapter 100 - Understanding leads to Freedom
482

Chapter 101 - Gnani does not Grasp, nor Hold
486

Appendix I - Nisarga Yoga
493

Appendix II - Navanath Sampradaya
496

Appendix III - Glossary
498

PHOTOS
511

Go to Table of Contents
6

I AM THAT

Talks with

SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ

Translated

from the Marathi taperecordings by

MAURICE FRYDMAN

Revised and edited by
SUDHAKAR S. DIKSHIT

THE ACORN PRESS

Durham, North Carolina

Go to Table of Contents
7

Copyright © 1973 by Nisargadatta Maharaj

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Originally published by Chetana Pvt. Ltd., Bombay, India, 1973, 3d ed. 1981, reprinted 1983.
Published by arrangement with Chetana in the U.S.A. and Canada by The Acorn Press, P.O. Box 4007,
Duke Station, Durham, North Carolina . Published in hardcover 1982, reprinted 1984,1985, 1986.

First American Paperback 1988

Third printing 1992

ISBN: 0-89385-022-0

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 81-66800

Photographs by Jitendra Arya

Printed in the United States of America

Go to Table of Contents
8

That in whom reside all beings and who
resides in all beings, who is the giver of

grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the

universe, the limitless being — I am that.

Amritbindu Upanishad

That which permeates all, which

nothing transcends and which, like the

universal space around us, fills

everything completely from within and

without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman

— that thou art.

Sankaracharya

Go to Table of Contents
9

Forward

That there should be yet another edition of I AM THAT is not surprising, for the sublimity of
the words spoken by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, their directness and the lucidity with which
they refer to the Highest have already made this book a literature of paramount importance.
In fact, many regard it as the only book of spiritual teaching really worth studying.

There are various religions and systems of philosophy which claim to endow human life with
meaning. But they suffer from certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding
words their traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical. Believers,
however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability, of these words, sooner or
later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems, in the same way as scientific
theories are abandoned, when they are called in question by too much contradictory
empirical data.

When a system of spiritual interpretation turns out to be unconvincing and not capable of
being rationally justified, many people allow themselves to be converted to some other
system. After a while, however, they find limitations and contradictions in the other system
also. In this unrewarding pursuit of acceptance and rejection what remains for them is only
scepticism and agnosticism, leading to a fatuous way of living, engrossed in mere gross
utilities of life, just consuming material goods. Sometimes, however, though rarely,
scepticism gives rise to an intuition of a basic reality, more fundamental than that of words,
religions or philosophic systems. Strangely, it is a positive aspect of scepticism. It was in
such a state of scepticism, but also having an intuition of the basic reality, that I happened
to read Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s I AM THAT. I was at once struck by the finality and
unassailable certitude of his words. Limited by their very nature though words are, I found
the utterances of Maharaj transparent, polished windows, as it were.

No book of spiritual teachings, however, can replace the presence of the teacher himself.
Only the words spoken directly to you by the Guru shed their opacity completely. In the
Guru’s presence the last boundaries drawn by the mind vanish. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is
indeed such a Guru. He is not a preacher, but he provides precisely those indications which
the seeker needs. The reality which emanates from him is inalienable and Absolute. It is
authentic. Having experienced the verity of his words in the pages of I AM THAT, and being
inspired by it, many from the West have found their way to Maharaj, to seek enlightenment.

Maharaj’s interpretation of truth is not different from that of Jnana Yoga/Advaita Vedanta.
But, he has a way of his own. The multifarious forms around us, says he, are constituted of
the five elements. They are transient, and in a state of perpetual flux. Also they are
governed, by the law of causation. All this applies to the body and the mind also, both of
which are transient and subject to birth and death. We know that only by means of the
bodily senses and the mind can the world be known. As in the Kantian view, it is a correlate
of the human knowing subject, and, therefore, has the fundamental structure of our way of
knowing. This means that time, space and causality are not ‘objective’, or extraneous

Go to Table of Contents
10

entities, but mental categories in which everything is moulded. The existence and form of all
things depend upon the mind. Cognition is a mental product. And the world as seen from
the mind is a subjective and private world, which changes continuously in accordance with
the restlessness of the mind itself.

In opposition to the restless mind, with its limited categories — intentionality, subjectivity,
duality etc. — stands supreme the limitless sense of ‘I am’. The only thing I can be sure
about is, that ‘I am’ not as a thinking ‘I am’ in the Cartesian sense, but without any
predicates. Again and again Maharaj draws our attention to this basic fact in order to make
us realize our ‘I am-ness’ and thus get rid of all self-made prisons. He says: The only true
statement is ‘I am’. All else is mere inference. By no effort can you change the ‘I am’ into ‘I
am-not’.

Behold, the real experiencer is not the mind, but myself, the light in which everything
appears. Self is the common factor at the root of all experience, the awareness in which
everything happens. The entire field of consciousness is only as a film, or a speck, in ‘I am’.
This ‘I am-ness’ is, being conscious of consciousness, being aware of itself. And it is
indescribable, because it has no attributes. It is only being my self, and being my self is all
that there is. Everything that exists, exists as my self. There is nothing which is different
from me. There is no duality and, therefore, no pain. There are no problems. It is the
sphere of love, in which everything is perfect. What happens, happens spontaneously,
without intentions — like digestion, or the growth of the hair. Realize this, and be free from
the limitations of the mind.

Behold, the deep sleep in which there is no notion of being this or that. Yet ‘I am’ remains.
And behold the eternal now. Memory seems to bring things to the present out of the past,
but all that happens does happen in the present only. It is only in the timeless now that
phenomena manifest themselves. Thus, time and causation do not apply in reality. I am
prior to the world, body and mind. I am the sphere in which they appear and disappear. I
am the source of them all, the universal power by which the world with its bewildering
diversity becomes manifest.

In spite of its primevality, however, the sense of ‘I am’ is not the Highest. It is not the
Absolute. The sense, or taste of ‘I am-ness’ is not absolutely beyond time. Being the
essence of the five elements, it, in a way, depends upon the world. It arises from the body,
which, in its turn, is built by food, consisting of the elements. It disappears when the body
dies, like the spark extinguishes when the incense stick burns out. When pure awareness is
attained, no need exists any more, not even for ‘I am’, which is but a useful pointer, a
direction-indicator towards the Absolute. The awareness ‘I am’ then easily ceases. What
prevails is that which cannot be described, that which is beyond words. It is this ‘state’
which is most real, a state of pure potentiality, which is prior to everything. The ‘I am’ and
the universe are mere reflections of it. It is this reality which a jnani (gnani) has realized.

The best that you can do is to listen attentively to the jnani (gnani) — of whom Sri
Nisargadatta is a living example — and to trust and believe him. By such listening you will

Go to Table of Contents
11

realize that his reality is your reality. He helps you in seeing the nature of the world and of
the ‘I am’. He urges you to study the workings of the body and the mind with solemn and
intense concentration, to recognize that you are neither of them and to cast them off. He
suggests that you return again and again to ‘I am’ until it is your only abode, outside of
which nothing exists; until the ego as a limitation of ‘I am’, has disappeared. It is then that
the highest realization will just happen effortlessly.

Mark the words of the jnani (gnani), which cut across all concepts and dogmas. Maharaj
says: “Until one becomes self-realized, attains to knowledge of the self, transcends the self,
until then, all these cock-and-bull stories are provided, all these concepts.” * Yes, they are
concepts, even ‘I am’ is, but surely there are no concepts more precious. It is for the seeker
to regard them with the utmost seriousness, because they indicate the Highest Reality. No
better concepts are available to shed all concepts.

I am thankful to Sudhakar S. Dikshit, the editor, for inviting me to write the Foreword to this
new edition of I AM THAT and thus giving me an opportunity to pay my homage to Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, who has expounded highest knowledge in the simplest, clearest and
the most convincing words.

Douwe Tiemersma

Philosophical Faculty

Erasmus Universiteit

Rotterdam, Holland

June 1981

*Evening Talk. October 2, 1979, recorded by Josef Nauwelaerts of Antverp. Belgium.

Go to Table of Contents
12

Who is Nisargadatta Maharaj?

When asked about the date of his birth the Master
replied blandly that he was never born!

Writing a biographical note on Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
is a frustrating and unrewarding task. For, not only the
exact date of his birth is unknown, but no verified facts
concerning the early years of his life are available.
However, some of his elderly relatives and friends say
that he was born in the month of March 1897 on a full
moon day, which coincided with the festival of Hanuman
Jayanti, when Hindus pay their homage to Hanuman,
also named Maruti, the monkey-god of Ramayana fame.
And to associate his birth with this auspicious day has
parents named him Maruti.

Available information about his boyhood and early youth is patchy and disconnected. We
learn that his father, Shivrampant, was a poor man, who worked for some time as a
domestic servant in Bombay and, later, eked out his livelihood as a petty farmer at
Kandalgaon, a small village in the back woods of Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. Maruti
grew up almost without education. As a boy he assisted his father in such labours as lay
within his power — tended cattle, drove oxen, worked in the fields and ran errands. His
pleasures were simple, as his labours, but he was gifted with an inquisitive mind, bubbling
over with questions of all sorts.

His father had a Brahmin friend named Vishnu Haribhau Gore, who was a pious man and
learned too from rural standards. Gore often talked about religious topics and the boy
Maruti listened attentively and dwelt on these topics far more than anyone would suppose.
Gore was for him the ideal man — earnest, kind and wise.

When Maruti attained the age of eighteen his father died, leaving behind his widow, four
sons and two daughters. The meagre income from the small farm dwindled further after the
old man’s death and was not sufficient to feed so many mouths. Maruti’s elder brother left
the village for Bombay in search of work and he followed shortly after. It is said that in
Bombay he worked for a few months as a low-paid junior clerk in an office, but resigned the
job in disgust. He then took to petty trading as a haberdasher and started a shop for selling
children’s clothes, tobacco and hand-made country cigarettes. This business is said to have
flourished in course of time, giving him some sort of financial security. During this period he
got married and had a son and three daughters.

Childhood, youth, marriage, progeny — Maruti lived the usual humdrum and eventless life
of a common man till his middle age, with no inkling at all of the sainthood that was to
follow. Among his friends, during this period was one Yashwantrao Baagkar, who was a

Go to Table of Contents
13

devotee of Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, a spiritual teacher of the *Navnath Sampradaya,
a sect of Hinduism. One evening Baagkar took Maruti to his Guru and that evening proved
to be the turning point in his life. The Guru gave him a mantra and instructions in
meditation. Early in his practice he started having visions and occasionally even fell into
trances. Something exploded within him, as it were, giving birth to a cosmic consciousness,
a sense of eternal life. The identity of Maruti, the petty shopkeeper, dissolved and the
illuminating personality Sri Nisargadatta emerged.

Most people live in the world of self-consciousness and do not have the desire or power to
leave it. They exist only for themselves; all their effort is directed towards achievement of
self-satisfaction and self-glorification. There are, however, seers, teachers and revealers
who, while apparently living in the same world, live simultaneously in another world also —
the world of cosmic consciousness, effulgent with infinite knowledge. After his illuminating
experience Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj started living such a dual life. He conducted his shop,
but ceased to be a profit-minded merchant. Later, abandoning his family and business he
became a mendicant, a pilgrim over the vastness and variety of the Indian religious scene.
He walked barefooted on his way to the Himalayas where he planned to pass the rest of his
years in quest of an eternal life. But he soon retraced his steps and came back home
comprehending the futility of such a quest. Eternal life, he perceived, was not to be sought
for; he already had it. Having gone beyond the I-am-the-body idea, he had acquired a
mental state so joyful, peaceful and glorious that everything appeared to be worthless
compared to it. He had attained self-realization.

Uneducated though the Master is, his conversation is enlightened to an extraordinary
degree. Though born and brought up in poverty, he is the richest of the rich, for he has the
limitless wealth of perennial knowledge, compared to which the most fabulous treasures are
mere tinsel. He is warm-hearted and tender, shrewdly humorous, absolutely fearless and
absolutely true — inspiring, guiding and supporting all who come to him.

Any attempt to write a biographical note on such a man is frivolous and futile. For he is not
a man with a past or future; he is the living present — eternal and immutable. He is the self
that has become all things.

* See Appendix II

Go to Table of Contents
14

Translator’s Note

I met Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj some years back and was impressed with the spontaneous
simplicity of his appearance and behaviour and his deep and genuine earnestness in ex-
pounding his experience.

However humble and difficult to discover his little tenement in the back lanes of Bombay,
many have found their way there. Most of them are Indians, conversing freely in their
native language, but there were also many foreigners who needed a translator. Whenever I
was present the task would fall to me. Many of the questions put and answers given were so
interesting and significant that a tape-recorder was brought in. While most of the tapes
were of the regular Marathi-English variety, some were polyglot scrambles of several Indian
and European languages. Later, each tape was deciphered and translated into English.

It was not easy to translate verbatim and at the same time avoid tedious repetitions and
reiterations. It is hoped that the present translation of the tape-recordings will not reduce
the impact of this clear-minded, generous and in many ways an unusual human being.

A Marathi version of these talks, verified by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj himself, has been
separately published.

Maurice Frydman

Translator

Bombay,

October 16, 1973

Go to Table of Contents
15