I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj: A Complete Review

The Book and Its Origins

For much of the twentieth century, the most direct available teaching on the nature of consciousness came from a small loft apartment above a tobacco shop on Khetwadi Lane in central Mumbai. Seekers from around the world came to this cramped room, sat on the floor, asked their questions, and received answers that were by turns gentle, devastating, funny, and absolute.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj taught from this room from the late 1940s until his death in 1981. Most of the teachings were given in Marathi, his native language. A Polish-born engineer and social activist named Maurice Frydman, who had worked with Mahatma Gandhi and was close to J. Krishnamurti, spent years translating recordings of these conversations. The result was first published in 1973 by Chetana Publications in Mumbai as I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

The book is organized into 101 chapters, each typically three to seven pages long, each recording one conversation between Nisargadatta and one or more visitors. There is no systematic philosophical progression through the book, you can open it anywhere and find something complete. But there is a sustained depth: the same territory is approached from hundreds of different angles, and what seems paradoxical from one angle becomes clarified from another.

The book arrived in the West at a moment of intense interest in Eastern philosophy and nondual spirituality. It was passed hand to hand among serious practitioners. Eckhart Tolle has described it as the most direct exposition of nondual truth he has encountered. Adyashanti called it "the clearest expression I've ever found." Wayne Dyer carried a copy for decades. It has never gone out of print.

View on Amazon

Nisargadatta Maharaj: The Tobacco Vendor

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli in 1897 in Mumbai (then Bombay), the son of a domestic servant. He grew up in a small village and returned to Mumbai as a young man, eventually opening a small shop selling handmade cigarettes (bidis). He was a householder, a father, an ordinary working man with no formal education in Sanskrit or classical philosophy.

His transformation came at around age thirty-five, when he met Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, a teacher in the Navnath Sampradaya lineage. Siddharameshwar gave him a single instruction: "Hold on to the sense of 'I Am.' Stay with it. All else will follow."

Nisargadatta did this with the single-mindedness that characterized everything he did. He worked, tended his family, ran his shop, and simultaneously abided in the sense of "I Am" as consistently as he could. Within approximately three years, he reports, the understanding crystallized. He knew himself as the witnessing awareness in which the sense of "I Am" arose rather than as the person who had the sense of "I Am."

His manner of teaching bore the marks of this biography. He had not studied the traditional Sanskrit texts in depth. He had not undergone years of formal spiritual training. He spoke from direct experience, in plain language, about what he had seen directly. This gave his teachings an immediacy and an authority that more academically trained teachers sometimes lack, the authority of someone who is not reporting what he has read but what he has seen.

The 'I Am' Practice

The central practice of Nisargadatta's teaching is deceptively simple. He instructs: stay with the sense of "I Am." Not "I am John," not "I am a seeker," not "I am meditating," not "I am confused", but the bare, content-free sense of existing, of being present, that underlies all of these.

This sense of "I Am" is what you can be most certain of. Before you know anything else about yourself, your name, your age, your nationality, your spiritual status, you know that you are. This bare existence-sense is prior to all content. It is, Nisargadatta argues, what you actually are rather than an attribute you have.

The practice is to return to this sense repeatedly, and eventually continuously. Every time the mind moves into a thought, a story, a plan, a judgment, the instruction is: return to "I Am." Not as a thought about existence but as the felt sense of it.

This practice has parallels in other traditions. The Tibetan Buddhist practice of rigpa (recognition of the nature of mind) involves the same turn: instead of following the content of awareness, rest in awareness itself. The Christian contemplative practice of hesychasm (stillness) cultivates the same orientation. Nisargadatta's version is notable for its directness: there are no visualizations, no mantras, no elaborate frameworks, just the bare sense of being and the instruction to stay with it.

Consciousness Versus Awareness

One of the most philosophically important, and initially most confusing, distinctions in I Am That is between consciousness (chit, or the sense of "I Am") and awareness (pure being, or what Nisargadatta sometimes calls the Absolute).

Consciousness, in his teaching, is the sense of existence, the "I Am." It is impersonal and universal, but it is conditioned by the body. It arises when the body arises; it will cease when the body ceases. When you are in deep dreamless sleep, consciousness is suspended. When you die, consciousness, in this sense, ends.

Awareness is prior to and independent of consciousness. It is the space or light in which consciousness appears. It is not a sense or an experience; it is what makes all senses and experiences possible. It does not arise with the body and does not end with it. It is what Hinduism means by Brahman, the ultimate reality that is not a thing but the ground of all things.

The important teaching: most people identify themselves as the person (a bundle of body, mind, memories, and personality). Some advanced practitioners identify themselves as consciousness, the universal sense of "I Am." But even this is not the final recognition. True liberation is the recognition that you are awareness itself, prior to consciousness, prior to the sense of "I Am," the unchanging background in which even consciousness appears and disappears.

This distinction cuts through a common confusion in contemporary spiritual practice. Many people aim to stabilize in a state of pure consciousness, a kind of sustained "witness" awareness, and mistake this for liberation. Nisargadatta is unambiguous: the witness is still an experience. The liberation he describes is prior to the witness, the recognition of what the witness witnesses within, not another object of awareness but its very ground.

Self, World, and the Problem of Identification

Nisargadatta's analysis of suffering begins with identification. The human being identifies with the body-mind complex, takes it to be what it is. From this identification, all the ordinary problems of human existence arise: fear of death (because the body will die), desire for security (because the body is vulnerable), the endless search for happiness in objects (because the mind believes happiness is something to be acquired rather than recognized as one's nature).

The problem is not the body-mind. The body-mind is a functional instrument, and Nisargadatta has no interest in asceticism or the mortification of the flesh. The problem is the misidentification, the mistake of taking the instrument for the one who uses it.

He uses a striking analogy: imagine a cinema screen on which a film is being projected. The images on the screen include fire, water, beautiful landscapes, and violence. The screen is not burned by the fire or drowned by the water; it remains unchanged regardless of what images appear on it. Consciousness, he argues, is like this screen, present to all experiences without being affected by them. The person who suffers is a character in the film. Awareness is the screen. You are the screen, not the character.

The philosopher Thomas Nagel, in his essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), asked what feature of subjective experience cannot be captured by any objective description. Nisargadatta would agree that this subjective "what it is like" cannot be captured objectively, but he would go further and argue that this subjectivity, properly investigated, is not a property of the person but the very nature of awareness itself, impersonal and universal.

No Doer, No Seeker

One of the most challenging teachings in I Am That is the teaching on non-doership. Nisargadatta teaches, consistently, that there is no individual doer. Actions happen; understanding arises; the body-mind functions in response to circumstances. But the sense that "I" am doing or choosing or deciding is itself a construction of the mind rather than a description of what is actually happening.

This is not fatalism. Nisargadatta does not say that action does not matter or that choices are not made. He says that the attribution of action to an individual self is a cognitive fiction. Actions happen through bodies and minds in response to conditions; the mind then constructs a story in which a doer caused the action. This story is useful for social coordination but is not a metaphysical truth.

The implication for spiritual seeking is pointed. Who is looking for enlightenment? The seeker is looking for a state that will be experienced by the seeker. But if the seeker is a construction of the mind, and if the mind is not what you are, then the seeker is looking for its own dissolution without knowing it. As Nisargadatta puts it with his characteristic directness: "The seeker is the sought."

This is not a paradox designed to stop the mind in its tracks (as in Zen koan work, though the effect is similar). It is a precise description. The one who wants to be free is the very pattern of identification that freedom would dissolve. Understanding this, not intellectually but in one's own case, is, Nisargadatta argues, very close to liberation itself.

The Style: Direct, Abrupt, Confrontational

Nisargadatta's style is unlike that of most spiritual teachers. He does not offer comfort. He does not affirm the seeker's progress. He does not take premises for granted. When a visitor says "I have been meditating for twenty years," Nisargadatta might ask: "Who has been meditating?" When a visitor says "I am seeking liberation," he might say: "Liberation from what? Who is in bondage?"

He will contradict himself between one chapter and the next, because he is not building a consistent doctrinal system but pointing to something that doctrine cannot capture. He says everything is consciousness; he also says consciousness is not what you are. He says there is no self; he also says the true self is all there is. These are not errors; they are different angles on a reality that requires different language from different positions.

Visitors sometimes left his room frustrated, having received not answers but better questions. This is the intended result. Nisargadatta is not interested in adding to anyone's stock of spiritual knowledge. He is interested in the direct recognition of what you are. Every response is calibrated not for its general truth but for its effect on the specific person asking.

Nisargadatta and Ramana Maharshi

The two figures most often compared in twentieth-century Advaita Vedanta are Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) and Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981). Both pointed to the same recognition. Both attracted international seekers. Both rejected elaborate philosophical systems in favor of direct pointing.

The differences are largely stylistic and temperamental. Ramana was gentle, quiet, and radiative, much of his teaching happened through presence rather than words. His primary verbal instruction was the inquiry "Who am I?", an investigation that traces every identification back to the "I" that claims it. He sat in near-silence for years and spoke only rarely.

Nisargadatta was more verbal, more direct, sometimes more abrasive. His primary instruction was the practice of abiding in "I Am", not an investigation but an orientation, a resting in the sense of existence prior to investigation. He engaged actively with visitors' questions and pursued misunderstandings with a surgeon's persistence.

Many serious practitioners of Advaita have worked with both teachers' material and found that they complement each other: Ramana's self-inquiry and Nisargadatta's "I Am" practice address different aspects of the same orientation. David Godman, who has written extensively on both teachers, has noted that the difference is primarily in starting point: Ramana begins with investigating the "I," Nisargadatta begins with resting in "I Am."

How to Read This Book

Most people who encounter I Am That are tempted to read it quickly, tracking the arguments, collecting the insights. This is the wrong approach. The book is not primarily an intellectual system but a transmission, the recordings of a realized person speaking to specific seekers in specific circumstances. Much of what is being communicated is between the lines, in the quality of attention that the conversations generate.

The most productive approach is to read one chapter per sitting, slowly, and then sit quietly for ten minutes before doing anything else. Notice whether anything has shifted, whether there is a different quality of attention available, even briefly. Over time, the book tends to produce a cumulative effect that is greater than the sum of its individual insights.

Many readers find that certain chapters seem nonsensical on first encounter and become luminous on second or third reading, when one's own practice has deepened enough to provide a context for what is being said. This is not because the book is obscure but because some of what Nisargadatta is pointing to can only be understood from experience, not from prior conceptual preparation.

Why I Am That Matters

In a library of spiritual classics, I Am That occupies a unique position: it is the most direct, the most philosophically rigorous, and the most practically actionable account of the nondual recognition available in the English language. It does not require prior knowledge of Sanskrit philosophy. It does not require acceptance of any particular metaphysical system. It requires only the willingness to be honest about one's own experience and the patience to sit with questions that do not resolve easily.

For spiritual practitioners in the Hermetic and Western esoteric tradition, the book provides a perspective that complements and deepens the tradition's own insights. The Hermetic teaching "Know thyself", which traces through the Oracle at Delphi, the Renaissance Hermeticists, and the modern esoteric tradition, is precisely the investigation that Nisargadatta is conducting. His answer to the question "who am I?" is the same as the tradition's at its deepest: the individual self is a mask (persona) worn by the universal consciousness, and liberation is the recognition of what is wearing the mask.

The Hermetic principle of correspondence ("as above, so below") finds its nondual completion in Nisargadatta's teaching: the "above" (the Absolute, Brahman, pure awareness) and the "below" (individual consciousness, the sense of "I Am") are not two separate things in correspondence. They are one reality seen from two perspectives, and the recognition of this nonduality is what every genuine tradition, beneath its specific cultural form, is pointing toward.