Nisargadatta Maharaj was an Indian spiritual teacher and, throughout much of the 20th century, one of the world’s best-known proponents and teachers of Advaita Vedānta (aka nondualism).

A Mumbai resident, Nisargadatta married young, had children, and lived a simple life as a shopkeeper selling bidis (hand-rolled cigarettes) and other sundry items.

Nisargadatta gave satsang (spiritual meetings) to seekers from around the world in his modest apartment. Recordings of his talks are often difficult to understand due to the cacophony of Mumbai street noise just outside his home.

Fortunately, his followers collected a large number of his exchanges with students and published them in a book titled, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. For the first time, Western audiences were introduced to nonduality, the cornerstone to the perennial wisdom teachings.

When I say ‘I am’, I do not mean a separate entity with a body as its nucleus, I mean the totality of being, the ocean of consciousness, the entire universe of all that is known. I have nothing to desire for I am complete forever.

Focusing on the I Am

Nisargadatta said that for as long as he could remember he’d had a deep inner yearning for truth. In his mid-30s, he met his guru, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, who urged him to relentlessly recognize, “You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are.”

After three years of intense meditation on the inner sense of I Am, Nisargadatta said the self he’d long held himself to be fully and completely collapsed to reveal the Oneness he’d always been.

That same teaching – to remain steadfastly focused on the inner-most sense of being – is the one he drilled into his own students. Nisargadatta was pointed and unflinching in his talks and he did not suffer fools or those who simply came to argue their own rigid beliefs (he was not shy about evicting such individuals from his satsangs).

The core tenets of Nisargadatta’s teachings included:

I Am As the Doorway to Truth

Behind thought and perception exists a timeliness since of consciousness or presence that Nisargadatta called the I Am. This I Am exists before and after ‘I am this or that’ and it is that sense of I Am that is key to liberation. He urged his students to stay with that I am until, eventually, the mind dissolves into silence.

Neither Body Nor Mind

The body and mind are temporary phenomena that appear in consciousness, he said, and even the simplest of investigations will reveal such truths. The true Self, he said, is the awareness of this body and mind appearing and disappearing. “You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are not and what remains will reveal what you are.”

Awareness As Self

Consciousness, which is known as the ‘hard problem’ in Western scientific circles, is not something you possess or contain, he said. It is what you are. The observing student will soon recognizes that all experiences, thoughts, sensations, and perceptions arise in this awareness and dissolve away. But the awareness itself it changeless, timeless, and formless. “The awareness in you and the awareness in me are one and the same,” he said. Or as David Carse says in Perfect Brilliant Stillness, “My knowing I am is the same knowing as you knowing I am.”

Reality Is Non-Dual

When the Self is realized, said Nisargadatta, the individual at last recognizes there is no separation between him / herself and the universe. The endless universe of objects exists due to the ignorance of the mind – in fact, they exist only in the mind. Once the individual recognizes this Truth, only Oneness remains, and I Am That. “The world you perceive is born of your imagination. It is not the world itself that binds you, but the way you see it.”

Self-Realization is the Only Goal

Nisargadatta recognized that all spiritual seeking gets its start from suffering. We are unhappy with some aspect of our lives, so we seek a deeper meaning that might improve our situation. And so off we go to undertake rites and rituals that will improve ourselves or our condition. The only practice necessary, he said, was self-inquiry.

Surrender

Like so many perennial wisdom teachers, Nisargadatta taught that we must surrender our desires, fears, and the story of me in order for our natural state to shine through. This state cannot be realized so long as we hold onto the idea of a personal control of life. “Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain; the ‘I am this’ is not.”

Be the Witness

In Nisargadatta’s estimation, a critical first step in the awakening process was to recognize oneself as the witness of all experience. Beyond this witnessing self is the Absolute, God, Self, the timeless reality beyond being and non-being. “The ultimate is beyond the witness. It is the source of both the observer and the observed.”

The published collection of his talks became a mainstay in the homes of spiritual seekers in the 50s, 60s, and 70s and is still widely hailed as a spiritual masterpiece.