About ‘I Am’
by Nisargadatta / I Am That
Book, I AM THAT – Nisargadatta
The sense ‘I am’ is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, reality or by any other name.
When ‘I am’ and ‘God is’ become in your mind indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know without a trace of doubt that God is because you are, you are because God is. The two are one.
The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as ‘I am’. As long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the ‘I am’ appears as many.
Beyond the body there is only the One. Without the body we have the pure identity in the sense of ‘I am’.
By focussing the mind on ‘I am’, on the sense of being, ‘I am so-and-so’ dissolves;
“I am a witness only” remains and that too submerges in ‘I am all’.
Only your sense ‘I am’, though in the world, is not of the world. By no effort of logic or imagination can you change the ‘I am’ into ‘I am not’. In the very denial of your being you assert it.
The ‘I am’ in movement creates the world. The ‘I am’ at peace becomes the Absolute.
In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like the pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving, and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body, as the sense ‘I am’. There is only light, all else appears.
There is the body and there is the Self. Between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as ‘I am’.
Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body, not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realise its identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems.
What is pure, unalloyed, unattached, is real. What is tainted, mixed up, dependent and transient is unreal.
Do not be misled by words — one word may convey several and even contradictory meanings. The ‘I am’ that pursues the pleasant and shuns the unpleasant is false; the ‘I am’ that sees pleasure and pain as inseparable sees rightly. The witness that is enmeshed in what he perceives is the person; the witness who stands aloof, unmoved and untouched, is the watch-tower of the real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the manifested. There can be no universe without the witness, there can be no witness without the universe.
Q: What about the witness? Is it real or unreal?
Nisargadatta It is both. The last remnant of illusion, the first touch of the real. To say: I am only the witness is both false and true: false because of the ‘I am’, true because of the witness. It is better to say: ‘there is witnessing’. The moment you say: ‘I am’, the entire universe comes into being along with its creator.
Q: On what side is the witness? Is it real or unreal?
Nisargadatta: Nobody can say: ‘I am the witness’. The ‘I am’ is always witnessed. The state of detached awareness is the witness-consciousness, the ‘mirror-mind’. It rises and sets with its object and thus it is not quite the real. Whatever its object, it remains the same, hence it is also real. It partakes of both the real and the unreal and is therefore a bridge between the two.
When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense ‘I am aware’ is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is the reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross
Tamas obscures, rajas distorts, sattva harmonises. With the maturing of the sattva all desires and fears come to an end.
The real being is reflected in the mind undistorted. Matter is redeemed, spirit — revealed. The two are seen as one. They were always one, but the imperfect mind saw them as two. Perfection of the mind is the human task, for matter and spirit meet in the mind.
Truth is not the result of an effort, the end of a road. It is here and now, in the very longing and the search for it. It is nearer than the mind and the body, nearer than the sense ‘I am’. You do not see it because you look too far away from yourself, outside your innermost being. You have objectified truth and insist on your standard proofs and tests, which apply only to things and thoughts.
This is the end of Yoga — to realise independence. All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the ‘I am’. Once you realise that all happens by itself, (call it destiny, or the will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed.
But once you know that the body alone dies and not the continuity of memory and the sense of ‘I am’ reflected in it, you are afraid no longer.
Relax and watch the ‘I am’. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in.
Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am’. Yet it is not extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more.
The final stage of meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the ‘I-am-so-and-so’, beyond ‘so-l-am’, beyond ‘I-am-the-witness-only’, beyond ‘there-is’, beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being.
Before the mind — I am.
‘I am’ is not a thought in the mind; the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. And since time and space are in the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent.
The man who cherishes the feeling ‘I am’ is self-conscious.
The jnani holds on to nothing and cannot be said to be conscious. And yet he is not unconscious. He is the very heart of awareness.
We call him digambara clothed in space, the Naked One, beyond all appearance. There is no name and shape under which he may be said to exist, yet he is the only one that truly is.
Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am’. Yet it is not extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more.
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Repeat God’s name constantly
“The water to purify your heart is the name of God.” “Of utmost importance is to increase the repetition of God’s Name (japa) daily. In this way, your heart and mind will be purified, and only then will you find (realize) God within you.”
~ Haidakhan Babaji
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The ‘secret’ to a plentiful life, a life of harmony, happiness and contentment is to have a sattvic mind free from desires and ego and to live in every moment in conscious contact with our true Self (Consciousness).
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atmannityanada 