2. Nisargadatta and "I Am"
Regardless of culture or spiritual tradition, the sense that “I Am” or “I Exist” is something that we naturally come to have and know, likely by the time we learn to walk. That this is so can be verified by simply dropping in the words “I Am… I Am…” - there is what might be described as a felt resonance with that statement. This resonance is present, even if there is nothing referred to as proof, such as “I Am This” or “I Am That”. “I Am” just feels like an irrefutable fact.
The eradication of not just “I Am This or That”, but also the very notion that “I Am”, is not unique to Buddhist teachings: it is what all human beings must do to fully awaken. One of the most well-known non-Buddhist teachers in this regard is Nisargadatta, whose book “I Am That” is considered a foundational text within what is generally called the nondual community. Recognizing that a given teacher may or may not identify themselves as “nondual”, many contemporary teachers reference Nisargadatta in one way or another.
Nisargadatta described a two-step path to let go of “I Am”. First, one abides in the “I Am” where all with which one identifies, as “I Am This” or “I Am That”, is released. During this first step, the validity of the “I Am” is not questioned, but is allowed to be something that one ostensibly knows, and to be provisionally real:
The eradication of not just “I Am This or That”, but also the very notion that “I Am”, is not unique to Buddhist teachings: it is what all human beings must do to fully awaken. One of the most well-known non-Buddhist teachers in this regard is Nisargadatta, whose book “I Am That” is considered a foundational text within what is generally called the nondual community. Recognizing that a given teacher may or may not identify themselves as “nondual”, many contemporary teachers reference Nisargadatta in one way or another.
Nisargadatta described a two-step path to let go of “I Am”. First, one abides in the “I Am” where all with which one identifies, as “I Am This” or “I Am That”, is released. During this first step, the validity of the “I Am” is not questioned, but is allowed to be something that one ostensibly knows, and to be provisionally real:
Go to the ‘I am’ level and dwell there because at the body level (you) revel in all these objective things, but if you were to go to the ‘I am’ and firmly abide in that, then all these external things will lose (their) grip on you.
Do not bother about anything you want, or think, or do, just stay put in the thought and feeling, ‘I am’, focusing ‘I am’ firmly in your mind. All kinds of experience may come to you – remain unmoved in the knowledge that all (that is) perceivable is transient and only the ‘I am’ endures.
Give up all questions except the 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. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
It is right to say ‘I am’, but to say ‘I am this’ (or) ‘I am that’ is a sign of not enquiring, not examining, of mental weakness or lethargy. Practice consists of reminding oneself forcibly of one’s pure ‘beingness’, of not being anything in particular, not a sum of particulars, not even the totality of all particulars, which make up a universe.
The complete ‘I am’ quotes of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, nos. 8, 14, 24, and 541
Then, the second step is where the “I Am” is let go of as an illusion, along with the illusion that there is a consciousness, “beingness”, presence or other apparent proof that “I Am”. For example:
That which you like most is the ‘I am’, the conscious presence, but that is not going to last forever. When the body drops off and the consciousness is extinguished, you need to do nothing. With this understanding, do what you like in the world.
You are so used to (the) support of concepts that when your concepts leave you, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling to them again. Why is the intellect puzzled here? That beingness which you are experiencing is melting away. When the concept of ‘I am’ goes, intellect also goes. So, the intellect gets that frightening experience of ‘I am going’.
The primary illusion is only this knowingness ‘I am’, prior to that there was no illusion. This very consciousness is the source of illusion. This illusion or consciousness or ‘I amness’ does not remain as something eternal. It is liberated; this non-eternal consciousness is liberated, when the knowingness is transformed into non-knowingness, that is liberation.
In truth the ‘I am’ consciousness was never there, so when it goes, what do I lose? Do I die or remain what I ever have been? There in that state, there is no ‘God’ – no sense of separateness at all, no ‘I am’.
You did not have the concept ‘I am’ in the course of the nine months in the womb. Understanding this state of affairs, the concept ‘I am’ comes spontaneously and goes spontaneously. Amazingly, when it appears, it is accepted as real. All subsequent misconceptions arise from the feeling of reality in the ‘I amness’. Try to stabilize in the primary concept ‘I am’ in order to lose that, and with it all other concepts. Why am I totally free? Because I have understood the unreality of that ‘I am’.
The complete ‘I am’ quotes of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, nos. 104, 217, 247, 292 and 557
The “I Am” is therefore recognized as an illusion, by which we embark on a path or process of self-relinquishment. By this, we first realize the error in saying “I Am This” or “I Am That”, and then realize that “I Am” is also an illusion. While living solely from the perspective that “I Am” is a substantial difference from where we start, and potentially quite blissful, it is an intermediate point on the way to full awakening.
I note that the “I Am” is not consistently seen within the nondual community as an illusion, but is often considered to be essentially a singularity that is aware of itself. A key question is therefore: how do we define “non-duality”? In the original Sanskrit (advaya), the term literally means “not two”. It is a reminder or corrective that negates the tendency that we have to distort what we perceive by bifurcating it into two actual or real things, such as a perceiving subject and a perceived object.
It might be supposed that, if what is happening right now is “not two”, there is nevertheless another option besides “two” that is valid. For example, if “not-two” is mistaken to mean “there is one”, that would affirm a singularity, such as awareness or consciousness that is referred to or experienced as “I Am”, by which awakening would be a matter of self-realization. “Not two” also doesn’t affirm “there is nothing” (a form of nihilism) or “there are three” (found in certain forms of theism). Instead of affirming any other numerical alternative, it can simply mean “not-two”.
I note that the “I Am” is not consistently seen within the nondual community as an illusion, but is often considered to be essentially a singularity that is aware of itself. A key question is therefore: how do we define “non-duality”? In the original Sanskrit (advaya), the term literally means “not two”. It is a reminder or corrective that negates the tendency that we have to distort what we perceive by bifurcating it into two actual or real things, such as a perceiving subject and a perceived object.
It might be supposed that, if what is happening right now is “not two”, there is nevertheless another option besides “two” that is valid. For example, if “not-two” is mistaken to mean “there is one”, that would affirm a singularity, such as awareness or consciousness that is referred to or experienced as “I Am”, by which awakening would be a matter of self-realization. “Not two” also doesn’t affirm “there is nothing” (a form of nihilism) or “there are three” (found in certain forms of theism). Instead of affirming any other numerical alternative, it can simply mean “not-two”.