This text outlines a spiritual practice, taught by Nisargadatta Maharaj, focused on realizing the self by directly experiencing the fundamental sense of "I am" and subsequently transcending it to discover the true, changeless awareness beyond all identification.
How to Practice The ‘I am’ as taught by Nisargadatta Maharaj
Begin by resting with an awareness of Being or simple presence
without seeking for anything in particular or striving to reach a state.
Maintain this awareness and ground yourself in the knowledge that you are.
This awareness of being is known by the sense of ‘I am’.
The "I Am" is not a thought, but the very feeling of existence,
the basic sense of being that arises before any specific identity or experience.
Do not add or complicate this knowing of
just being the I am. Refrain from adding anything to it.
The very moment you start thinking about anything else you can rest assured that
there have been ‘add-ons’ to the basic ‘I am’ and it has lost its purity.
Let go of any ideas, words or concepts such as, I am this, I am that, I am so and so
They are all contaminants and do not go with it.
Do not add a new identity to the I am or claim it as an attainment.
Just Be and know you Are.
Do not be distracted or allow your attention to wander.
Do not try to control the mind but understand its
nature and gradually release your identification with it
Your only capital is the ‘I am’,
it is the only tool you can use to solve the confusions and delusions of life
The ‘I am’ is in all and movement is inherent in it.
Simply be aware of this sense of being. Dwell on the sense of I am in a relaxed and open way.
Allow your attention to naturally deepen this way and maintain your interest and inquiry into it
Commit to not wavering from it.
Stay with this knowingness ‘I am’ without words and every
secret of your existence will be revealed to you.
Come into full awareness of the presence of this living experience –
the totality of this mind and body
Ground you awareness in this, remain alert and mindful of the energy of your beingness.
Observe any thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions without judgment or identification
In the beginning, use this observation of body and mind as a tool for experience and
understanding, but know that these are not the source of consciousness or identity.
Recognize the body and the fleeting mental impressions as just transient forms and phenomena.
Relax and gently meditate on the ‘I am’ without clinging to the body-mind
Grounding your awareness in the body is not about clinging to physicality,
but about recognizing it as a temporary vessel for consciousness.
The goal is also not to reject the body,
but to realize the reality that is beyond the body's limitations.
You can observe and know the body,
so you are not the body. You can observe the breath, so you are not the vital breath.
Know yourself as the witness of the body and mind. Whatever happens,
happens to the body and to the mind.
The body and the mind are only instruments.
Let it happen. Just remain aware without identifying and grasping them.
In the same way, you are not the consciousness,
but first you have to become one with the consciousness in order to transcend it.
Do not get entangled in the contents of Consciousness
The very root of this consciousness is the felt-sense ‘I am’,
there is no personality or individual there, reside there and transcend it.
Inquire into the nature of the "I am."
This is not a intellectual exercise, but a direct, intuitive investigation into the feeling of being
This felt-sense of I am is the root of all, yet it is not you.
Rather, it is a means for knowing and understanding reality. Once
its purpose is served, it too must be let got.
This ‘I am’ is impersonal, it’s common to everybody and wordless – free of concepts.
That moment you came know that ‘you are’ you did not know any words or language, which came later.
You are definitely sure that ‘you are’ - after that then
everything else comes to be. Not before that.
The ‘I am’ lies at the very base of everything.
It is the root and cause of all appearances.
At the moment all you know is the ‘I am consciousness’, which is a product of the
five elements, three qualities or the food body, but you are none of these.
The ‘I am’ itself is an illusion, it is time-bound and thus impermanent.
It is like a dream which has spontaneously appeared on you and one day it will disappear.
You are not the ‘I am’ you are prior to it.
The ‘I am’ is your greatest foe and greatest friend, foe when binding
to the illusion as body, friend when taking out of the illusion as body.
When the sense or feeling ‘I am’ appeared on you, it fooled you into believing that you are
the body, the thoughts and feelings, and later on that you are so-and-so.
It strengthened the illusion even more as time went by, conditioning strengthened, and so the
illusion of divisions and separations increased creating turmoil and suffering.
In this sense it is your foe.
But now the Guru tells you to come back to the ‘I am’,
understand it, stay there, make friends with it or rather make it your guide, God or Guru.
Doing so, the ‘I am’ shall help you break the
illusion and it will itself lead you to the Source.
Having understood the nature of the ‘I am’ in its various dimensions and guises,
stay there and do not deviate from it.
Just keep in mind the felt sense of naked, unadulterated presence.
Put everything aside and come back to this basic
sense of ‘being’ in all its simplicity and purity and it will heal your mind.
The ‘I am’ is the first ignorance,
persist on it and you will go beyond it.
The ‘I am’ has brought you in, and the ‘I am’ will take you out
The ‘I am’ is the door to liberation. Stay at it! It is already open!
True liberation comes from moving beyond this "I am" experience to a state of "no-knowingness".
All that appears and disappears cannot be true and since you are a witness to it you stand apart.
You have to realize that you are not the body or the knowledge ‘I am’.
As the Absolute, you are neither, nor do you require them
The I am knowledge limits you in time and space…
In understanding the unreality of the ‘I am’ you are totally free.
The I am is a provisional understanding
or "beingness" that acts as a cloak over the ultimate reality
While it is the first step in spiritual realization,
ultimately it is something to be transcended.
The sages and enlightened ones first recognized the sense of being,
then abided in it through meditation, and finally transcended it to reach the ultimate realization.
When you realize that you are not the person or this felt sense of ‘I am’,
but the witness only, and that pure awareness is your true nature, then you will be free.
That knowledge which knows change must itself be changeless, it is unborn and deathless
Relax and Stabilize in this witnessing awareness and release your
identification with the body and mind.
As you stabilize in the consciousness, dispassion
for the body and for the expressions through the body occur spontaneously.
You will know yourself not as an object in consciousness, but as the changeless,
unchanging background upon which consciousness appears and disappears.
Appearance and disappearance, birth and death,
these are qualities of ‘I am’, they do not belong to you, the Absolute.
You are not what is perceived, but that which perceives.
You must abandon all that you think you are and all that you think the world is
to know what truly is.
The real is beyond concepts and names.
Immortality is freedom from the feeling ‘I am’,
to have that freedom remain in the sense ‘I am’, it’s simple, it’s crude, yet it works!
Who or what can know the illusory state ‘I am’?
Only a non-illusory state can do so – this non-illusory state is the Awareness,
the Parabrahman, or the Absolute.
One who has realized the knowledge ‘I am’, which means transcending it as well,
for them there is no birth or death nor any karma.
The state where there are no needs, no desires, and no identification—that is the Absolute.
The highest type of rest is when ‘I am’ and ‘I am not’ are both forgotten.
It is total rest, complete relaxation or utter quietude in the highest state.
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