I

Am
Nisargadatta

Pradeep Apte
Preface

One can be Nisargadatta by just pondering over these words of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Nisargadatta means “actually nothing”. Just pondering over the words of the Sadguru is a
powerful meditation.

“What I do not know I speak, what I know I cannot speak.”

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

1. Nisargadatta means ‘actually nothing’ and that’s exactly what I am. By ‘not being’ I have
become ‘nothing’.

2. Due to the Maya I came to know that ‘I am’, till then it wasn’t so. Once I recognized this
mistake of mine, I realized that I was always so – without knowing.

3. What knowledge could have occurred to me? Whatever knowledge that has occurred and I
am experiencing is an illusion measured in the form of time.

4. The knowledge that I have while not experiencing this body is my joy. I am not the body but
beyond it, devoid of any illusions.

5. Nothing is useful to me; others may find me useful, depending on how much they trust me.

6. I am prior to everything, whatever it may be. If I am behind everything that happens then
of what use is it?

7. Now I do not meditate at all because I am unable to forget what I am. I always abide as the
eternally true, unblemished Parabrahman.

8. I am not aware of any dissolutions of the universe. All these years of the ‘living’ experience
is the only disturbance I have had or known.

9. What I do not know I speak, what I know I cannot speak.

10. I am before all beginnings, after all endings, beyond being and non-being.

11. Whatever happens I remain, I am unborn.

12. I am neither born nor can I die. I have nothing to remember or to forget.

13. For me there was no coming. It was so – always. I know for myself, I was never born.

14. What I don’t know is prior-most, I am in the state before the knowledge ‘I am’ appeared
on me.

15. I prevail prior to anything, I ever exist. Prior to the appearance of childhood, that is my
eternal state.

16. I am to-day like the experience I had prior to being born.

17. To me birth only means whatever already was, came to know that it is. My birth isn’t true;
it has been unknowingly thrust on me.
18. The world and the mind – everything – are unreal, but I am not those.

19. I, the Absolute never had any experience that I was alive. I, the Absolute have no needs, I
ever prevail.

20. I, the Absolute am not this ‘I am’. There is no question of going into that state; I am in the
Supreme state.

21. Who will recognize me? My recognition will only come when the recognizer disappears.

22. Why I took up this form I do not know, I even do not know that I am. All this is due to the
grace of the Guru.

23. I do not know myself so what knowledge can I have? Actually what I say is not worth
telling to people.

24. My true nature is that which was before the consciousness and body came into being.

25. I was, I am and I shall be in that original state before the ‘I am’ came, fully established in
that unborn state.

26. As the Absolute I have no experience of myself and I do not need this consciousness.

27. I have never seen Maya and Maya has never seen me, such is my principle.

28. I do not hold on to this worldly body and the knowledge coming out of it.

29. I do not give any teaching but only state what is and how it is.

30. I am before anything can happen, having no need of any experience.

31. Even when the consciousness goes, I prevail – I always am – as the Parabrahman.

32. I bragged about my knowledge in ignorance, but with ignorance gone now whom to argue
with?

33. My siddhi: I know that I don’t know anything and similarly the one sitting in front of me
also doesn’t know anything.

34. I came before memory so how can memory see me? I did not forget, but it was the
memory that forgot itself.

35. I have seen a lot of this story that has never taken place.
36. I am not related to whatever I am saying right now.

37. Before the ‘I am’ arrived I knew no time; birth, living and death constitute nothing but
time, duration.

38. I am the principle which survives all the creations, all the dissolutions.

39. I, who am there before consciousness, am not concerned in any way to all that happens in
consciousness.

40. I am not the seed, I am not the phenomena, nor am I the consciousness which is time
bound.

41. Devoid of experience I am the great experiencer, yet this experience has no effect on me.

42. Nothing in the world is fit for me and I am not fit for anything in the world.

43. It is not possible to have any proof of what I say and thus it’s not needed.

44. What I say can be useful only to the one devoid of the body.

45. I do not belong to any creed or cult; rather they have been created out of me.

46. Whatever has happened, I am not that. What is and has not happened
I am that.

47. By whatever I believe myself to be alive is all false, I am not what I see or perceive. All
happenings and activities are false.

48. That ‘I am born and going to die’ is all imagination, there is no such thing as birth and
death it’s all deception.

49. I am free as I am not afraid of the mind, intellect and imagination.

50. The body may remain or go I am as I am, living with the identity ‘I am Parabrahman’.

51. I was possessed by the five-elemental ghost, but having stabilized in the Parabrahman, I
know what it is and I am out of it.

52. Waking, sleeping and the sense of presence are all temporary states that have come upon
me, I am not these states.

53. My true identity is a state of not-knowing, total, complete and perfect.

54. I was there before the consciousness and body arose, I am there now and will be after the
consciousness and body go.

55. I have come to the firm conclusion that I am nothing.

56. When nothing worked I at least accepted ‘I am not the body’ and kept saying ‘nahamdeho’
(I am not the body).

57. I may love it, I may take care of it but I am not the body.

58. Everything happens automatically, I just dropped the idea ‘I did it’ and there I was – the
Parabrahman!

59. I am before all my so-called ancestors, the one prior to all who has never touched or seen
the world.

60. Through regression I progressed to find the Parabrahman available free of cost handed
on an invisible platter!

61. I am totally free because I have understood the unreality of the ‘I am’.

62. The consciousness full of concepts is dead to me; it is gone, I have transcended it.

63. I abide in the no-knowing state. All my knowledge has gone into liquidation, I am
unconcerned.

64. I have no relationship at all with the activities happening through the body.

65. How can I, the one without a body die? If there is no body what is there to destroy?

66. My dictum: ‘Be the Parabrahman rather than tryingto be it’.

67. Once the unreality of the world stood exposed it didn’t matter whether it was good or
bad.

68. Dropping all the externality I found that I was waiting for myself.

69. I avoided being tricked by whatever I understood myself to be through my understanding.

70. I escaped the noose that imagination puts around you and hangs you.

71. Since the world does not exist for me this life-span is useless.

72. My state is: I am, without parents, I am the unborn. I am and I am not, and I am neither.
73. I am certainly not presence and not even the presence of absence.

74. Who pulled me into the womb and in what form? That was possible only if I had a form
prior to conception.

75. I am interested only in the state prior to conception, the Parabrahman.

76. I recognized the Maya by observing that whatever done for convenience is bound to end
up in inconvenience.

77. I can clearly see that in the world of experiences derived through the senses every
solution is likely to create a problem.

78. I have no birth, what else is there to be done for when birth itself is untrue? In fact not a
single experience is true.

79. I have never entered the world so where is the question of getting out of it?

80. Every signature I sign is false, you spend a life-time telling lies!

81. My detachment: I am fed up of the non-eternal.

82. ‘I’, the Absolute, am not the personal ‘I’. The personal ‘I’ cannot tolerate impersonal
beingness and hence fears death.

83. Prior to, during and after the dissolution, I, the Absolute ever prevail, untouched,
untainted and unchanged.

84. Prior to experiencing the ‘I am’ and the world I abide in myself, in my eternal Absolute
state.

85. The quality ‘I am’ has recognized its falsehood and now it is qualityless and formless and
thus I have no words for it.

86. I have always been without the body and thus the imaginations of birth and death have
been destroyed.

87. As I have appeared so will I disappear, there is no question of coming and going.

88. I can clearly see that everything is in knowingness which has no name or form nor is it
aware of happiness and grief, once it goes the world goes.

89. Whatever I knew was false, nothing is, nobody is, all is false.
90. I don’t tell you knowledge but just exclaim sentences like ‘The ‘I am’ itself is suffering so
why complain?’ The suffering ‘I am’ has no body form.

91. What I say is not to block or obstruct humanity but to reveal that you are not human.

92. Whatever I say are my memories after the erasure of humanness.

93. There are no experiences in my eternal state; ‘I’ alone prevail even without the message ‘I
am’.

94. When I do not have the knowingness of the ‘I am’ illusion, the Parabrahman state prevails.

95. It was only when the understanding ‘I am the body’ dropped that I came to know who I am.

96. All the words of this world are false, but I am not of this world.

97. On realizing what I truly am all questions came to an end or disappeared.

98. I am free because I have realized the fundamental mistake of believing the ‘I am’ to be
true.

99. Nothing has happened, nothing is gone, I have not seen anybody, and nobody has seen
me.

101. I pleased my ‘I amness’ by understanding it and in the process also discovered that I, the
Absolute, am not that ‘I am’.

102. Before the appearance of beingness or knowingness, I, the Absolute am eternally there.

103. The voice that you appear to hear is the ‘paravani’, I have no voice.

104. I have banished the body and remained where I always am.

105. I see neither ‘actuality’ nor witness any ‘eternal truth’, my knowledge is outside the
realm of imagination.

106. I came to know myself when I came to know that I don’t know anything.

107. Let the one who has to die, die, I cannot die.

108. It is by the grace of the Guru that the illusion ‘I am born’ has disappeared.

109. I am unborn, I was unborn and I shall remain unborn.

110. I am Parabrahman, which means only myself, nobody’s Guru, nobody’s disciple, nobody’s
God.

111. According to my experience all is unborn, all this that appears as the multiplicity never
happened.

112. I am myself the proof that I was never born.

113. I know that I am not what I appear to be, I won’t die but what appears will disappear.

114. I am before the one saying ‘I am’ and whatever meaning that flows out of this feeling ‘I
am’ is false.

115. I am formless, nameless and indestructible, I appear to be in the helm of activity but I am
not attached to it.

116. Whatever I know in consciousness is an illusion, so it’s all useless.

117. There is no need for me to say ‘I am or I should be’.

118. I wouldn’t be doesn’t mean that I would die.

119. According to my experience the idea ‘I am the body’ has proved false.

120. My beingness has dissolved into non-beingness, a state prior to the sphere of
subject-object.

121. Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least as the real does
not die and the unreal never lived.

122. To-day I may know that ‘I am’, prior to that I didn’t, for some days and up to some day I
may know it.

123. That I came to know ‘I am’ is like an accident that occurs unexpectedly.

124. It is due to grand deception ‘I am’ that I recognized myself as a male or female.

125. According to the orders of my Guru my species is the formless unborn.

126. Earlier also I was but didn’t know it, to day I know it and later I wouldn’t.

127. I have the memory but am I the memory?

128. I do not depend on the body and its knowledge, I am unborn so what destiny can I have?
129. For me the duality never was so all its expressions are naught.

130. I know I am unborn because I know that I am not as described by the mind.

131. To me the fear of death and the idea that I am born are both imaginary.

132. I became free the very moment the imagination ‘I am the body’ dropped.

133. All these states that appear on me are transient including the ‘I am’ which is the main
culprit.

134. The whole riddle was solved when I met myself, the one who completely knew how he
was when there was no experience of time.

135. I cannot give any information about myself as all information is post- ‘I am’ which is false.

136. My real identity has no body, no thought.

137. I didn’t know, now I know, without this is there any knowing?

138. Whatever I see and feel has never occurred, I am awake and I sit without words.

139. Various imaginations do not arise as I have the conviction ‘birth is false’.

140. I am not visible and I am indestructible as I see the destructible.

141. I am not the body, I am without any shape or deeds, and I am without birth or death.

142. I tried to see what I was before I came to know that ‘I am’, that’s where the ‘I am’ ends
and disappears, it is called Parabrahman.

143. Despite of ‘not being’ I had to bear this allegation called ‘birth’.

144. Due to the words of the Guru I died while living.

145. I am Parabrahman, I have never had the experience of any body, neither now nor later.

146. My abode is prior to the ‘I am’ and that is where I actually reside.

147. The body has never touched me so can I have any needs?

148. I very clearly see that which has been born and I also know that I am not that which is
born. And that is why I am totally fearless.
149. I am nothing, I know nothing, I have nothing.

150. There is no birth or world, nor did it ever come to be, I am Parabrahman.