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Nisargadatta Gita
Pradeep Apte

Dedicated to the Great Master Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

PROLOGUE
The Beginning

What I am trying to recapture took place fifty years back, many aspects are quite vague and hazy but some of them are very distinct and clear. The first thing that I can recollect is that a complete blank prevailed; I did not know anything at all. I cannot describe that state except for saying that it was total oblivion, no sound, no light, no colors, nothing!

From conception to that stage it was almost three years and till then everything went along on its own, there was no question of any volition on my part. I was told that during this period I had some illnesses, mishaps and injuries, they must have been troublesome and painful as they are now, but at that time, I did know at all.

Then quite suddenly, quite spontaneously, without any effort on my part, one day I instantaneously came to know 'I am', I had a sense of 'being', I felt that 'I am'. All that I knew that 'I am'. When? Where? How? All this I did not know. Quite simultaneously along with this feeling there was space as well, it was indoors, probably a room. There was a side platform, some sort of settee, above which was a large rectangular space, a window from which light was coming in. Probably the time was somewhere around eight or nine in the morning. All this I can describe now, at that moment I did not know anything apart from seeing only light, space and objects. That was my first 'knowing' and soon I was back into 'not-knowing'. These two states, that of knowing, or 'I am' and not-knowing or 'I am not' was all there was. There weren't the waking, deep sleep or dreaming states which I acquired much later.

The descriptions that follow are now of this state only, which is 'I am' and 'I am not' and I do not know exactly how long this period lasted, probably a year or so. Please remember, I can make these descriptions now with my sense of language well developed and of course, my memory which I feel is reasonably good.

To begin with I remember this girl and that small boy who was always dressed up like a girl. I played a lot with the girl, we ran and ran and laughed a lot. We were probably of the same age and we were living in a valley, there were lots of hills around. We ran along the streams and then there was this bridge over a stream, we used to go below the bridge and play. One day we were running around completely naked, splashing water in the stream which was rather shallow. All this never made any sense then but still it was a carefree life with great fun and there were no demands or desires whatsoever.

Once while running around the lanes on the small hillocks that were closer to us we encountered a not very old man strolling around in a pyjama-kurta and a jacket. He gazed at us intensely and then gave a broad smile, just patted our heads and went on.
Then there was this large banyan tree where lots and lots people used to come and make a lot of noise. When we went there these people would catch us, cuddle us, kiss us and there was a lot of laughter.

I used to go to a hall where other children came as well. A dark, bald man in a white lungi and shirt used to take us to the banks of small streams and tell us to gather pebbles of different shapes. A fat lady was in charge of serving food to us in a dining hall that was behind our house.
Large groups of us children we were taken to the top of a hill and made to watch the sunset in complete silence, here sometimes I again saw the same pleasant looking not so old man whom we had met on the hillocks, his silence appeared quite different and he was unusually calm. I remember once the girl and I managed to enter a big hall where a lot of people were listening to the same man who was talking softly on a platform. We were very restless; we began fidgeting, giggling and creating quite a commotion. I just ran towards the man on the platform and stood looking at him, the girl poking me from behind made me laugh. The audience was distracted, the talk disturbed and there was this Englishman in the front row who glared at us annoyedly. Just then quite suddenly the man caught hold of me and sat me up in his lap, I became absolutely still, calm and quiet, he then continued with his talk.

I very distinctly remember that python in the cage and the rabbits next door and how the python swallowed one of the rabbits by wriggling through a hole between the cages. I also remember how the villagers had brought the python tied to a large pole which was held by two of them at the two ends.
Now the random memories:
1. Moonlight dinners in large numbers
2. Travel by moon light in bullock carts
3. Village festivals and fairs with decorated cattle
4. Seeing jaggery being made
5. Peeping in the dancing huts
6. The injured boy being carried on Diwali day

I have two distinct memories of injuries; one was of my head hitting the tap below which I was bathing. The second injury I remember is of a metal cot falling on the tips of my fingers causing cuts over there. The scars of these injuries are still there on my body, the memory of the event is also there but there is no memory of the pain.

I can now add much more information about then from what my parents told me.The place was Rishi Valley School in Madanapally district, Andhra Pradesh in India, where my father was working as Music teacher. The girl friend was Rekha, the daughter of a lady next door who worked in the school. The calm, not so old man whom we encountered, was J.Krishnamurti, the banyan tree was in fact a famous theatre in the school. The bald man in lungi was one Mr,Raju, the fat lady who conducted food services was one Rama bai. The evening activity on the hillock was called 'Asthachal'; the Englishman who got annoyed was Gordon Pearce, the then principal of the school.

What were the most remarkable features about this period? First of all, I did not know at all who or where I was, nor who my parents were. I did not know that there was something called birth and death. I had no body awareness at all, because I did know what or when I ate, or that there was pain when I was injured. The only two things that I very clearly remember are that either 'I was' or 'I was not' a state of knowing ('I am') and not knowing ('I am not'). I had no sense of time at all nor did I know of the waking, deep sleep or dream states or that there was anything such as daily routine or the cycle of morning, afternoon, evening and night.

Above all, which is the most outstanding feature of this state was the total absence of any verbalization in the form of the spoken word or language. There may have been some stray words in Marathi, my mother tongue, English or Telugu, but I have no memory of them at all and it can hardly be called a genuine meaningful linguistic expression. The states of knowing ('I am') or not-knowing ('I am not') were completely non-verbal and they occurred quite spontaneously without my having any control over them, the question of volition did not occur at all. These two states may also be said to be those of ignorance (not-knowing) and knowledge (knowing).

The Conditioning

From here onwards, i.e. approximately from the age of four till the age of forty, I led a life which completely submerged and almost obliterated the beginning. It was the life of a perfectly conditioned man and that is the way it is meant to be according to the traditions laid down in our society. During this period of thirty-six years and even to this day I have not met in person a single human being who could tell me directly that I have got it all wrong. Nobody told me that I am not what I believe myself to be, not a single person told me about my true identity or even give a hint about it. Rather, it was the other way around; I was very much led to believe that I am so and so having this particular position in society and this particular role to play. But I don't blame them or anybody, that's the way it is, all have been designed or conditioned to be customers for the external world. Very few are directed towards the interior life and it is only the rarest of the rare who would realize the interior principle. So you stand a very remote chance of coming across someone living one who has not only realized the interior principle but has himself become 'The Principle' itself!

In the present context, I led in this thirty-six year period is not of much relevance. It was just one of the run-of-the-mill stories that anybody who has been reasonably successful could have had. I did acquire a few useful things during this period that stood me in good stead later. Firstly, I developed an enormous interest in reading books; secondly, I also developed fairly good writing and editing skills. The third thing that I guess came quite naturally to me and grew over the years and that was a keen sense of observation.

The Wandering

I read, and read a lot, but it was around the age of forty that I came across a book called 'The Republic' by Plato, which was a turning point. The Socratic dialogues set the ball rolling and that was my first camp. Then I went on camping, like the climbers of Mount Everest do, and believe me when I camped, I camped firmly, leaving no stone unturned at that particular camp. I studied and read the works at all these camps in great detail; at times I prepared notes and even gave presentations for the sake of my own understanding. Sometimes procuring a particular book was quite difficult but still I usually managed to get it. The arrival of internet on the scene made things very easy and now an enormous amount of information can be procured within moments, something very difficult in my earlier camping days. A camp once left was not left forever, but traveling back forth always continued, links of similarity and harmony in different aspects was appreciated. Here is a list of the camps:
1. Socrates
2. Swami Ramdas
3. Saint Jnaneshwara
4. Ramkrishna Paramhansa
5. Sri Aurobindo
6. J.Krishnamurti
7. Osho
8. U.G.Krishnamurti
9. Eckhart Tolle
10. Ramana Maharshi
11. Sri Ranjit Maharaj
12. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I have not mentioned the many, many sub-camps that occurred in between and were very helpful throughout my quest. Indeed, hats off to all these great masters from whom I imbibed a lot and will always cherish, I bow to all of them. As to how I arrived at each camp is a story in itself but I wish tell only one of them - the last one, that of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

It was in the first week of February 2004 that I visited the J.Krishnamurti study centre located at Sanyadhri, near Pune,India. While browsing through the library at the study centre I came across a book 'I Am That' based on the talks of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

As I began going through it, I just couldn't put it down, 'This is dynamite!' that's the immediate feeling I had. By the time I finished the book I knew that the summit was not far and in all probability this would be the last camp.

The Genesis

I found the talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj to be highly penetrating and many things that were usually vague became quite clear. It was just like the clouds clearing away leaving a perfectly blue spotless sky. After 'I Am That' by Maurice Frydman nine more books followed that covered almost all the talks, these books were:
1. Edited by Jean Dunn: Seeds of Consciousness, Prior to Consciousness and Consciousness and the Absolute.
2. Edited by Robert Powell: The Experience of Nothingness, The Nectar of Immortality and The Ultimate Medicine.
3. Edited Maria Jory: Beyond Freedom
4. E-book,Created by Vijay Deshpande and edited by me: I am Unborn.
5. Mark West's: Gleanings from Nisargadatta.

Throughout all these books the 'I am' theme was highly pre-dominant, so in the first phase I began compiling all the 'I am' quotes and this took quite some time. In all, these quotes were 572 in number of which 521 are available as an e-book at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4906514/I-AM-The-complete-I-am-quotes-of-Sri-Nisargadatta-Maharaj, http://www.lulu.com/content/2469683 and http://www.nisargadatta.in/WebCMS/CMSPage.aspx?PageID=7

I only managed to procure much later on the last 51 from Mark West's book and they have been included when I began preparing the text of 'The Nisargadatta Gita'.

What actually served as a very strong trigger for preparing The Nisargadatta Gita was the clarification of a doubt that had always lingered at the back of my mind. In my life, so far, I had never met a living Guru, so as the convention goes, is my mere reading or studying of books of the teachings of all these great men of no avail? This last doubt was removed while I was editing the script of 'I am Unborn' where Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj answered this very question asked by one of the visitors, it goes like this:
V: Do books replace a Guru?
M: Yes, books can replace a Guru. At one stage you yourself become a Guru;
then you find out that books are of no use anymore. The Guru is one, who
knows the beginning, continuity and the end of his life and understands the
mind on which the environment has so much impact.( Page, 89, I am Unborn).
This answer came as a big relief and will also come to many like me who have never come across a living Guru in their life.
In the second phase I began a process of condensing the quotes, the idea was to increase the potency by reducing the words to a barest minimum, without distorting the meaning. This brought the number down to 231, approximately 1/3rd of the original 572. In the third and final phase, a short commentary was written on each quote and that is how The Nisargadatta Gita came to be. It has only one chapter: 'I AM' which is the first and the last chapter. The objective behind preparing The Nisargadatta Gita is, for it to be used as a meditative device to get focused on the 'I am', and if possible, transcend it.

So what had Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj done to me that made all the difference? Well life had undergone a full circle; 'the beginning' that I have described in the prelude was made all so important a fact to me. I had never given thought to it or felt that there lay the key to the redemption of all.

********

The Nisargadatta Gita

I AM : THE FIRST AND THE LAST CHAPTER

1. The 'I am' came first, it's ever present, ever available, refuse all thoughts except 'I am', stay there.
Understanding the 'I am', your sense of 'being' or just 'presence' is extremely important as on it rests the entire outcome of the teaching. Firstly, are you at all aware of your 'being' or of the fact that 'you are'? You have 'to be' before anything else can be, your sense of 'presence' or the feeling 'I am' is really fundamental to anything that has to follow. Secondly, this sense of 'being' or the feeling 'I am', was it not the very first event or happening before any of your living experiences could begin? Apply your mind go back in time to the moment when it dawned on you that 'you are' or 'I am'. This 'I am' is still there with you, ever present, ever available, it was and still is the first thought, refuse all other thoughts and come back there and stay there. So try to understand and grasp this 'beingness' or 'I amness' that is inherent in you. The more precisely and clearly you do it the more rapid will be your progress.

2. Just stay put firmly and establish yourself in the 'I am', reject all that does not go with 'I am'.
Having understood the 'I am' in every way, the next thing is to stay there, establish yourself in your sense of 'being' and not deviate from it at all. The very moment you start thinking about anything else you can rest assured that there have been 'add-ons' on the basic 'I am' and it has lost its purity. Reject anything that is 'I am plus …'and so forth because all the rest are contaminants and do not go with it.

3. Consistently and with perseverance separate the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', just keep in mind the feeling 'I am'.
All this is not as easy as it sounds, it is hard work, your consistency and perseverance are keys to your success. Separate the 'I am' from 'I am this' or' I am that' or 'I am so and so' all these are add-ons and have been loaded onto you by others and society. All these appendages on the 'I am' may be of some value in your day to day living but if your goal or quest is for eternity, then they are impediments. You will have to separate them from the 'I am' and just keep in mind your sense of 'presence' or the feeling 'I am'.

4. Only the 'I am' is certain, it's impersonal, all knowledge stems from it, it's the root, hold on to it and let all else go.
Right from the day you came know that 'you are' to this day you still know that 'you are'. All add-ons have come and gone. They are transient but the fundamental 'I am' has remained unchanged and is the only certainty. This 'I am' is impersonal, it's common to everybody and wordless, the moment you came know that 'you are' you did not know any words or language, which came later. Based on this non-verbal 'I am' you could later on say verbally 'I am' in whatever language you were taught. From this tiny, minuscule 'I am' further knowledge grew leaps and bounds to gigantic proportions. So all knowledge stems from the 'I am', it is absolutely fundamental, the base, the origin, the root of everything. You have to hold on to this 'I am' and let everything else go.

5.   You are sure of the 'I am', it's the totality of being, remember 'I am' and it's enough to heal your mind and take you beyond.
You are definitely sure that 'you are', only then everything else is! Not before that. Since the 'I am' lies at the very base of everything and is common to all, does it not form the totality of being? Throwing aside everything, come back to this sense of 'presence' or 'being' in all its purity and it will heal your mind. The use of the word 'heal' is very important as it clearly suggests that the mind or whatever has been loaded on the 'I am' afterwards is a pain, an illness that needs to be cured. There is also here a hint towards something that is beyond the 'I am'.

6. The 'I am' is, it's ever fresh, all else is inference, when the 'I am' goes all that remains is the Absolute.
This sense of 'being' is always there, fresh as ever, it doesn't leave you, it's always available. At whatever stage you are in your life it has stuck to you unchanged. Circumstances, relationships, people, ideas and so forth, everything else has been changing and is inferential but the 'I am' has remained and has stood throughout this turbulence. And what will happen when this 'I am' goes? What will remain? The hint is now more emphatic on something beyond the 'I am', the Absolute.

7. Give all your attention to the 'I am', which is timeless presence, the 'I am' applies to all, come back to it repeatedly.
Use your memory to go back in time to the stage when you just came to know that 'you are' without words. Did you have a sense of time then? Did you know who you are or who your parents are? Did you know where you were geographically located?
You knew none of these, it was a timeless presence, you did of course know space which came with the 'I am', but not time, and this timeless presence applies to all. Come back to this timeless and wordless 'I am' again and again.

8. Hang on to the 'I am' and go beyond it, without the 'I am' you are at peace and happy.
Right now you have this 'I am', hang on to it, it is the only means you have to go beyond, and there is nothing else. And what has this 'I am' given you but conflict and misery? It came, it identified with the body and you became an individual, now go back, come to the 'I am', transcend it and be peaceful and happy.

9. Hold on to the 'I am' to the exclusion of everything else, the 'I am' in movement creates the world, the 'I am' at peace becomes the Absolute.
Leave everything aside and just grab hold of the 'I am'. Just observe its power, its stirrings, and its movements that created the world along with which came all this turmoil and misery. Come back to the 'I am' and let the 'I am' be in the 'I am'. Then it becomes still and disappears, and then there is peace, for there is only the Absolute now.

10. 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!
The feeling 'I am' is dormant at birth, it appears spontaneously say around the age of three. It is the essence of the five elements that make up the body or the food body. The body is a limitation, and as long as the 'I am' identifies itself with the body there is no chance of freedom, and death is certain. Eternity or immortality is possible only when you are free from the 'I am'. For this freedom to accrue you have to be after the 'I am', understand it, abide in it and transcend it. Judging from the enormous amount of spiritual literature available, the understanding, abidance and transcendence of the 'I am' appears to be too simple and crude a 'Sadhana' or practice, yet it works!

11. The 'I am' appears spontaneously on your True state, it is wordless and can be used to go beyond.
This sense of being came onto you without your willing it; it came on its own and when it came there was no question of any words being there. Though wordless, yet if you keenly observe, this feeling 'I am' can be caught hold of and then it can serve as a means for going beyond towards your True state.

12. The 'I am' has brought you in, the 'I am' will take you out, the 'I am' is the door, stay at it! It's open!
The feeling 'I am' very clearly qualifies as the port of entry or doorway through which you came into this world and thus it also qualifies as the way out. And there is no other way out! Stay at it and you shall see that this door is always open, it was never closed. Unless you go back and stay in the 'I am' for a sufficiently long time you won't come to know this fact.

13. You have to be there before you can say 'I am', the 'I am' is the root of all appearance.
There definitely was a substratum on which this knowledge 'I am' arose, it was a wordless feeling. It was only when you learnt a language that you could say 'I am'. Along with the wordless 'I am' also came space and the world, so the 'I am' is at the root of whatever you perceive.

14. The 'I am' is the permanent link in the succession of events called life, be at the link 'I am' only and go beyond it.
Conception, birth and infancy, these are the beginnings of your being where the 'I am' lies dormant. Then there is the spontaneous appearance of the non-verbal feeling 'I am' around say three years of age. On this foundation of the knowledge 'I am' is built a large structure of words, ideas and concepts and very soon it is 'I am so and so' and so forth. The pure 'I am' is contaminated and it piles on right from childhood to old age, but in all the succession of events, the 'I am' lies at the base and has always been there. The 'I am' is an unbroken link throughout your life, so come back to it, abide there and try to transcend it, for there lies your True being.

15. The 'I am' is the sum total of all that you perceive, it's time-bound, the 'I am' itself is an illusion, you are not the 'I am' you are prior to it.
Since the 'I am' is the continuous link throughout all the events in your life it quite obviously forms the sum total of all your perception. It is the very basis of your perception, no 'I am' no perception. This 'I am' is an illusion, for like a dream it has spontaneously appeared on you and one day it will disappear. All that appears and disappears cannot be true and since you are a witness to it you stand apart. You are not the 'I am' but prior to it.

16. 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 duped you into believing that you are the body, and later on that you are so-and-so. It strengthened the illusion all the more as time went by and thus began all the 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.

17. The beginning and the end of knowledge is the 'I am', be attentive to the 'I am', once you understand it, you are apart from it.
Whatever the volume of knowledge maybe it has to begin with the primary knowledge or concept 'I am'. The 'I am' is the one, and then with two, three, four and so forth the structural labyrinth of knowledge builds. You have to go back, retrace the steps in the maze and when you do so correctly you will end up at the 'I am'. Give all your attention to this 'I am', by and by you shall come to understand it and all its implications as well. The clearer your understanding of the 'I am' is, the more distinctly apart from it you are.

18. You must meditate on the 'I am' without holding on to the body-mind, the 'I am' is the first ignorance, persist on it and you will go beyond it.
Bring all your attention to the 'I am', meditate on it; try to do it by keeping the body-mind totally aside. In the beginning the body-mind will resist this abidance in 'I am', but with practice they will automatically not interfere. Remember, this 'I am' has tricked you into believing the unreal so you may call it the first ignorance. You have to be after this 'I am' constantly only then can you go beyond it; otherwise it will continue playing games with you.

19. Your Guru, your God, is the 'I am', with its coming came duality and all activity, stay on the 'I am', you are before the 'I am' appeared.
The entire process of perception and all activity is based on duality: the subject and the object, the observer and the observed, the doer and the done. It is only after the appearance of 'I am' that all duality and activity began, not before that, so at the root lies the 'I am' that triggered everything. Track down the 'I am' and stay on it, only then will you realize that you are before the 'I am' appeared.

20. The 'I am' concept is the last outpost of the illusion, hold on to it, stabilize in the 'I am', then you are no more and individual.
Moving out of a country, at the border, there are checkpoints and then it is 'no-man's land' till another country begins its checkpoints. Similarly, to move out of this country or illusion the 'I am' is the last and only outpost, there is no other way out. Stay at this outpost, stabilize yourself over there in the 'I am', and when you do so you are no more an individual.

21. Without doing anything you have the knowledge 'I am', it has come spontaneously and unwillingly on you, stay there and put an ax to the 'I am'.
See the beauty of it, this knowledge 'I am' has dawned on you without any effort on your part; it has come on its own without you willing it to be so.
This 'I am' will also go on its own without asking or telling you, but before that happens, stabilize in the 'I am' and liquidate it, then there is no death for you.

22. Your only capital is the 'I am', it's the only tool you can use to solve the riddle of life, the 'I am' is in all and movement inherent in it.
You may have earned a lot of money, you may have established an empire but it's all worthless compared to the value of 'I am'. In fact the knowledge 'I am' is the only capital and the only tool you have to crack this puzzle that life presents, at times completely baffling you and making you miserable. The knowledge 'I am' is present in all and movement inherent in it; the type of activity or expression depends on the combination of the five elements and three qualities.

23. Only be the 'I am', just be, the 'I am' has appeared on your homogenous state, the one free of the 'I am' is liberated, you are prior to the 'I am'.
You are absolutely free, homogenous and formless, on this state has the 'I am' appeared and then it tricked you into believing that you are the body-mind. In order to go back to your True state you have to abide in the 'I am', just be, that's all; moreover the 'I am' is closest to your True state so just stay there. Abide in the 'I am' with the understanding that you are not the 'I am' but you are prior to it.

24. Worship the indwelling 'I am' in you, it is the 'I am' that is born, it is the 'I am' that will die, you are not that 'I am'.
This indwelling principle 'I am' that has appeared on your True being is the one that is born and it is the one that will die. You are not the 'I am', but in order to understand this and transcend the 'I am' you have to worship it, stay with it constantly, only then will it be pleased with you and release you from its clutches.

25. Remain focused on the 'I am' till it goes into oblivion, then the eternal is, the Absolute is, Parabrahman is.
Putting aside everything, not allowing anything else to enter your mind, in total earnestness remain with all the strength you have focused on the 'I am'. Persist on this focus or meditation on the 'I am' till you drive it away into oblivion. If your effort is sincere and earnest enough the 'I am' is bound to disappear, for that is its nemesis. Then whatever remains is your True being or Self, call it Eternity, the Absolute or 'Parabrahman'.

26. The knowledge 'I am' is the birth principle, investigate it and you'll finally stabilize in the Absolute Parabrahman.
The knowledge 'I am' is the creator of everything, it likes to assert itself again and again, it is the sheer love of its own existence. It was inherent in your parents and their parents and so on. It was the 'I am' in your parents that was attracted towards itself that led to your procreation and the 'I am' therein. The 'I am' is the birth principle abounding in nature and perpetuating itself all over. Investigate or try to find out how the 'I am' came about on you and it will not only lead you to, but also get you stabilized in the Absolute.

27. All knowledge including the 'I am' is formless, throw out the 'I am' and stay put in quietude.
The root of all knowledge is the 'I am', it's the starting point and it is formless, hence all knowledge is formless. By repeated efforts go back to this knowledge 'I am', catch hold of it and throw it out. The 'I am' is slippery and will evade your efforts, but persist and stabilize in the silence and stillness that prevails on its departure.

28. Prior to birth where was the 'I am'? Don't contaminate the 'I am' with the body idea, I as the Absolute am not the 'I am'.
What were you before you were born? Where was the 'I am'? You were 'Nothing' and there was no 'I am'. On this Nothingness of yours has the 'I am' appeared and it has got contaminated with the body idea. Now, through discrimination you need to undertake a decontamination procedure, free the 'I am' of the body idea, abide in it and transcend it, because you as the Absolute are not the 'I am'.

29. In the absence of 'I am' nothing is required, the 'I am' will go with the body, what remains is the Absolute.
Before the 'I am' appeared did you have any requirements or did you have any demands? None whatsoever, all demands began with the arrival of the 'I am'. What is this 'I am'? It is nothing but the essence of the five elements that make up the body. The 'I am' depends on the body, is as transient as it and will go together with it, so neither of them are true. What remains then? It is only the Absolute.

30. You must not only have the conviction that 'I am' but also that you are free from the 'I am'.
Clearly you can envisage two steps in the process of self-discovery, the first one being the understanding of the knowledge 'I am' and abiding in it. You must develop the strong conviction that 'you are' and stay there. What will happen then? By and by as you abide in the 'I am' the second step will be to realize that you stand apart from the 'I am', you are free from it! You are not the 'I am' but its witness. Thus abidance in the 'I am' and its transcendence is the key to the whole 'Sadhana' (practice).

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