Person
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) was a Mumbai shopkeeper who became a teacher in an Advaita-related lineage of non-dual instruction. In dialogues later published as I Am That, he repeatedly turned students back to the simple sense “I am”—the feeling of being itself, before names, roles, and stories attach to it.
His teaching is conversational and blunt. Objects of desire, spiritual ambitions, even refined concepts are set aside in favor of abiding in being. “I am” here is not a technique for getting what you want, as in some imagination teachings, and not the theological I AM of Exodus, but a pointer toward what remains when identification softens.
Beside Jesus and Neville, Nisargadatta brings the I AM cluster toward freedom and the wider pattern that keeps returning in the question of who you are.
A few words worth clarifying
- Advaita Vedanta
- A school of Hindu philosophy that teaches that the deepest Self and ultimate reality are not fundamentally separate. This view is often called non-duality.
- non-duality
- The idea that the separation we normally experience between “me” and “everything else” is not the deepest level of reality.
- I AM
- A short phrase that appears in very different settings: biblical language, later Christian theology, New Thought teaching, and non-dual inquiry. Similar wording does not guarantee the same meaning.
Featured connections
Why are these connected?
shared concept
Nisargadatta’s sense of “I am”
Nisargadatta Maharaj uses “I am” as a pointer to the bare sense of being—the felt fact of existence before the stories attached to identity.
Related: I AM
Why are these connected?
similar language
Same phrase, different practice
Both turn attention toward the first-person sense of existence.
Both speak in the neighborhood of “I am,” but Neville emphasizes imaginal assumption while Nisargadatta emphasizes abiding in being without becoming the content of desire.
Creative visualization and non-dual inquiry aim at different goals and rest on different metaphysics.
Related: Neville Goddard
Related doors
Sources
I Am That
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (talks; edited translations) · 1973 (English edition commonly cited)
Primary English-language presentation of his dialogues.
Primary source · primary
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman.