Quotes from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“You are what you are, but you know [you can only know–AT] what you are not” (The Wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, ed. Robert Powell, p. 95)

“Before the mind–I am. ‘I am’ is not a thought in the mind; the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. And since time and space are in the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent” (Ibid, p. 70, Powell’s italics).

Exposition

1.) You are. This is the same thing as saying: “You know that you are.” The language, here, looks bewitching, however, since it might seem to imply that knowing that you are and being “I am” are non-identical. In fact, knowing “I am” and being “I am” are utterly non-different. To know one’s conscious presence is to be conscious presence.

2.) Now, you are always what you are (i.e., Brahman), but you do not know yourself as yourself. You only know yourself as “the first pulse” of manifestation–that is, as “I am.”

3.) Hence, consider “this perch” upon which you stand: being “I am” but not knowing what the essence (svarupa) of what you really are.

4.) The negative way, then, proceeds by getting you to “grok” what you aren’t: namely, mind, body, senses, space, time, etc. As Nisargadatta often says, “You are nothing conceivable or perceivable.” You must inquire into what you are not in order to know this for sure.

Study the mind and body closely. See: “the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind.” Likewise, the body is nothing save a mental conception, and, again, the mind appears to me, awareness.

5.) This inquiry in 4 (only hinted at in 4) leads “back” to “I am.” Therefore, Nisargadatta, at this point, says, “Just abide as ‘I am.’”

6.) When there is sufficient concentration on “I am,” sufficient repose in and as “I am,” the latter gets naturally resolved back into the Supreme, or Brahman–that is, the nameless reality that you ultimately are.