Who Am I?

The highest truth can be found in the teachings of Nisargadatta Maharaj, a barely-educated tobacco-kiosk owner who died in Bombay in 1981. The classic book of his teachings is 'I Am That' transcribed and translated from his native Marathi by Maurice Frydman. There are also fine books on his teaching such as 'Pointers' by Ramesh Balsekar and those of Jean Dunn and Robert Powell . 'The dialogue, one evening, was started by a young Canadian, wearing a lunghi and a thin kurtha. He said that he was twenty-three, but looked barely out of his teens. He wore around his neck an elegant little silver cross on a dainty chain. He said that he had come across the book I Am That in a bookshop in Bombay a couple of days ago. A cursory glance at a few pages impelled in him a desire to meet Maharaj personally. He had already gone through the book reading almost continuously, through the afternoon, evening and night, and had finished both volumes only a few hours ago. Mah...

I see what you too could see, here and now, but for the wrong focus of your attention. You give no attention to your self. Your mind is all with things, people and ideas, never with your self. Bring your self into focus, become aware of your own existence. See how you function, watch the motives and the results of your actions. Study the prison you have built around yourself by inadvertence. By knowing what you are not, you come to know your self. The way back to your self is through refusal and rejection. One thing is certain: the real is not imaginary, it is not a product of the mind. Even the sense ‘I am’ is not continuous, though it is a useful pointer; it shows where to seek, but not what to seek. Just have a good look at it. Once you are convinced that you cannot say truthfully about your self anything except ‘I am’, and that nothing that can be pointed at, can be your self, the need for the ‘I am’ is over -- you are no longer intent on verbalising what you are. All you need is t...

The mind creates the abyss; the heart crosses it The highest truth can be found in the teachings of Nisagardatta Maharaj, a barely-educated tobacco-kiosk owner who died in Bombay in 1981. The classic book of his teachings is 'I Am That' transcribed and translated from his native Marathi by Maurice Frydman, as well as books about his teaching such as 'Pointers' by Ramesh Balsekar . The dialogue, one evening, was started by a young Canadian, wearing a lunghi and a thin kurtha. He said that he was twenty-three, but looked barely out of his teens. He wore around his neck an elegant little silver cross on a dainty chain. He said that he had come across the book I Am That in a bookshop in Bombay a couple of days ago. A cursory glance at a few pages impelled in him a desire to meet Maharaj personally. He had already gone through the book reading almost continuously, through the afternoon, evening and night, and had finished both volumes only a few hours ago. Maharaj: You ...

You are not made up of earth, water, fire, air or space. You are not the body. You are not a particular name or form. You are not a member of a particular family or tribe. You are not connected with any nation or culture. You are not in any way related to the things of this world. You are not perceivable by the gross or the subtle senses. You are the witness of these. You are the immortal self, the universal consciousness. Concepts of right or wrong, vice or virtue, doing or enjoying, pleasure or pain are all of the mind. They are not of you. The root of all misery is duality. There is no other remedy for this disease except the realisation that all objects of experience are unreal and all that there is is the one, pure consciousness. The rising of the wind in the mind produces the multifarious waves of the world. With the calming dawn of knowledge they again vanish without a trace. In me, the boundless ocean, the waves of individual selves with countless names and forms arise, strike ...

When I met my Guru, he told me: "You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense 'I am', find your real Self." I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon! My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am -- unbound. I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my nor...

Questioner: My own feeling is that my spiritual development is not in my hands. Making one's own plans and carrying them out leads nowhere. I just run in circles round myself. When God considers the fruit to be ripe, He will pluck it and eat it. Whichever fruit seems green to Him will remain on the world's tree for another day. Maharaj: You think God knows you? Even the world He does not know. Q: Yours is a different God. Mine is different. Mine is merciful. He suffers along with us. M: You pray to save one, while thousands die. And if all stop dying, there will be no space on earth. Q: I am not afraid of death. My concern is with sorrow and suffering. My God is a simple God and rather helpless. He has no power to compel us to be wise. He can only stand and wait. M: If you and your God are both helpless, does it not imply that the world is accidental? And if it is, the only thing you can do is to go beyond it. Questioner: Without God's power nothing can be done. Even you wo...

Q: Why did this consciousness arise? M: You are both the question and the answer. All your questions come from your identification with the body. How can any question relating to that which was prior to the body and consciousness be answered? There are yogis who have sat in meditation for many, many years seeking answers to this question, but even they haven't understood it. And yet you are complaining. Q: It is a great mystery. M: It's a mystery only to the ignorant. To the one not identified with the body, it is no longer a mystery. Q: Maharaj cannot convey it to us? M: I keep telling you but you don't listen. Q: Does Maharaj see us as individuals? M: There are no individuals; there are only food bodies with the knowledge `I am'. There is no difference between an ant, a human being, and Isvara; they are of the same quality. The body of an ant is small, an elephant's is large. The strength is different, because of size, but the life-force is the same. For knowledge...

Maharaj: For meditation you should sit with identification with the knowledge "I am" only and have confirmed to yourself that you are not the body. You must dwell only in that knowledge "I am"--not merely the words "I am." The design of your body does not signify your identification. And also, the name which is given to you or to the body is not your correct identity. The name which is imposed on you, or the name which you have heard about you- you have accepted that name as yourself. Similarly, since you have seen your body, you think you are the body. So you have to give up both these identities. And the indwelling knowledge that you are, without words, that itself you are. In that identity, you must stabilize yourself. And then, whatever doubts you have, will be cleared by that very knowledge, and everything will be opened up in you... Visitor: My question is, is there a useful way for arriving at moksha and are there particular signs for...

People talk of world peace. But how can you ensure peace in the world? Here is the formula for it. “If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.” It may thus be seen that the first link in the chain leading to world peace is righteousness or dharma. Dharma is only another name for right action. But the prerequisite for right action is right thought. In other words, peace should start with the individual and gradually spread wider and wider right along the line - from the home or family to the village to the nation, etc., till finally, it encompasses the entire world. Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Om Namo Bhagavathe Sri Ramanaya Who Am I? - (Nan Yar?) As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of everyone there is observed supreme love for one's self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one's nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one's self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form "Who am I?", is the principal means. 1 . Who am I ? The gross body which is composed of the seven humours (dhatus), I am not; the five cognitive sense organs, viz. the senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell, which apprehend their respective objects, viz. sound, touch, colour, taste, and odour, I am not; the five cognitive sense-organs, viz. the organs of speech, locomotion, grasping, excretion, and procreation, which have as their respective functions speaking, moving, grasping, excreting, and enjoyi...

Along with Vicharasangraham (Self-Enquiry), Nan Yar (Who am I?) constitutes the first set of instructions in the Master's own words. These two are the only prose-pieces among Bhagavan's Works. They clearly set forth the central teaching that the direct path to liberation is Self-enquiry. The particular mode in which the enquiry is to be made is lucidly set forth in Nan Yar. The mind consists of thoughts. The 'I' thought is the first to arise in the mind. When the enquiry ' Who am I?' is persistently pursued, all other thoughts get destroyed, and finally the 'I' thought itself vanishes leaving the supreme non-dual Self alone. The false identification of the Self with the phenomena of non-self such as the body and mind thus ends, and there is illumination, Sakshatkara. The process of enquiry of course, is not an easy one. As one enquires 'Who am I?', other thoughts will arise; but as these arise, one should not yield to them by following them , on...

It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good that the great change in my life took place. It was quite sudden. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house. I seldom had any sickness, and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it, and I did not try and account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt ' I am going to die' and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends; I felt that I had to solve the problem by myself, there and then. The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: 'Now death has come; what does it mean? What is is that is dying? The body dies.' And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff, as t...

Ramana Maharshi wrote little and usually taught in silence, but once he prepared the following, condensed by Shirish Murthy, who will be known to all those who visited Ramesh Balsekar . In the vast ocean of cause and effect, actions happen and impermanent results follow. If one takes them as ‘my’ actions the idea of having a free will gets stronger. This sense of personal doership gives rise to a feeling of guilt or pride and effectively blocks the spiritual understanding that everything happens according to the will of God. When there is total acceptance that all actions happen purely by the will of God, and if the fruits and the consequences are accepted as His grace, the mind gets purified and attains freedom from expectations. Accepting and understanding that God has created the world for His sport and God is playing the lila through billions of body-mind organisms, is better than chanting the sacred names of the Lord, which in turn is superior to worshipping the image of t...

Wayne Liquorman was both a spiritual seeker and a family man with a successful export business, when he met his first and final guru, Ramesh Balsekar, in September 1987. In April 1989 the process of seeking ended when enlightenment happened through the body-mind mechanism called Wayne. Wayne describes the event as being “of interest only to seekers.” His first book, No Way: A Guide For the Spiritually ‘Advanced’ was published in 1990 under the pen name Ram Tzu because he “didn't want a bunch of miserable seekers cluttering up his living room.” In fact, Wayne did not speak publicly until Ramesh asked him to do so in 1996. This enlightenment event and its aftermath are described in Wayne's second book, Acceptance of What IS, published in 2000. He is also the author of Never Mind... A journey into Non-duality, and the editor of Consciousness Speaks and several other books by Ramesh Balsekar, who refers to Wayne as his “spiritual son.” The teaching, as it happens through Wayne, is ...

The great Advaita Sage Nisargadatta Maharaj was born Maruti Kampli to devout Hindu parents on a small farm south of Mumbai in 1897. He left at 18 and settled in Mumbai. In spite of his poverty and lack of formal education, a forceful personality and desire for independence led him to start a string of eight retail shops that eventually employed 30 people. He also married and fathered four children. He had an interest in spiritual matters that worldly success did not satisfy, and in 1933 he was convinced to meet a friend’s guru - Siddharameshwar Maharaj. He quickly became a disciple and took the name Nisargadatta Maharaj. Shortly after the death of his guru in 1936, Nisargadatta attained realization. “My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures.” He left his family and business, expecting to live a life of renunciation in the Himalayas. H...