The Natural State — “I Am”

“Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of ‘I am’ is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the ‘I am’, without moving, you enter a state, which cannot be verbalized, but which can be experienced. All you need to do is to try and try again. After all, the sense of ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it—body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions, and so on. All these self-identifications are misleading, because of these you take yourself to be what you are not.”

“The ‘I am’ 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 yourself anything except ‘I am’, and that nothing can be pointed at, can be your self, the need for the ‘I am’ is over—you are no longer intent on verbalizing what you are. All definitions apply to your body only and to its expressions. Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state. We discover the natural state by being earnest, by searching, inquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one’s life to this discovery.”

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1990)