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That there should be yet another addition
of I AM THAT is not surprising, for the sublimity of the words spoken by Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, their directness and the lucidity with which they refer
to the Highest have already made this book a literature of paramount
importance. In fact, many regard it as the only book of spiritual teaching
really worth studying.
There are various religions and systems
of philosophy which claim to endow human life with meaning. But they suffer
from certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding words their
traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical. Believers,
however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability of these
words, sooner or later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems,
in the same way as scientific theories are abandoned, when they are called in
question by too much contradictory empirical data.
When a system of spiritual interpretation
turns out to be unconvincing and not capable of being rationally justified,
many people allow themselves to be converted to some other system. After a
while, however, they find limitations and contradictions in the other system
also. In this unrewarding pursuit of acceptance and rejection what remains for
them is only scepticism and agnosticism, leading to a fatuous way of living, engrossed
in mere gross utilities of life, just consuming material goods. Sometimes,
however, though rarely, scepticism gives rise to an intuition of a basic
reality, more fundamental than that of words, religions or philosophic systems.
Strangely, it is a positive aspect of scepticism. It was in such a state of
scepticism, but also having an intuition of the basic reality, that I happened
to read Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s I AM THAT. I was at once struck by the
finality and unassailable certitude of his words. Limited by their very nature
though words are, I found the utterances of Maharaj transparent, polished
windows, as it were.
No book of spiritual teachings, however,
can replace the presence of the teacher himself. Only the words spoken directly
to you by the Guru shed their opacity completely. In a Guru’s presence the last
boundaries drawn by the mind vanish. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is indeed such a
Guru. He is not a preacher, but he provides precisely those indications which
the seeker needs. The reality which emanates from him is inalienable and
Absolute. It is authentic. Having experienced the verity of his words in the
pages of I AM THAT, and being inspired by it, many from the West have found
their way to Maharaj to seek enlightenment.
Maharaj’s interpretation of truth is not
different from that of Jnana Yoga/Advaita Vedanta. But, he has a way of
his own. The multifarious forms around us, says he, are constituted of the five
elements. They are transient, and in a state of perpetual flux. Also they are
governed by the law of causation. All this applies to the body and the mind
also, both of which are transient and subject to birth and death. We know that
only by means of the bodily senses and the mind can the world be known. As in
the Kantian view, it is a correlate of the human knowing subject, and,
therefore, has the fundamental structure of our way of knowing. This means that
time, space and causality are not ‘objective’, or extraneous entities, but
mental categories in which everything is moulded. The existence and form of all
things depend upon the mind. Cognition is a mental product. And the world as
seen from the mind is a subjective and private world, which changes
continuously in accordance with the restlessness of the mind itself.
In opposition to the restless mind, with
its limited categories -- intentionality, subjectivity, duality etc. -- stands
supreme the limitless sense of ‘I am’. The only thing I can be sure about is
that ‘I am’; not as a thinking ‘I am’ in the Cartesian sense, but without any
predicates. Again and again Maharaj draws our attention to this basic fact in
order to make us realise our ‘I am-ness’ and thus get rid of all self-made
prisons. He says: The only true statement is ‘I am’. All else is mere
inference. By no effort can you change the ‘I am’ into ‘I am-not’.
Behold, the real experiencer is not the
mind, but myself, the light in which everything appears. Self is the common
factor at the root of all experience, the awareness in which everything
happens. The entire field of consciousness is only as a film, or a speck, in ‘I
am’. This ‘I am-ness’ is, being conscious of consciousness, being aware of
itself. And it is indescribable, because it has no attributes. It is only being
my self, and being my self is all that there is. Everything that exists, exists
as my self. There is nothing which is different from me. There is no duality
and, therefore, no pain. There are no problems. It is the sphere of love, in
which everything is perfect. What happens, happens spontaneously, without
intentions -- like digestion, or the growth of the hair. Realise this, and be
free from the limitations of the mind.
Behold, the deep sleep in which there is
no notion of being this or that. Yet ‘I am’ remains. And behold the eternal now.
Memory seems to being things to the present out of the past, but all that
happens does happen in the present only. It is only in the timeless now
that phenomena manifest themselves. Thus, time and causality do not apply in
reality. I am prior to the world, body and mind. I am the sphere
in which they appear and disappear. I am the source of them all, the
universal power by which the world with its bewildering diversity becomes
manifest.
In spite of its primevality, however, the
sense of ‘I am’ is not the Highest. It is not the Absolute. The sense, or taste
of ‘I am-ness’ is not absolutely beyond time. Being the essence of the five
elements, it, in a way, depends upon the world. It arises from the body, which,
in its turn, is built by food, consisting of the elements. It disappears when
the body dies, like the spark extinguishes when the incense stick burns out.
When pure awareness is attained, no need exists any more, not even for ‘I am’,
which is but a useful pointer, a direction-indicator towards the Absolute. The
awareness ‘I am’ then easily ceases. What prevails is that which cannot be
described, that which is beyond words. It is this ‘state’ which is most real, a
state of pure potentiality, which is prior to everything. The ‘I am’ and the
universe are mere reflections of it. It is this reality which a jnani
has realised.
The best that you can do is listen
attentively to the jnani -- of whom Sri Nisargadatta is a living example
-- and to trust and believe him. By such listening you will realise that his
reality is your reality. He helps you in seeing the nature of the world and of
the ‘I am’. He urges you to study the workings of the body and the mind with
solemn and intense concentration, to recognise that you are neither of them and
to cast them off. He suggests that you return again and again to ‘I am’ until
it is your only abode, outside of which nothing exists; until the ego as a
limitation of ‘I am’, has disappeared. It is then that the highest realisation
will just happen effortlessly.
Mark the words of the jnani, which
cut across all concepts and dogmas. Maharaj says: “until once becomes
self-realised, attains to knowledge of the self, transcends the self, until
then, all these cock-and-bull stories are provided, all these concepts.�? Yes,
they are concepts, even ‘I am’ is, but surely there are no concepts more
precious. It is for the seeker to regard them with the utmost seriousness,
because they indicate the Highest Reality. No better concepts are available to
shed all concepts.
I am thankful to Sudhakar S. Dikshit, the
editor, for inviting me to write the Foreword to this new edition of I AM THAT
and thus giving me an opportunity to pay my homage to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,
who has expounded highest knowledge in the simplest, clearest and the most
convincing words.
Douwe Tiemersma
Philosophical Faculty
Erasmus Universiteit
Rotterdam, Holland
June, 1981
