Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj - I Am That I Am - Part 1 Transcript

I am That I am: Experience the teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj”
DVD TRANSCRIPT
I AM THAT I AM
EXPERIENCE THE TEACHINGS
OF SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
WITH: STEPHEN WOLINSKY
“THE WORD THAT REFERS TO EVERYTHING IN TOTALITY”

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
I AM THAT I AM
www.NetiNetiFilms.com
DVD 1 Transcript
INDEX
0. Introduction page 3
1. Advaita Vedanta page 4
2. Gnana Yoga page 6
3. The I am page 7
4. Stay in your nothingness page 12
5. Fluids come together and the I am appears page 15
6. It is all an illusion page 17
7. Why is it an illusion? Why can’t I see it? Page 20
8. I am not the doer page 25
9. It’s all a concept, it’s all an illusion page 31
10. The Guru page 34
11. Cause and effect page 38
12. The Void page 41
DVD extras:
A. History
A1. 1970’s page 44
A2. 1981 page 49
B. A talk in Albuquerque, NM page 51
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0. INTRODUCTION
My name is Stephen Wolinsky and I was fortunate enough to meet Nisargadatta
Maharaj in about 1979. I went and spent as much time as I could from about 1979 until
he died. The program that you’re about to see, shows footage of Maharaj and is an
attempt to give a complete and concise format to look at what exactly he said, what
exactly it means and, finally, how to experience that through a series of exercises and
meditations.
(video clip)
Nisargadatta Maharaj was the only guru, the only teacher, the only person I ever
worked with who spoke in sutras. And when he spoke to you, if you were fortunate, what
he said went into you and you caught it almost like a virus. And once that virus took hold
of you then what you found was you could not get it out of your psyche until it was
understood, if you will, until you experientially got it.
The problem was that by getting it, everything that stood in the way of you getting it—
every concept, every idea, every belief, every structure, every psycho—emotional state,
every archetype that you have had that stood in the way between you and getting it had to
be discarded, dismantled, taken apart.
And so we get really to the themes that he spoke in.
And Maharaj spoke in sutras and there were several themes.
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1. ADVAITA-VEDANTA
One substance, not two
Not this, not that
The first theme that you see throughout all the material is Advaita-Vedanta.
I would call it the first theme because it’s the most prevalent in the book, not necessarily
the most instructive, but it was the biggest context.
If you understand Advaita-Vedanta, what it actually is, then you understand the context
of what Nisargadatta was trying to give you.
Advaita can be translated as one substance, not two.
Everything is one substance, not two substances.
Now throughout the world of yoga, there are statements, for example, in the “Yoga
Vasishta”, which is one of the most famous books in India, the most famous statement
out of there is “everything is consciousness, nothing exists outside of consciousness.”
If you went into tantric yoga, they refer to everything as undifferentiated consciousness
or consciousness.
So everything is consciousness, nothing exists outside of consciousness.
In Buddhism, they would say form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
Form is condensed emptiness, emptiness is thinned out form.
But there’s only one substance, not two, and that is the basic theme.
Advaita,-Vedanta.
Vedanta technically means the end of the Vedas.
Vedanta can be summarized under one word—in Sanskrit, neti-neti.
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NETI-NETI
Not this, not that
Neti-neti can be translated as not this, not this, which means there’s one substance,
not two and anything that comes up for you—I’m good, I’m bad, I’m high, I’m low, I’m
right, I’m wrong, I’m a sinner whatever that is, is to be discarded as not this, not this.
And that is the overall context of what Nisargadatta Maharaj was always teaching.
I AM NOT DESCRIBABLY, NOR DEFINABLE

~Nisargadatta Maharaj
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2. GNANA YOGA
The path of unlearning
The second theme, I would call Gnana. Maharaj’s always talking about Gnana, being a
Gnani, about Gnana. Gnan yoga can be translated as the path of knowledge, but actually
it’s the path of unlearning.
The best way I could—I could describe this would be if you ever saw the Star Wars
trilogy. In the seconds part of the Star Wars, trilogy, you have the teacher, Yoda, and
he’s instructing the student, which is Luke Skywalker. And he says “Luke. you must
unlearn that which you have learned.”
So the first theme, Advaita Vedanta, one substance, not two. Everything is
consciousness, nothing exists outside of consciousness. Not this, not this.
Anything that’s there is not this, not that.
The theme, gnan yoga, you must unlearn.
The path of unlearning everything that you’ve been told about yourself is not, is to be
discarded.
What’s pivotal about understanding that is that means everything because Maharaj would
say things like, “what you know about yourself came from outside of you, therefore,
discard it.”
“Anything that you think you are, you’re not.”
So obviously, everything is always not this, not this.
IN ORDER TO LET GO OF SOMETHING, YOU MUST FIRST KNOW WHAT

IT IS.
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3. THE I AM
The next theme would be the I am.
Throughout all of his work, it was always: “hold onto the I am, let go of everything else.”
“Stay in the I am, be in the I am.”
And he always had this thing about the nonverbal I am and the verbal I am.
But the strongest question, the most frequent question that was asked of me for two
decades was, “what is the I am?”
So what I’d like to do is rather than me talk about the I am and talk about it—the I am
again, have an experience, in quotes, of what the I am is and then you can get even a
greater understanding or appreciation of the context of the work.
So what I’d like you to do as a listener to this is just to let your eyes close for a moment.
ENQUIRY
(EYES CLOSED)
Without using your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations or perceptions, are you a
man, a woman or neither?
If you do not use your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations or perceptions, are you
defined, undefined or neither?
Without using your thoughts, your memory, your emotions, your associations, your
perceptions, are you limited, unlimited, or neither?
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If you do not use your thoughts, your memory, your emotions, your associations, your
perceptions, are you in a body, out of a body or neither?
If you do not use your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions, notice the
no-state state of the I am.
No thoughts, memory, emotions, associations or perceptions.
So in a moment, I’m going to ask you to open your eyes, just come back to the room and
keep part of your awareness back there in the no-state state of no thoughts,
memory, emotions, associations, perceptions and when you let your eyes open, a part of
your awareness can be back here in the room.
So you’re splitting your awareness in two directions.
So Maharaj spoke about the I am in terms of the verbal I am, the nonverbal I am.
For example, the verbal I am would be, “I am good”, “I am bad”, “I am smart”, “I am
stupid”—whatever those are.
So he would first say cut that off and just have a—the verbal—just stay in I am.
Let go of bad, good, anything that comes up.
Just hold onto the verbal I am.
Once you’ve gotten that clear, no thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions,
you have what he would call the nonverbal I am.
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No thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions.
Let’s emphasize it again or let’s go over it again.
Let your eyes close for a moment.
ENQUIRY
(EYES CLOSED)
perfect, imperfect or neither?
If you do not use your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions, what does
the word perfect or imperfect even mean?
If you do not use your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions, are you
worthy, unworthy or neither?
worthy or unworthy even mean?
perceptions, are you adequate, inadequate or neither?
the word adequate or inadequate even mean?
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perceptions, are you alone, connected or neither?
perceptions, what does alone or connected even mean?
perceptions, are you complete, incomplete or neither?
perceptions, what does complete or incomplete even mean?
perceptions, are you powerful, powerless or neither?
If you do not use your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations or perceptions, what
does powerful or powerless even mean?
loveable, unlovable or neither?
If you do not use your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations or perceptions, what
does loveable or unlovable or love even mean?
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Again, notice the no-state state of no thoughts, memory, emotions, associations,
perceptions.
Whenever you’re ready, you will be keeping part of your awareness back there in the no-
state state of no thoughts, memory, emotions, associations or perceptions, when you open
your eyes, part of your awareness can be here, back here in the room.
So whenever you’re ready.
So just as a very quick review, if you were—for Maharaj, you were to stay in the no-
state state of no thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions and discard
anything that came up as not this, not that—neti-neti—not this, not that.
STAY IN THE I AM, LET GO OF EVERYTHING ELSE.

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4. STAY IN YOUR NOTHINGNESS
The next theme, which is a very unusual one… people would come to Maharaj and they
would say to him very, very often, “how long is it going to take?”
I mean, after all, I have been here for like three weeks.
I should be like enlightened already.
And Maharaj had two answers.
One was kind of tongue in cheek, which was, “to get established in this condition, it
might take some time. But hang onto your beingness only”, (the I am).
But the other answer he gave to that was, quote, “You will get maturity quickly if you
stay in your nothingness”.
YOU WOULD GET MATURITY QUICKLY IF YOU STAY PUT IN YOUR

NOTHINGNESS.
So I’d like you to do again is to allow your eyes to close…
ENQUIRY
(EYES CLOSED)
Without using your thoughts, your memory, your emotions, your associations, your
perceptions, are you organized, disorganized or neither?
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perceptions, are you isolated, not isolated or neither?
If you do not use your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, your perceptions, what
does isolated or not isolated even mean?
perceptions, do you exist, not exist or neither?
perceptions, what does existence or nonexistence even mean?
Notice the no-state state of nonverbal I am without thoughts, memory, emotions,
associations or perceptions.
Allow your awareness to move outward and backward and just notice the big emptiness.
Notice how the emptiness appears to go on forever.
Notice what occurs if the witness or the awarer of the emptiness and the emptiness were
made of the same substance.
So in a moment, I’ll just ask you to open your eyes, noticing the emptiness, the no-state
state.
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Notice that in the no-state state, there’s no frames of reference, no references to frame.
In fact, if I were to say what’s the closest verbage or way to describe no thoughts,
memory, emotions, associations, no perceptions.
“There’s a no-state state with no frames of reference, no references to frame.”
So as Maharaj said, you will get maturity quickly if you stay in your nothingness.
Discard all you are not and go even deeper.

Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, discard until nothing is
left…Give-up the tendency to define yourself.
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5. FLUIDS COME TOGETHER AND THE I AM APPEARS
The next theme is something that he said to me directly and we’ll take it in two parts.
The theme is “Fluids come together and the I am appears”.
Now when Maharaj said, “Fluids come together and the I am appears,” I didn’t know at
the time—back in about 1979-1980—I didn’t realize that he was giving a sutra, a one-
sentence statement that describe in detail all of neuroscience, brain science, since about
the early 1930’s.
He did that in one sentence.
What does that statement mean?
“Fluids come together and the I Am appears.”
I was so infected with Maharaj’s virus that when he would say to me personally fluids
come together and the I am appears, all of a sudden I would be looking at brain research
and looking at neuroscience and trying to figure out what was—what was he trying to
convey to me?
What I realized was that there are fluids in the brain and those fluids in the brain are
called neurotransmitters.
Those neurotransmitters, when they come together in a chemical reaction in the brain, the
experience, the sense of I or I am arises.
If there are no fluids coming together, then there is no I am and there is no sense of I.
That means that if you have to think that you are, all that whole experience comes about
through a chemical reaction.
It’s just chemicals coming together.
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So all the whole mirage, the whole illusion that I am and I have a mission, I have a
purpose, that I’m this person, that I have all these things going on is all—only taking
place by a chemical reaction.
Without the chemicals, you wouldn’t even be.
You would have no experience of being.
So the whole idea when he used to say “you are not a person”, these fluids come together,
you have this experience of I or I am and all of a sudden, you think you’re a person with
a mission, a path, a past, a present, a future, a future life, a past life.
All of this is stuff that’s coming together only because fluids come together and the I am
appears.
THE I AM IS NOTHINGNESS
FROM NOTHINGNESS THIS “I-AM-NESS” HAS APPEARED.
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6. IT IS ALL AN ILLUSION
The next theme, which is essential and a cousin to this, is something that you hear in
the land of spirituality all the time.
Now when I was with Maharaj, he got very angry with me one day and he began pacing
back and forth and he said to me, “you’ve been around long enough, you should know by
now there is no birth. There is no death. There is no person.
It’s all a concept; it’s all an illusion!”
And he went like this with his hand and it felt like light passed through me.
And he said, “Now you know the nothing, and so now you can leave!”
And when I left, it was like there was absolute nothingness.
There was so much nothingness and so not I that I didn’t even know that I was until after
I came out of it, which was several hours later.
But the thing that was amazing about Maharaj is he would say things like “it’s all like an
illusion”, which you’ve all heard, but what does it mean when you say it’s all an illusion?
The best way I could describe this is… Again… I came back from India and I was
obsessed with this is “all an illusion”.
What does this mean? Why does this mean—we hear it’s all an illusion.
You hear that if—I lived in Santa Cruz, California. So in Santa Cruz, California, if you
go to the herb store, the health food store, everyone’s always saying it’s all an illusion.
But what does it mean?
And if it is all an illusion, why can’t I see it?
I also began to study quantum physics.
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What I realized when I studied quantum physics was that in a standard model that we all
grew up with, there’s a nucleus of an atom and there are electrons that go around.
Now if we took the nucleus of the atom and we expanded it to the size of the sun and the
electron to the size of the Earth, there would be more nothingness, more empty space
between the nucleus and the electron than there actually is between the physical Earth
and the sun and the Earth.
That means that most everything we see is actually empty, but we don’t get to see it.
If I could hand you a quantum lens, what—mostly what you would see would be
emptiness with an occasional particle. That’s it.
Now the Buddhist Heart Sutra said, “form is none other than emptiness, emptiness is
none other than form”, which means that this particle and this emptiness are made of the
same substance.
He didn’t say emptiness is cool, and form sucks because if you went to most Buddhists,
they’re trying to get into emptiness and discard form.
He didn’t say emptiness is terrific and this form sucks. He said they’re both the same.
Basically you have formed emptiness and thinned out emptiness.
So you have everything that is emptiness and form is condensed emptiness.
So the nervous system and the brain, automatically before you get there, omit, omit,
omits, omits, omits all of this emptiness and only selects out a small piece.
So what you see is an abstraction of nothing, of the emptiness.
Now the question is, why or how does that even happen?
The first reason is that the brain and nervous system have two primary functions.
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First function is survival. Fight, flight, freeze. I added a fourth, which is fight, flight,
freeze, pray.
The section—the second thing is the purpose of the nervous system is to organize chaos.
Now if you went and looked in your dictionary under the word chaos, the first definition
is going to say something like completely out of order, out of control, something in that
vein. The second or third definition, depending upon which brand of Webster’s
Dictionary you look in will say something like “the emptiness prior to the creation of the
physical universe.”
So the nervous system organizes the chaos by omitting the emptiness and it does that
automatically before you’re there.
BEYOND THE WITNESS THERE IS AN INFINITE EMPTINESS

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7. WHY IS IT AN ILLUSION?
WHY CAN’T I SEE IT?
Next theme would be why is it an illusion and why can’t I see it?
The body, mind—what Maharaj called the body-mind mechanism, the nervous system,
the brain, receives four billion bytes of information per second and it can only process
two thousand.
That means that what the nervous system actually can see and feel and experience is
point zero, zero, zero, zero five four percent of what’s actually there.
What the nervous system does—the term that’s used technically is abstracts, which
means the nervous system omits, omits, omits, omits, omits, omits, omits all the
emptiness and it selects out point zero, zero, zero, zero five four percent and that’s why
the world looks solid to you.
That’s why you can’t see the emptiness.
Now this process whereby the nervous system omits, omits, omits, omits, omits, omits,
omits all of that emptiness and selects out this small, tiny, tiny little fraction takes place
in time.
That means that the I—what you call I takes place in time.
It does not arise until there’s enough condensation of that emptiness, which means the I
arises after the action event has already occurred.
By the time I perceive it, it’s late.
The nervous system and brain are late.
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That means everything that you see has already occurred, that work is basic neuroscience.
The nervous system is late and everything that has occurred, everything that you perceive
has already occurred.
What does that mean?
And one of the most famous yoga statements is “you are not the doer.”
Why are you not the doer?
You’re not the doer because the time the I arises and can perceive anything, the action
event has already occurred.
There’s two reasons why that it’s all an illusion.
The first thing is that you do not see the emptiness.
What you see is an abstracted representation, a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
fraction of what’s there.
You don’t see the emptiness, you see a solid world.
The solid world is an illusion.
But what’s even more striking is that the perceiver of the illusion, the knower of the
illusion, the awarer of the illusion, the witness of the illusion, is part of the illusion.
The witness, knower, awarer, observer, experiencer of the illusion is part of the illusion.
So it’s not like I’m standing out here going it’s all an illusion.
The knower, awarer, witness or beingness, observer of the illusion is part of the illusion
because the observer, awarer, knower of the illusion is an abstraction of nothing.
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The emptiness omits, omits, omits, omits, omits, omits and out of that comes this thing
that is not there.
An illusion is defined as seeing something which is not there.
Since I’m seeing a chair or a person or a coffee cup or whatever that be, since I’m seeing
that, I don’t see the emptiness.
I’m only seeing point zero, zero, zero, zero five four percent of what’s there.
I’m not seeing what’s there. Therefore, it’s an illusion.
And the I that’s perceiving it is an abstraction it’s formed through the omission of all of
that emptiness.
Therefore, the perceiver of the illusion is part of the illusion.
REALIZATION IS OF THE FACT THAT YOU ARE NOT A PERSON.

So Maharaj looked at me and said, “there is no birth, there is no death, there is no person,
it’s all a concept, it’s all an illusion”, all of these things are part of the illusion including
the knower and awarer of the illusion and, more importantly, spirituality is part of the
illusion.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SPIRITUALITY.

WHATAEVER IS, IS ONLY THIS WORLDLY LIFE IN THE FIVE-
ELEMENTAL PLAY.
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
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So if I gave you a quantum lens and you looked through the quantum lens, it would all be
empty with these little particles and that would basically be it.
But again, Buddha did not say emptiness is great and form sucks. Form is emptiness,
emptiness is form.
There’s only one substance. Advaita.
Advaita means one substance, not two.
Einstein, twenty-five hundred years after the Buddha, made a statement, which was that
everything is emptiness and form, like this chair, my arms, your thoughts, arc—is
condensed emptiness.
So if you took this emptiness and condensed and condensed and condensed and
condensed and condensed, like Campbell’s soup, what you would eventually get is form.
And if you thinned it out, you would get emptiness.
Some people refer to this as formed matter—in the dictionary—or formless matter, but
there’s still only one substance, not two substances.
So the nervous system and the brain automatically, before you get there, omit, omit,
omits, omits, omits all of this emptiness and only selects out a small piece.
So what you see is an abstraction of nothing, of the emptiness.
Now the question is why or how does that even happen?
The first reason is that the brain and nervous system have two primary functions.
First function is survival. Fight, flight, freeze—I added a fourth, which is fight, flight,
freeze, pray. The second thing is the purpose of the nervous system is to organize chaos.
Now if you went and looked in your dictionary the—under the word chaos, the
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first definition is going to say something like completely out of order, out of control,
something in that—in that vein.
The second or third definition, depending upon which brand of Webster’s Dictionary you
look in will say something like the emptiness prior to the creation of the physical
universe. So the nervous system organizes the chaos by omitting the emptiness and it
does that automatically before you’re there.
I AM NOTHING
I AM COMPLETELY VOID.
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8. I AM NOT THE DOER
So the next theme would be I’m not the doer and the question would be why are you not
the doer?
So the I arises after the action event has already occurred, which means not only are you
not the doer of the action, you also—there’s no such thing as choice.
Now why is there no such thing as choice?
There’s no such thing as choice because the I that says I am going to choose this or
choose that or choose that arises after the action has already occurred.
It would be like this.
I am now raising my hand. I am now going to choose to put my hand down.
See, I did it.
I am now going to choose to put my hand up. See, I did it.
This action, an event has already occurred before the I ever got there.
The illusion of doership, authorship, choosership, if you will, all of those are illusions,
part of the nervous system’s power of illusioning.
So even spirituality is part of the illusion.
LATER I UNDERSTOOD THE MEANING OF SPIRITUALITY AND CAME TO

THE CONCLUSION THAT IT IS AS DISCARDABLE AS DISHWATER. I AM
IN NO WAY CONCERNED WITH SPIRITUALITY.
What did Nisargadatta mean when he makes this kind of a statement?
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It’s a very powerful statement and, that is, that everything in the physical universe—I
don’t care whether it’s war, peace, love, hate, forgiveness or—or revenge, every single
action, everything every single experience—all perceivables and conceivables are part of
the illusion.
If you can perceive it or conceive it, it’s a by-product of the nervous system’s abstracting
process.
So the best way to understand Maharaj’s spirituality, which is finding out who you are, is
to go into Buddhism.
The word nirvana—most people have nirvana meaning like “I am going to go into
nirvana”.
Some heaven, some blissful place for all of eternity where everything’s fantastic.
But what does the word nirvana actually mean?
The definition of nirvana is extinction.
NIRVANA MEANS EXTINCTION
In fact, if you looked it up, it would generally say nirvana, literal translation, extinction.
Sometimes it says annihilation.
So Buddha never really spoke much about nirvana because you can’t say anything about
what it is. It’s total extinction.
People think that spirituality is I’m going to get rid of my ego and then “I” will be
something, do something, have something, create something, but the fact is that nirvana
means extinction, means no I. Annihilation. The I is annihilated.
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Of course, the I wants to have the experience of what it’s like to be no I or to have
nirvana.
But the I can’t possibly have that because the I is an abstraction of nothing. It isn’t.
So that is why the Buddha actually said in the diamond sutra, he said, “no being has ever
entered nirvana”.
Of course no being has ever entered nirvana because no being ever could because a being
can’t enter something.
Because there’s no being to enter nirvana means, there’s no “I” which means you
wouldn’t even know it.
The Buddha said brilliantly that “you might not necessarily be even aware of your own
enlightenment.”
Why?
Because there won’t even be an “I” there to realize it.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ENLIGHTENMENT.

THE APPRECIATION OF THIS FACT IS ITSELF ENLIGHTENMENT.
Now when he makes a statement like that, what he means is that the I—there can never
be an I which gets enlightened because the I only occurs through fluids in the brain.
The I is an abstracted representation of nothing.
So how can an illusion become something?
There’s an illusion around the concept of enlightenment, which is that I will become
something.
Be in this permanent, blissful, pleasurable state for all of eternity.
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But the I is a fiction, the I is a fabrication.
It’s only produced by fluids created through the abstraction process.
If there’s no fluids, no abstraction process, no brain, there is no I.
So therefore, the concept or the idea that an I, which is, occurs through fluids can arise
and all of a sudden become or be in a permanent state for all of eternity is an illusion.
SPIRITUALITY IS NOT A CHILD’S PLAY. MY SENTENCES WILL TEAR TO

PIECES…ANYONE WHO LISTENS TO THEM.
The best way to understand enlightenment and spirituality is to divide things up.
Number one, there’s a spiritual lifestyle.
A spiritual lifestyle is being nice and loving and compassionate and forgiving and being
part of a community and meditating and doing all of those things.
Maharaj would’ve defined spirituality as finding out who you are through finding out
who you’re not.
Who you’re not, you’re nothing perceivable or conceivable.
They asked him who are you?
He’d say, “nothing perceivable or conceivable.”
So there’s a spiritual lifestyle and then there’s spirituality as in finding out
who you are.
Now I have spent years in India and I lived in an ashram and I knew the game and I knew
the people and I knew the chanting and the meditation and seva and the karma yoga and
oh, I knew how to do all of that stuff and I knew how to play the game.
The problem was I did not know that the spirituality was a game.
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When I came to Maharaj one day and he looked at me and he said, “do you know who
you are?”
And I said, “well, I feel a lot of love. I feel a lot of bliss. I said I can even see energy
patterns.” And he did not even wait for the translation.
With this look of real disgust on his face, he said, “I’m not interested if you’re satisfied or
you’re pacified with your spiritual life.
Do you know yourself?”
And I said, “no.”
He said, “until you do, you shut your mouth.”
Now I knew the spiritual game. I knew how to get a nice room, I knew how to play the
game, how to make friends, how to look spiritual, act spiritual, behave spiritual and all of
that stuff, but I didn’t know who I was.
So I was caught in the spiritual game rather than spirituality, which was the discovery of
who you were.
And so Maharaj would differentiate that theme very clearly, finding out who you are and
what does all of these things have to do, if anything, with finding out who you are?
Because if I am meditating to learn how to concentrate, if I am more forgiving, if I am
more this or more that, but the question would be, without using your thoughts, memory,
emotions, associations or perceptions, what does forgiveness even mean?
Without using your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions, what does
spirituality mean?
perceptions, what’s enlightenment?
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If you don’t use your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions, what’s
purification?
So if you were to stay in the no-state state of the nonverbal I am and discard everything
else, what you start seeing is mostly they are spiritual concepts.
And it’s very, very difficult and I would say very, very painful when you realize that
you’ve been—organized your entire life around concepts.
MY WORDS, IF ABSORBED, DESTROY ALL OTHER CONCEPTS AND

WORDS.
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9. IT IS ALL A CONCEPT
IT IS ALL AN ILLUSION
Next theme would be concepts.
One of the things when you look at all the material Maharaj’s always saying it’s a
concept, it’s a concept. Discard it, it’s a concept, it’s a concept.
But what does he mean by concept?
Now again, to best appreciate what that is, I’m going to use a term coined by Jacques
Derrida, the founder of post modernism.
Derrida had a word, which was differance—difference with an A.
What it means is that all words refer to other words, refer to other words, refer to other
words, refer to other words.
(let me clarify) So we are clearer.
If I say to you, I feel happy, you would say well, what do you mean by happy?
I would say, what’s that mean?
I would say well, happy is kind of these sensations in my chest, in my heart.
And you would say well, what sensations?
Well sensations are this kind of energy that’s moving through my body and it kind of
accumulates in my heart.
And I’d say well, what’s energy?
Well, energy is kind of this feeling that I have that goes—these things are going through
my body.
What’s a feeling?
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Feelings are—so what you notice is that all words or concepts, to get to the meaning of
that concept, you have to go to another word, which goes to another word, which goes to
another word, which goes to another word, which means that things are always referring
or deferring their meaning to other words.
That means that all of these words are true only in a linguistic system.
Without language, you would have no idea what things mean.
You might have an experience of sensation, but you won’t even know what it meant
without a linguistic map.
Now why is that a concept to be discarded?
If I say the word chair, there’s nothingness with particles, Uh, emptiness is omitted,
omitted, omitted. Gone emptiness, gone emptiness.
Now we have the concept of chair. That is a concept because it is an abstracted
representation of nothing; therefore, it is something to be discarded.
So when Maharaj says discard all concepts, you’re discarding everything that is in
language, which is pretty much everything.
So if I say I love you, “I - love – you” is language.
Language is only formed through the omission of emptiness.
It’s omitted, omitted, omitted, omitted, omitted and now we have words and speech
called language.
Each one of these things are only true on the level of language.
They are not true because language is only a representation of something that’s not there
because it all is an abstraction of nothing.
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So they’re all concepts, be them spiritual concepts, like God or Heaven or the universe or
practical concepts, like computers and chairs and I love you and I hate you and all of
these things are only words which describe experiences which are only formed through
the omission of emptiness and having the substance there.
The abstraction process.
THERE IS NOT BIRTH

THERE IS NO DEATH
THERE IS NO PERSON
IT’S ALL A CONCEPT
IT’S ALL AN ILLUSION
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10. THE GURU
The next theme, which of course, would always come around with Maharaj is the
guru.
Now when I first went to him and I—and he said, “are you willing to stay eight days
and absorb the teachings,”and I said, “whatever Maharaj wants me to do, I’ll do”, I
was into the guru game and I didn’t know of—I didn’t know I was even into the guru
game because I didn’t know it was a game.
Maharaj’s reply to me was. “don’t you understand? I don’t play that game If you
want to play the guru disciple game, go play it somewhere else” .
Now I had played the guru disciple game with Muktananda for many years and it was
really time for me to let go of this.
And so what I started to get clear about being with Maharaj is he had a guru.
His guru gave him the basic teachings, which was you are that, there’s only one
substance, you are the absolute reality, question everything, don’t believe anything.
He gave him those teachings and Maharaj said that he held onto those and I believed
him and what happened was all of this came to pass.
It took for him somewhere around three years.
When you get further into Maharaj and you get clearer about the I am, Maharaj makes
a statement, which is “the guru walks with you to the final goal”.
The guru is your own self.
The guru walks with you to the final goal, something like that, all throughout the
work.
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What you start understanding is that the guru is the I am.
The guru is not something out there; the guru is the I am.
You, without using your thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions are
the guru.
The illusion is that there’s a guru out there rather than understand that the guru is who
you are.
So naturally, since the guru is the I am—without thoughts, memory, emotions,
associations, perceptions—naturally the guru is going to be with you all the time.
Obviously the guru knows what you do because it’s you and that is the key thing.
You—it is you.
Without thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions, you are the guru.
Now unfortunately, the question always arises is what is a guru?
A guru is somebody who knows who they are.
Now because somebody knows who they are does not necessarily mean that they can
teach, that they can even communicate or describe to you.
In other words, because somebody knows who they are does not mean they could
play the piano.
Because somebody knows who they are does not mean they can fix a car.
Because somebody knows who they are doesn’t mean they can, run a four-minute
mile.
So there’s knowing who you are and then there’s the ability to teach.
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Now I’m not saying that Nisargadatta is the only person who knew who they were
and could teach.
What I am saying is he was the only person that I met that those two things came
together in such a clear, powerful way.
And so I think very often people will confuse knowing who you are and the ability to
teach and because those things are so not necessarily connected, what you have is
people who have done spirituality or yoga for years and years and years and suffered.
Now part of this to understand is I was with, uh, many, many gurus and one,
particularly, Baba Prakasananda to who I love tremendously.
He was really sweet and wonderful but he was a very, very poor teacher for me.
For somebody else, he might’ve been the greatest teacher in the world.
You have to be your own barometer.
If you’ve been with somebody—and Maharaj will say this—if you’ve been with
somebody for years and you’re still suffering or if you’ve been with somebody for
years and you feel more and more, in quotes, liberated, then obviously you’ve picked
the right person or you’ve picked the wrong person.
The qualifier for me always is after years, am I clearer? Am I closer?
Do I have a greater understanding of knowing who I am and also understanding who
I’m not?
Rather than blaming yourself, I would suggest noticing is it really right for me?
Is it a hand and glove mix with this particular teacher?
And if it’s not, to leave rather than doing what I did for years, which is hanging out
with someone who knew who they were but couldn’t teach to suit me and then
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thinking somehow I had to take on the act and role or game of that particular spiritual
discourse or context and play that out.
So there are several questions to ask.
One is can they teach, and can they teach me?
So the guru is the I am, without thoughts, memory, emotions, associations,
perceptions.
So you are that guru and whether the, in quotes, person outside of you who’s giving
you those teachings can teach or is the teaching right for you, you have to be your
own barometer.
YOUR OWN SELF IS THE ULTIMATE TEACHER.

THE OUTER TEACHER IS MERELY A MILESTONE.
IT IS YOUR INNER TEACHER THAT WILL WALK WITH YOU TO THE
GOAL, FOR HE IS THE GOAL.
Oftentimes, a question arises about ritualized worship, or puja, since Maharaj certainly
did arati, or chanting, three times a day and the best way I could relate this is I was once
there with him and a man had brought him a present and he put it in front of Maharaj and
five minutes went by, ten minutes went by, fifteen minutes went by. Maharaj never did
anything. All of a sudden, the man said to Maharaj, “I brought you a present.
Why don’t you open it?” And he got very intense and he looked at the man and he said.
“I know why you brought this present. I even know what’s in it. I don’t need anything; I
don’t even need my own self. But I still do arati three times a day to my guru and that’s a
mystery.”
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11. CAUSE & EFFECT
The next theme is cause and effect.
Maharaj—said that no thing has a specific cause and a specific effect.
There’s a famous quote in a book called The Yoga Vasishta and the quote is something
like this: A crow lands on a coconut tree. At about the same time, a coconut falls. The
mind puts it together that the crow caused the coconut to fall.
Since there was only one substance in the universe, there cannot be a separate, localized,
individual thing causing a specific, localized effect.
It would be like if everything in the universe was made of the ocean and water, one
specific particle or one specific droplet in the ocean could not cause something else to
move.
There is an illusion of cause and effect and the illusion of cause and effect is formed by
the abstraction process.
In other words, the nervous system, by abstracting and omitting and omitting and
omitting and omitting all of the emptiness and coming out with a solid thing also draws
conclusions that this caused that.
Now in 1964, John Stewart Bell created what was called Bell’s Theorem.
Noted physicist Henry Stapp would say, quote, the discovery of Bell’s Theorem was the
most profound discovery in all of science, unquote.
Bell’s Theorem basically says there is no local cause and there is no location.
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Location is dependent upon position.
You can’t have location unless you have a specific isolated position in space-time.
There’s no local causes—I mean, there’s no local, separate, individual event here that you
can say causes that particular thing over there.
There is no cause and effect other than there’s an illusion of cause and effect.
This brings to a very, very important light, karma.
Maharaj said, quote, there is no karma.
(video)
[Q:…karma, that’s the reason you come back in the body form
Q:…is it the combination eternal state…that can’t accept karma
A: There is no karma in the state of parabrahman…
…where is the question of karma
Karma is a story used to organize chaos.
Why did something bad happen?
It must have been something here that I did back when, if not in this life, then in some
other life, that caused this particular thing to happen.
But there is none because there’s no local causes, there’s only one substance.
In order for something to happen, the entire universe has to go along with it.
It would be like this in relationship to cause and effect and choosing.
Imagine you had the ocean and a wave in the ocean and in the ocean, there was a particle
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or droplet. It would be like imaging a droplet in the ocean could cause—or the drop—a
droplet in the ocean could create or choose to go someplace else other than where the
entire ocean is going.
If the entire ocean is going towards this particular beach, it’s going there.
The illusion that the droplet of water, or you might have is, that you caused or created
this.
But how could you possibly because the eye arose after the action and event already cu—
occurred, so how could you have caused it?
There’s only the illusion of cause and effect.
There is no cause and effect.
FOR ANYTHING TO HAPPEN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE MUST COINCIDE.

IT IS WRONG TO BELIEVE THAT ANYTHING, IN PARTICULAR CAN
CAUSE AN EVENT.
EVERY CAUSE IS UNIVERSAL.
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12. THE VOID
The next theme Maharaj talked about was the nothingness or the void and he made a
statement which was very curious, which is the nothingness or void, uh, had no interest to
him: “Even the word nothingness and void mean nothing to me.”
When I first heard him say that years later, I was reminded of His Holiness, the Dalai
Lama, when I first met him and what he said was the mind is devoid of mind.
In other words, there always is an I or a witness there, even if there’s an experience of the
void.
With the experience of the void, there’s an I experiencing the void.
Therefore, the I in all experiences, including the experience of the void, including
spirituality, are all I dependent.
If there’s no I, there’s no void, there’s no spirituality.
So you have to understand that all psychology and spirituality is dependent upon the
belief in the existence of a subject I.
But if a subject I is a representation of nothing, a coming together of fluids in the brain
and without the fluids there’s no I, then there is no spirituality separate from the fluids.
Now what that means is there’s some subtle belief that there’s an I—a big I, floating in
the sky up there somewhere or a spirituality that’s beyond what we perceive—we see.
But the fact is that—that spirituality is I dependent.
If there’s no perceiver, there’s no spirituality.
In fact, if there’s no perceiver, there is no world.
And the best single statement I’ve ever heard is from The Yoga Vasishta.
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In Sanskrit, it is “dristi shristi vada” and it translates as “the world is only there as long as
there’s an I there to perceive it.”
As long as there’s abstraction going on and an I there, then there’s going to be a world
perceived.
Once that process ends, there is no I and there is no world.
It happens on a daily level.
Maharaj used to say when you go to sleep at night, the I disappears and you’re not
and the world is not.
So the entire universe and world is dependent upon—and spirituality and psychology is
dependent upon the fluids come together and the I am appears and the abstraction
process.
No fluids, no I am, no abstraction process and you are not.
The I wants to go on forever, that’s why the I has come up with ideas like an afterlife.
Maharaj said, “reincarnation is a concept for the ignorant masses.”
The I does not want to die; the I wants to go on and on and on.
It’s actually—what many people don’t know, although it should be right up front as far as
teaching is what is the difference between Hinduism and Buddhism?
The Buddha was a Hindu.
Hindus believe there’s a separate, individual, independent soul which incarnates from
lifetime to lifetime to lifetime.
What is Buddha’s realization under the Bodhi tree 2500 years ago?
“There is no separate individual, independent self or soul that transmigrates or incarnates
from lifetime to lifetime to lifetime.”
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Maharaj used to say it’s all an illusion and the perceiver of the illusion, obviously, is part
of the illusion.
What I like actually is the word mirage.
Most psychology and spirituality is trying to make a better mirage, make yourself into a
better mirage.
You are a mirage that does not know it’s a mirage and, hence, you’re trying to make
yourself better.
Spirituality and psychology and the world and the perceiver of the world is part of that
mirage.
Maharaj summed it up best when he said “you are the child of a barren woman.”
YOU ARE THE CHILD OF A BARREN WOMAN

And when somebody asked him well, what am I going to do with my life, he said, “now
you’re making plans for the child of a barren woman.” …
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DVD extras:
HISTORY
1970s
In the mid-1970’s, I had opened up a psychotherapy practice in Southern California and I
was invited to participate in a workshop with Ram Das. Actually, in Santa Cruz,
California.
And so I went to a classic seven-day a retreat with Ram Das and, during that time, I only
had really one thing that kept on coming up to me very, very clearly and that was that I
wanted to get Rolfed. And the reason I wanted to get Rolfed was my body had hurt so
much from meditating for so many hours, I needed to get my body worked on. And so I
went back to Los Angeles and I was in a training program and in the training program
with Jack Rosenberg, I asked him for a Rolfer, somebody who I could work with,
someone I could be comfortable with, someone that would really fit for me. And Jack
recommended a man by the name of Chet Wilson. Unknowing to me, Chet Wilson
worked in a Muktananda meditation center in Southern California in Santa Monica. So
when I got to the meditation center, I obviously had a great connection with Chet and I
began to get Rolfed once a week and then over time, I was getting what they would call
Reichian Therapy, very traditional Reichian Therapy once a week. So on Tuesday, I’d
get Rolfed, Thursday, I’d get Reichian work.
One day during a Reichian session, a breathing session, all of a sudden, my breath
stopped and I had this incredible image of Avadhut Nityananda. Avadhut Nityananda
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died in 1961, he’s a very famous saint in India. I had never heard of him, I had no
concept of guru or not guru or teacher or—or that kind of stuff, even though I had
meditated for years. And when I came out of this state, all of a sudden, Avadhut
Nityananda was my guru and I didn’t really know what that meant. My body was
actually permeated with his energy, with his shakti.
Within about six months, I met Swami Muktananda, who was in New York at the time,
and then he had told me why not come to India? So shortly after I got there, someone
had given me a copy of the book I Am That and I read the book and I was completely
blown away. It was like everything that—in that book—every word in that book kind of
mesmerized me, to say the least. And so I lived about three hours from Bombay
where Nisargadatta was.
And in 1977, I just went there in a very flippant manner with—with my wife at the time
and we kind of knocked at the door in the middle of the afternoon and we asked Maharaj
and was told to come back, you know, in the morning or in the evening, which I did not
do. In 1979, two years more had passed, I’m still in India, doing my yoga practice and
I’m up at 3 o’clock in the morning and I’m meditating and doing this typical, very
traditional yoga thing and I decided to go see Nisargadatta. It was 1979 on my birthday.
So when I got there—normally in the past when you saw gurus, there’s like this energy
and that energy is emanating from a point in space-time. What struck was when I got to
Maharaj’s place and he—it’s a little slum outside of Bombay and he lived in an attic. He
had built this attic, maybe about ten by ten and—and you’d climb up a—a ladder, really.
It was almost a level ladder and a—into this, like, attic and I’m walking around. There
were about ten people up there in a room ten by ten and I can’t really find Maharaj
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because I don’t know what even what he looks like. And I’m trying to figure out who is
this guy Nisargadatta Maharaj? And I’m looking at all these big pictures on the wall and
behind is a picture of Ramana Maharishi and I—finally, I get that this is Nisargadatta in
front of me. And there’s an arati going on, a chant going on at the time and I turn
around—and at the time in my life, I was really suffering terribly. I had done this yoga
practice for a year; I’d been applying psychotherapy for years. I had traveled all the way
to India, given up my wife, giving up my entire life and now here I am in India and I’m
suffering terribly and I turn around and I see a picture of Ramana Maharishi.
And from some space really deep down inside me, but not even my voice, this voice kind
of looks at this picture of Ramana Maharishi, and says “will you just please show me
who I am? And I turn around and Maharaj is looking right at me. And we make eye
contact for what seemed like an hour—it was probably a matter of about thirty seconds—
and right after the chanting, you would go up to him and I went up to him and he said to
me “how long have you been in India?” I think I said about two years. And he looked at
me and he said are you willing to stay eight days and absorb the teaching?
Now at the time, the context of guru-disciple and spirituality and all the programming I
had received, although I didn’t know it was programming, was whatever the guru wants
you to do, you do, and if you do what he tells you to do, then you get liberated and
enlightened and all these types of things. I was very programmed, like everybody else,
certainly, in the 70’s. And so Maharaj says “are you willing to just stay eight days and
absorb the teachings?” And I give him the perfect answer of a spiritual seeker, a sadhu at
that time, which is “whatever Maharaj wants me to do, I’ll do.” And he looked at me with
this disgust; he looked at me like—almost with disdain. And he said “don’t you
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understand? I don’t play that game. If you want to play guru-disciple, you play it
someplace else. If you want to stay, stay. If you don’t want to stay, you go.”
Now at the time, I had a little thing in the back of my consciousness somewhere that
knew that spirituality and the game, the behavior that people take on around gurus and—
and yoga and so on, I knew it was a game. I knew it was an act, but everywhere I went,
everybody reinforced the act.
They didn’t break the act, they didn’t end the act.
Maharaj ended it immediately, boom, right for the act.
So the way it was set up there as I went downstairs—and there was like a tea shop
downstairs—and some of his, uh, students came down and they said oh, my—they were
all excited. My God, Maharaj told you to stay eight days and absorb the teachings and so
on and so on and so on.
And so I get back upstairs after the tea and normally he would do, like, a talk for
anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour and then he would take questions and answers,
depending upon—as time went on, as he got older, obviously he spoke less and answered
questions less, too.
Anyway, I walk upstairs and he immediately starts yelling at me and just, get in the
corner over there and you come in here and you’re making all this noise and so on and so
on. But I—it didn’t phase me at that point at all.
He was giving a talk about the beingness. And the being—what is the beingness? And
the beingness comes from food and what is the essence of food?
The essence of food is seminal fluid. And he said—then he asked me who my
successor’s going to be. I’m going to tell you who my successor’s going to be.
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My successor’s going to come from my seminal fluid. And what’s seminal fluid?
Seminal fluid is the essence of food. And what’s the essence of food? At—it—the
essence of food—seminal fluid is food and the food comes from the body and so you’re
all a bunch of semen. What do you have to be proud about?
And then he looks at me and at the time, I had spent several years in India with
Muktananda and, of course, time in the United States with Muktananda, and he looked at
me and he said “great sages like Muktananda, they’re only into accumulating wealth.”
And I kind of—I freaked out.
I felt like my body was on fire because here I was—spent all this time.
I’d given up my wife, my life, everything and all—and I had followed this thing that I
was told to do by Muktananda and all of a sudden—and I always knew that it was a game
and I always knew there was something not right about it.
But being in the context of an ashram in the middle of India, oh, you you constantly are
being, , tranced out.
Everybody is constantly always telling you, you know, do this and be spiritual and you
should only be with the guru, whatever the guru tells you do, you do and so on. And if
anybody speaks bad about the guru, you should stay away from them.
But you—oh, I always knew it was bullshit.
But the problem was that no one was able to—no one was able to get me out of the
bullshit.
When Maharaj said that, I looked at him and I knew one hundred percent sure that I had
met somebody that, number one, would never lie to me and, number one, didn’t care.
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He didn’t care whether I liked him or didn’t like him, whether I came back, whether I
didn’t come back, whether I had money, whether I didn’t have money.
He was just going to be one hundred percent straight and that I could trust him one
hundred percent.
1981
One of the most powerful experiences I had with Maharaj is that… I was living about
three hours away and it was his last birthday celebration.
Now I knew when his birthday was and so I went to his house and arrived there about
eight or eight-thirty in the morning. And when I got there, I tried to open the doors to get
into his house and I couldn’t get in. But inside, I heard about six or eight or ten people
chanting. And—and I was trying to get in and I couldn’t get in and there’s this chanting
going on and, all of a sudden, the doors opened and there is only Indians, only Maharaj’s
family was there and a couple of, Indian devotees.
And it looked as though they were chanting into a closet and I didn’t quite know what
was going on. All of a sudden, the several people parted and I look into this closet but it
wasn’t a closet. It was a shower room, and in India, there’s a little spigot and a bucket
and you shower like this. And one of the Indians came up to me and said “would you
like to pour water?”
Now I knew what that meant because in India, they had a ceremony called Abhishek and
in Abhishek generally, you wash the statue of the saint and then the water, actually, is
considered like Prasad or bless—blessed, if you will.
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And so the—these people part and in this water closet in front of me is Maharaj, sitting
on a stool, just with a loin cloth on and he’s just sitting there like this.
And Indians are washing him.
So they—they offer me the opportunity, so of course, I said yes. So I went towards him
and I took some water from down below and I just kind of ran it very, very gently across
his leg. And all of a sudden, I went into an open-eyed samadhi, I had no idea.
And I just stood there, almost like a statue, frozen.
Maharaj used to communicate many things to me just with a smooth of his hand and I
was not even aware of what was going on. And he went like this—and I instantly knew
what he meant. He kind of broke my field of vision and I kind of came out of that
Samadhi and he wanted me to take the glass and to put the glass up above because if it
had fallen, there’s no—it would—just would’ve shattered all over the place, in the middle
of a little shower room, it would’ve been a big disaster. So I put the glass here and I kind
of floated back and then I just burst into tears.
So Maharaj, even at the time, I didn’t realize what our interactions meant or what impact
it would have in my life. And certainly, the creation of quantum psychology and all the
things that followed after that, I saw, was a derivative of Maharaj’s work and everything
that he taught me and everything that was said in I Am That. He used to say to me,
“what I’m planting in you is seeds and one day those seeds will sprout. And the words of
a realized man can never go to waste. Sometimes it’ll take a long time for them to sprout,
but they have to sprout and they will sprout.”
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I AM THAT I AM
DVD 1 Transcript
DVD extras:
ENQUIRIES
(Audio Only)
All you can teach is understanding. The rest comes on its own. This is almost a mantra
that Maharaj used because there really was no practice. Maharaj kept on giving you
information, if you will, that would dispel or discard or confront you with the information
you already had. For example, if he would say to you, hold onto the I am and let go of
everything else, which is kind of his standard teaching, that means that anything would—
that would come up—it doesn’t matter, I love myself, I hate myself, I’m glad I’m here, I
love God, I hate God, I want to serve, I don’t want to serve—no matter what came up, it
didn’t really matter. That was all to be discarded. It’s all a concept; it’s all an illusion.
So all you can do—all he would do is give you the, in quotes, understanding and the rest
would come on its own as everything fell away as not this, not this.
The following enquires were originally presented at the
6th Annual International Conference on Science and Consciousness
in Albuquerque, NM
Okay. We’re going to take this in chunks and what I want to do is to do it as, uh,
emotional states because emotional states are very charged states for people, particularly
in the world of the New Age spirituality, where anger’s bad and love is good, right?
And fear is bad somehow and forgiveness is somehow spiritual. Okay.
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I AM THAT I AM
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So you have a very much dichotomy, all language is—comes in what’s called binaries,
where the first term is considered higher or closer to God—it’s a great illusion—than the
second term.
So love is better than hate, compassion is better or higher than passion, we’ll say, right.
Courage, probably, is better than fear, okay.
That’s a linguistic process.
One state is considered higher or closer to God or the source than anything else. So we
want to try to deconstruct that using tantric yoga. Okay.
So in this process, you have the nothing and you have it condenses down, abstracts,
abstracts, abstracts and, all of a sudden, I am.
There’s this—a feeling of sensations in the body.
There’s sensations in the body.
Sensations are prior to thought.
Sensations in the body trans—sensation is then condensed further and form a thing called
I am.
Then you learn that certain sensations mean anger.
In other words, if my body gets, I guess, hot or red or whatever, I call that anger.
We’re taught as children anger is bad, another concept, and we’re taught in therapy we
should get rid of our anger or express our anger in some way, in some form of therapy.
Another abstraction, another concept, another idea, okay.
So in tantric yoga, the basic statement is if at the moment of extreme anger or extreme
sadness or extreme fear or you are running for your life, if at that moment, you could
become introverted, you would experience spanda.
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I AM THAT I AM
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Spanda is defined as the divine throb, the divine pulsation, okay.
The text is called The Spanda Karikas.
Spanda means the pulsation or throb, karikas means lesson and so it’s lessons in the
divine pulsation. Okay.
Now the question is for a sexual one, it would look like if at the moment of orgasm, if
you could become introverted—and I’m—I’ll really go over what introverted means—
you would experience spanda.
They left out one little piece here.
If at the moment of orgasm, you could remember to become introverted, then you would
experience spanda. Okay.
So we do this in chunks.
We’re going to start up with anger and we’ll work our way all the way through sexuality
and then we’ll take questions and so on as we go along. Okay.
So what I’d like you to do is to let your eyes close.
(EYES CLOSED)
And what I’d like you to do is to recall a time where you felt angry and focus your
attention on the story as to why you feel what you feel.
And as you focus your attention on the story as to why you feel what you feel, notice
where in your body you feel the anger.
Do you feel the anger in your chest or your throat or your hands?
Just kind of scan your body.
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I AM THAT I AM
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Now what I’m going to ask you to do is to take your attention off of the story as to why
you feel what you feel and focus your attention on the anger itself.
Notice the size and shape of the anger.
Step into the anger and be the anger.
Step out of it and witness it.
Step into it and be it—as much as you can, be it.
Take the label off of the emotion called anger, take the label off it and experience it as
just consciousness or energy in a different shape or form. Don’t try to change it, just let
it do whatever it does.
So let’s do another piece and each time I’ll add like a little piece to it.
So let your eyes close again, and recall a time you felt sad.
Focus your attention on the story as to why you feel sad.
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I AM THAT I AM
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And as you continue to focus on the story as to why you might’ve felt sad, notice where in
your body you feel sad. Do you feel sad in your eyes or throat, chest, wherever it might
be?
Notice the size and shape of the sadness, in other words, where it is and where it isn’t,
and step into it and be the sadness.
Step out of it and un-be it.
Step into it and be it.
Step out of it and just witness it.
Take the label off of the story as to why you felt sad.
End the sadness simultaneously and just experience it as energy or consciousness,
whichever, and allow it to do whatever it does. You just witness it.
So what keeps us locked into an emotional state is the story you have about it.
So you have sensations, which becomes the story and then—so let’s say, for example,
I’m in a relationship and the relationship’s not working and I go over to somebody and I
say—I don’t tell them usually I feel sad.
I might say I feel sad, but mostly I’m focusing on the story as to why I feel what I feel.
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I AM THAT I AM
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I don’t usually turn my attention the other way and focus on the experience itself as
energy or consciousness.
So I focus on the story.
And then I go to Person One and I tell them the story and I go well, wasn’t she an
asshole? And they go yeah, you’re right.
I go to Person Two and they go (inaudible) obviously, she was an asshole. (inaudible)
Person Number Three, I go isn’t she an asshole?
And they go no, I don’t think so and they go oh, well, obviously, you’re not together.
And I go to Person Four because I’m looking for someone to agree that they—my
story—that I—that—that my nervous system has automatically come up with.
We have learned that as an almost automatic response through our neuro pathways that
this’ll bring you to that each time.
So let me do another one.
So he has—if you have a fear—it’s probably in the top ten, okay.
So recall a time where you felt incredibly afraid.
And as you focus on the story as to why you feel afraid, notice where in your body you
feel the fear.
Do you feel it in your chest, your jaw, your stomach, wherever that be.
Once again, notice the size and shape of that experience called—labeled fear.
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I AM THAT I AM
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Take the label off of the story, end the feeling called fear. Take the label off of both of
them simultaneously and have them both as made of energy or consciousness and allow it
to do whatever it is it does.
If any thoughts come into your awareness, take the label off of them and just have them
as made of the same energy or consciousness.
Notice your skin boundaries. Take your—the label off of the skin boundaries and have it
as slow moving energy or consciousness, made of the same consciousness.
Again, if any thoughts or anything comes up, just take the label off, have it as it is, as
energy or consciousness. Different shape, different form. Skin boundaries, slow moving
57
I AM THAT I AM
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Notice even the breathing mechanism, if you take the label off, it’s just energy or
consciousness.
So in a moment, I’m going to ask you to open your eyes, come back to the room.
Keeping part of your awareness in your body impression as energy or consciousness and
when you open your eyes and come back here, part of your awareness will be out here.
So let me do another one.
And I would like you to have a sexual fantasy.
Shouldn’t be too difficult.
And allow that sexual fantasy to really develop.
And notice where in your body you feel sexual.
Do you feel sexual in your mouth? Do you feel sexual in your genitals? Just notice
where in your body you feel sexual.
Noticing the size and shape, step into and be those sexual sensations. Actually feel them
and be them.
Step out of them and witness them.
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I AM THAT I AM
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Take the label off of the story as to why you feel sexual and the sexual sensations, take
the label off of both of them simultaneously, then have them both as made of the same
If any thoughts or fantasies come up, just take the label off them, have them as energy.
Notice your skin boundary.
Take the label off the skin boundary and have it as slow-moving or condensed or
solidified or slow-moving energy or consciousness.
Take the label off of the chair, the floor, the air and all the people around you and
experience them as—and it—as all made of the same consciousness.
The chair, the walls, the people—all the people, everyone, all made of the same
consciousness, same energy.
So we’ll do one last one.
So let your eyes close again, and again, each time, I’m adding one little piece.
59
I AM THAT I AM
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And recall a time you felt incredible joy or happiness.
Notice where in your body you feel the joy.
You feel it in your heart, face, wherever it be.
Notice the size and shape.
Step into it.
Step out of it.
Take the label off of the story as to why you feel what you feel, the joy and the feelings of
joy itself, and have them both made of the same energy or consciousness and allow it to
do whatever it does.
Again, take the label off of your skin boundary and have it as condensed or slow-moving
or compacted energy or consciousness, the same consciousness as the thoughts or the
sensations.
Again, take the label off of the chair, floor, people, the air, all made of the
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I AM THAT I AM
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same energy or consciousness. The air would be thinned out, or less dense energy and
the floor would be more condensed energy.
Allow an image to come to you of someone that you hate or dislike.
Take the label off of them and have them as energy or consciousness.
Allow an image to come up of someone that you love.
Take the label off of it and have it as energy or consciousness.
Again, make sure to take the label off of your skin boundaries, the air, the chair, the
walls, the—everybody in the room.
And now finally, notice the awarer or the witness, the one that’s been taking all the labels
off, and allow that—that’s been all—doing all the delabeling, allow that to be made of
the same consciousness as everything else.
Any thoughts, anything comes through, just take the label off and then have the awarer or
the witness as made of the same consciousness as that which it’s witnessing, just a
different form of it.
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I AM THAT I AM
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So in a moment, I’m going to ask you to open your eyes and when you do, besides having
everything as just consciousness, notice that the one who is seeing, the seer, and what it
sees are both made of the same consciousness, the same energy.
YOU ARE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS.

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I am That I am: Experience the teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj”

EXPERIENCE THE TEACHINGS

OF SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ

WITH: STEPHEN WOLINSKY

“THE WORD THAT REFERS TO EVERYTHING IN TOTALITY”

1. Advaita Vedanta page 4

2. Gnana Yoga page 6

4. Stay in your nothingness page 12

5. Fluids come together and the I am appears page 15

6. It is all an illusion page 17

7. Why is it an illusion? Why can’t I see it? Page 20

8. I am not the doer page 25

9. It’s all a concept, it’s all an illusion page 31

10. The Guru page 34

11. Cause and effect page 38

12. The Void page 41

A1. 1970’s page 44

A2. 1981 page 49

B. A talk in Albuquerque, NM page 51

My name is Stephen Wolinsky and I was fortunate enough to meet Nisargadatta

understood, if you will, until you experientially got it.

be discarded, dismantled, taken apart.

And so we get really to the themes that he spoke in.

And Maharaj spoke in sutras and there were several themes.

the most instructive, but it was the biggest context.

of what Nisargadatta was trying to give you.

Advaita can be translated as one substance, not two.

Everything is one substance, not two substances.

out of there is “everything is consciousness, nothing exists outside of consciousness.”

So everything is consciousness, nothing exists outside of consciousness.

In Buddhism, they would say form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

Form is condensed emptiness, emptiness is thinned out form.

Vedanta technically means the end of the Vedas.

Vedanta can be summarized under one word—in Sanskrit, neti-neti.

I AM NOT DESCRIBABLY, NOR DEFINABLE

it’s the path of unlearning.

unlearn that which you have learned.”

consciousness, nothing exists outside of consciousness. Not this, not this.

Anything that’s there is not this, not that.

The theme, gnan yoga, you must unlearn.

“Anything that you think you are, you’re not.”

So obviously, everything is always not this, not this.

IN ORDER TO LET GO OF SOMETHING, YOU MUST FIRST KNOW WHAT

The next theme would be the I am.

“Stay in the I am, be in the I am.”

decades was, “what is the I am?”

greater understanding or appreciation of the context of the work.

man, a woman or neither?

defined, undefined or neither?

perceptions, are you limited, unlimited, or neither?

perceptions, are you in a body, out of a body or neither?

no-state state of the I am.

No thoughts, memory, emotions, associations or perceptions.

your awareness can be back here in the room.

So you’re splitting your awareness in two directions.

For example, the verbal I am would be, “I am good”, “I am bad”, “I am smart”, “I am

stupid”—whatever those are.

Let go of bad, good, anything that comes up.

Just hold onto the verbal I am.

you have what he would call the nonverbal I am.

No thoughts, memory, emotions, associations, perceptions.

Let’s emphasize it again or let’s go over it again.

Let your eyes close for a moment.