The complete 'I am' quotes of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Pradeep Apte

322
The primary occurrence is the reminder ‘I am’ and out of which
springs the language and the talk. So, what is this ‘I amness’?
Remember that it is in the primary reminder ‘I am’ that the whole
cosmos and your body exist. Who and from where is this sense of
being? This has to be thoroughly investigated. When this is done,
while abiding necessarily in the knowledge ‘I am’ – the sense of
beingness – an amazing revelation will be made, namely that from
your own seed-beingness the whole manifest universe is projected
including your body. This supreme and powerful principle, though
being itself without form and name, upon sensing ‘I am’ instantly
embraces the body and mistakenly accepts this as its own. It clings
to the body-identity so quickly that the fact of its own independent
existence is easily missed.
323
You are quite knowledgeable; now understand this; if you think
you are dying, it shows that you still identify with your body and
that your knowledge ‘I am’ has not merged in itself, which also
indicates that you have not attained ‘jnana-yoga’. Your spiritual
knowledge therefore smacks of impurity. While you are actually
the manifest knowledge ‘I am’, you cling to a body as yourself;
this is the impurity.’
324
Suppose a question is asked of you, what were you a hundred years
back? You would reply ‘I was not’. That means, I was not like
‘this’, that is not like this present ‘I am’. Who (and how) could (he)
say ‘I was not like this’? The one who says this, was he not there?
The one who was prior to a hundred years was not like this present
‘I am’, but he was and is now.