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

325
Do nothing, absolutely nothing! Just be, be the knowledge ‘I am’
only and abide there. To imbibe this, meditate on beingness only.
Catch hold of the knowledge ‘I am’ in meditation. In this process,
the realization occurs that ‘I’ the Absolute am not the ‘guna’ ‘I
am’; therefore in meditation nothing is to be retained in memory.
Nevertheless something will appear on the memory screen, but be
unconcerned, just be, do nothing. Refrain from grasping anything
in meditation; the moment you do, otherness begins, and so does
duality. Nothing is to be done. Then all your riddles will be solved
and dissolved. ‘Moolmaya’ – that is, the primary illusion – will
release her stranglehold on you and will get lost.
326
At first ‘no one’ is. Instantly, one is, and then two. The subject of
the talk is: How did these two reduce to one, and finally to
nothing? Out of nothingness spontaneously the sense of beingness
is felt - this is one. Later, when the sense of beingness knows ‘I
am’ duality begins. Then after the duality has arisen, the sense of
being identifies with the form, and so on. Actually to refer to the
sense of being as ‘one’, is not quite correct. Since in this state only
the sense of being prevails, where is the need to say even ‘one’?
With the appearance of otherness (duality), both no.1 and no.2
appear simultaneously. To say ‘something is’, ‘I’ must be there
first. If ‘I’ am not, I cannot say ‘something is’. So the fundamental
principle of spirituality is that ‘I must be there, before anything
else can be. This ‘I’ is the beingness which if first.
327
When you sit in deep meditation, your sense of being is totally
infused with the knowledge ‘I am’ only. In such a state it will be
revealed to you intuitively as to how and why your sense of ‘I