I AM THAT
Sun 11:09 am +00:00, 25 Oct 2026
Source: https://roguemale.org/2026/10/23/i-am-that/
As well as being arguably the ultimate of adages, I AM THAT is a collection of discourses by a man who was ostensibly a shopkeeper in Bombay. It is a work that I have read frequently since I first picked up a copy in Connaught Place, Delhi in 2001.
I was recently reminded of its effect on me – which was not so much a revelation at the time, but a reminder of that which I always knew since I became conscious of my sense of self when I was a young boy who would often meditate on the eternal question, Who Am I?
At that time, all those thousands of days ago, I would invariably end up with the same answer: I am me. Which is not quite the same thing but it is close enough to have had the effect of deepening my knowing of the who it is that I AM.
It all sounds rather circular and that is the point – we are forever spiralling in and out of the epochs we inhabit just as a stone dropped in a pond creates ripples across the water’s surface.
In that sense, we are ripples of cognisance washing in and out of a realm that we scarcely understand.
The reminder of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981)’s tome of his discourses came from a recently documented revelatory episode in the life and times of Jason Breshears of ARCHAIX in which he stated that he had realised that the “I Am That” knowing had shifted his perspective of the world to one in which he knows that the world is inside him; that He is the simulation in multiverse populated by other living spirits in avatars; all of which is consistent with the reminders of Sri Nisargadatta, who stated,
“Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear.”
“You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream.”
“You have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and you have imprisoned yourself in it. Break the spell and be free.”
“Without imagination there is no world.” And: “The moment you allow your imagination to spin, it at once spins out a universe.”
All is consciousness, the way in is the way out,
“Take it to be a dream and be done with it.”
There was a humorous bluntness to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s pronouncements:
“My world is real, while yours is made of dreams… The talk is in your world. In mine—there is eternal silence.”
That harsh sense of humour is something that I have always found amusing – just as I did when elders would declare things like,
“Knackered? I am that!”
None of which is to state that the ego is something that can ever be conquered – it is more a case of dropping the false notions of self and stepping into your own reality, a unique journey of imagination in which your eccentricity, or individuality, is to be celebrated. Does that makes sense?
In a world that is increasingly making less sense, it could well be the most sensible thing of all for do the teachings of this former Bombay shopkeeper hit the bullseye?
Is it not the case that “I AM THAT” is the ultimate truth in a world of fictions?
The I is the One and it lies within you for the I can never be at one with a world that is fractured by absurdity – it may well be the case that it is the only truth in the life of the individual.
The World and Mind is unavoidable for we exist in a perceived reality – which, by definition, demonstrates that all is mental.
The world is not an independent, objective reality separate from the I but rather,
“it is a projection or appearance within consciousness—like a dream whose continuity is sustained by memory and imagination. “Once you realise that the world is your own projection, you are free of it.” Desire and fear arise from the sense of separation. When that dissolves, nothing is desired or feared because nothing is other.”
