Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) was an Indian spiritual teacher and sage rooted in the Advaita Vedanta, or non-dual, tradition. Born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli, he lived an outwardly ordinary life as a small shopkeeper and cigarette seller in Bombay (now Mumbai), maintaining the responsibilities of a householder while being regarded as a realized master. His simplicity of lifestyle formed a striking contrast to the depth and radicality of his insight, which centered on the realization of the Self as pure, impersonal awareness or consciousness, beyond all identification with body and mind.

His spiritual journey unfolded under the guidance of his guru, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, from whom he received the essential instruction to attend single-pointedly to the sense of “I Am,” the bare feeling of being. Through sustained contemplation of this fundamental sense of existence, he came to be known as a jñāni, one established in knowledge of the Self. Although lacking formal education, he articulated a rigorous and uncompromising vision of non-dual awareness, emphasizing that the individual self is illusory and that one’s true nature is the Absolute, or pure consciousness.

Nisargadatta Maharaj taught in an intimate setting, offering informal yet penetrating dialogues in his modest Bombay apartment, situated above his shop. Seekers, both Indian and Western, were drawn to his direct manner of pointing beyond conceptual understanding to immediate insight into one’s real nature. These conversations, marked by clarity and an insistence on direct realization rather than philosophical speculation, gradually gained recognition as a profound expression of Advaita Vedanta in a modern idiom.

The work known as *I Am That* is a compilation of these dialogues, recorded and later translated into English. It presents his core teaching that the sense of “I Am,” when freed from all personal attributes and stories, reveals the Self as the timeless, formless reality underlying all experience. Over time, this text has come to be regarded as a cornerstone of contemporary non-dual literature, carrying the voice of a shopkeeper-sage whose life and words exemplify the possibility of awakening in the midst of ordinary circumstances.