In Nisargadatta Maharaj’s teaching, the Self is presented as the absolute, non-dual reality that underlies and pervades all experience. It is not an individual soul or a refined version of the personal ego, but the universal ground in which body, mind, and world appear and disappear. This Self is pure awareness or pure consciousness—formless, timeless, and spaceless—remaining unchanged while thoughts, emotions, and perceptions continually arise and subside. As such, it is the silent witness of all mental and physical phenomena, yet it is never affected or modified by what it witnesses. There are not many selves belonging to different persons; there is a single Self expressing through the multiplicity of apparent individuals. The sense of separateness is thus regarded as a superimposition upon this one reality, rather than an ultimate fact.

A key nuance in these dialogues is the distinction between the basic sense of being, the feeling “I am,” and the Self in its absoluteness. The “I am” is described as the first movement of consciousness, the doorway or initial manifestation of being, but the true Self is prior even to this sense of existence. The Self is therefore not an object that can be grasped, thought about, or known in the usual way, because all objects and all knowledge arise within it. It is said to be prior to knowledge itself, including any notion of “self-knowledge,” and to transcend all attributes and conceptual categories. Any description of it is provisional and ultimately negated, since it is neither existent nor non-existent in the ordinary, dualistic sense. What is pointed to is a recognition that what one truly is, is this ever-present aware reality, not the limited body–mind complex.

Realization, as portrayed in the text, is not the attainment of something new but the clear recognition of this always-present Self as one’s true nature. This recognition involves a shift of identity from the personal, conditioned “I” to the impersonal, all-inclusive awareness that is unborn and deathless. When this shift stabilizes, fear and craving lose their foundation, because birth, death, and change are seen to belong only to the body–mind and not to what one essentially is. Daily life and its activities continue, but without the deep-seated belief in being a separate, limited doer. In this way, the Self is both the ultimate metaphysical principle and the most intimate reality, the natural state that remains when false identifications fall away.