Nisargadatta Maharaj speaks of the self in layered terms, carefully distinguishing what is conventionally taken to be the self from what he calls the real or Absolute Self. At the most immediate level stands the familiar, personal self: the sense of being an individual with a body, mind, history, and roles. This is the “I am this” or “I am that” identity, built from memory, conditioning, and habitual identification with thoughts and emotions. He consistently treats this as a conceptual construction, a temporary formation within consciousness rather than anyone’s true nature. It is a bundle of thoughts and sensations mistakenly taken to be a solid, enduring entity.

Beneath this shifting personal identity lies the more fundamental sense of being, the simple “I Am.” This is not yet “I am this or that,” but the bare awareness of existing, the witness-consciousness that observes body and mind. Nisargadatta points to this pure being-ness as the primary doorway to understanding the self, because it is prior to all particular identifications and experiences. It is the field in which all mental and physical phenomena appear and disappear, and it functions as the knowing principle rather than something that can be known as an object. Stabilizing attention in this unqualified “I Am” is presented as a crucial step in spiritual inquiry.

Yet his teaching does not stop with this witnessing presence. Nisargadatta repeatedly indicates that even the “I Am” is, in the final analysis, limited and must itself be transcended. The true Self, or Absolute, is prior to and subtler than the sense of being; it is beyond all attributes, beyond both being and non-being, and cannot be captured in any conceptual formulation. This Absolute Self is not an individual entity, not born and not subject to death, and is identical with the ultimate reality from which consciousness and existence themselves emerge. It is the ever-present, formless awareness in which the person, the world, and even the feeling of “I Am” arise and subside.

The practical thrust of his teaching is a movement of negation and discernment: recognizing what is not the self in order to cease misidentification. By seeing the personal self as a transient bundle of conditioning, and by resting in the pure sense of being, the seeker is gradually freed from the habitual claim “this is me.” From there, even the subtle identification with the witnessing “I Am” is relinquished, allowing the Absolute Self to stand revealed as that which cannot be objectified or described. Thus, the self, as Nisargadatta presents it, is ultimately the impersonal, changeless reality that is both the source and the silent witness of all experience, yet is never itself touched by what appears within it.