Nisargadatta Maharaj’s central emphasis on the impersonal “I Am” speaks directly to the modern preoccupation with identity, meaning, and psychological suffering. By pointing to awareness as prior to all personal stories, roles, and labels, his teaching undercuts the sense of lack and anxiety that arise from over-identification with the body–mind and its history. This perspective offers a way of meeting existential anxiety and identity crisis not by constructing a stronger narrative self, but by seeing that the very searcher is a transient appearance in consciousness. In this light, social roles, professional identities, and even cherished self-images are recognized as functional but not ultimate, allowing engagement with life without being imprisoned by it.

His critique of desire and material pursuit challenges the assumption that fulfillment lies in possessions, status, or external achievement. Modern consumer culture depends on a felt incompleteness that must be filled from the outside; Maharaj’s insistence that one’s true nature is already whole undermines this cycle at its root. This does not necessarily demand rejection of work or possessions, but rather a shift in where value and meaning are located: not in accumulation, but in the clarity of being. From such a standpoint, gain and loss, success and failure, are seen as movements within awareness, no longer the ultimate arbiters of worth.

Nisargadatta’s stress on present-moment awareness and self-enquiry resonates with contemporary interest in mindfulness and psychological well-being, yet it also goes beyond them. The invitation is not merely to observe thoughts for the sake of calm, but to recognize that thoughts, emotions, and sensations are objects in awareness, not the subject itself. This witnessing attitude can soften the grip of anxiety, depression, and mental turbulence by revealing them as passing phenomena rather than defining realities. The same orientation exposes the depth of social conditioning, showing how inherited beliefs, cultural norms, and collective narratives shape perception without touching the underlying awareness.

Equally significant is his insistence on direct experience over dogma or institutional authority. Rather than asking for belief, he continually points seekers back to their own immediate sense of being, encouraging an inner authority that questions second-hand conclusions. This aligns with the modern movement away from rigid religious structures toward a more individualized spirituality, while also offering a rigorous standard: only what is directly seen in consciousness is finally reliable. From this vantage point, the apparent separation between individuals begins to loosen, and an intuition of a shared, unitary reality naturally gives rise to compassion and a less divisive view of human society.