Maharaj was a Bombay shopkeeper about whom, by the mid-1960’s, the word had gotten out - he was, despite his absence of religious affiliation, despite his humble trappings, the real thing.
These dialogues were recorded and, when necessary, translated by one of Maharaj’s British devotees. It is, rather, a collection of dialogues between Maharaj and sundry global visitors (“I am a Swede by birth,” “By profession I am a physician,”). I Am That is, first of all, not really by Nisargadatta Maharaj at all. What could I say? Its language is so peculiar, its value so difficult to explain, its format so artless that I feel oddly protective of it, like an eccentric friend whom you hesitate to bring home for fear that her idiosyncrasies will overshadow her charms. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s I Am That is the most precious book in my collection - and a book that I, who never shut up about books, hardly ever mention. Instead, when it came time to settle down, I would pledge my devotion to an eccentric yellow book that reads in places as if it were written by a random-phrase generator and that looks, production-wise, like the sort of thing that shaven-headed young men would thrust at passersby outside a temple. If reading worked like marriage - one book only, ’til death do us part - I would forgo the titanic pleasures of Tolstoy I’d cast aside the cozy solace of Conan Doyle I would even give up the deep, reliable companionship of Alice Munro.
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