About Nisargadatta Accounts from Students of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Luckily there are many first-hand accounts from students of the great jnani (sage), Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897 – 1981.) However, most of them are spread across the Internet on various sites, and there is no one document I am aware of which collects them all. I thought, in the information saturated and disparate age of the Internet, that it would be a convenient thing to compile them all in one spot for posterity. It is hoped that any original author will appreciate the spirit in which this undertaking has been assembled: it is intended to recognize and appreciate the efforts of various students to set down in words their impressions of a great teacher. I haven’t sought permission or copyright for any of these quoted passages, nor do I stand to make a penny out of it. One thing I am impressed by is the eloquence, wit and love demonstrated by every single passage included. Surely the spirit of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is shining through here. The collection concludes with a reproduction of the only known published book Nisargadatta wrote in his own hand, Self Knowledge and Self Realisation (Atmagnana and Paramatma Yoga), 1963. Matthew Brown Toronto, 2010 Contents 1. Timothy Conway 2. ShriKant Gogate & P. T. Phadol 3. David Godman 4. Cathy Boucher 5. Alexander Smit 6. Milo Clark 7. Dr. Lakshyan Schanzer 8. Swami Shankarananda 9. Jack Kornfield 10. Nisargadatta Maharaj: Self Knowledge and Self Realisation (first on-line printing) Srî Nisargadatta Mahârâj (1897-1981)—Life & Teachings of Bombay's Fiery Sage of Liberating Wisdom © Copyright 1981/2007, by Timothy Conway, Ph.D. (last revision: Dec. 8, 2007) (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, blissfully seated in his family home in Bombay. Photo by Greg Clifford.) Every great once in a while, Absolute Awareness manifests within its fascinating dream- play a powerful dream-figure to talk about the nature of the dream and to indicate the transcendent Absolute. Such a figure was Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a sage of the highest order, a tremendously gifted teacher who spoke directly from Absolute “pure Awareness, unborn Reality,” and thus from real spiritual authority. The Maharaj was quite clear that all personalities, including his own, and all memories of personal history, are an illusion, devoid of any real, lasting substance, for there is only the one transpersonal Divine Self. When asked about his past, the Maharaj declared that there is no such thing as the past—nothing has ever really happened! Bearing this in mind, we shall speak on the conventional level, the level of historical events within the dream of life, to note something of the sage's earth-side history. His biography, which he himself once dismissed as a “dead matter,” is nevertheless quite useful in displaying or modeling for us the shining virtues of total dedication, one- pointedness, faith in and obedience to the Inner Guru and outer Guru, self-sacrifice, simplicity, loving-kindness, and all-embracing compassion. The body of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (née Maruti Sivrampant Kambli) was born on the full-moon day in March, 1897. His deeply religious parents named him Maruti in honor of the festival that day to Hanuman (Maruti), the fabled monkey-king hero of the Ramayana epic poem, the helper of Lord Rama. Though born in Bombay, second eldest of six children, Maruti was raised on a family farm in Kandalgaon, a rural village to the south in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri District. This was because his father Sivrampant, who had been employed by a merchant in Bombay, had moved the family to the countryside in 1896 when a plague-epidemic broke out in that bustling port city. We learn from a biographical booklet that "Maharaj's father Shivrampant Kambli and mother Parvatibai were both ardent devotees.... [They] observed very rigorously the traditional fasts and holy days. They made no distinction as between Siva and Vishnu. His father loved to sing bhajans [devotional songs], especially loudly as do the followers of [the] Varkari system. [The Varkaris are mystics and devotees of India's Maharashtra state, founded by the sage Jnanesvar (1275-96) and invigorated by the last leading historical figure of the movement, poet-saint-sage Tukaram (1607-49).] ... [Sivrampant] had in his possession a number of traditional holy books which he read regularly and devoutly." (S. Gogate & P.T. Phadol, Meet the Sage: Shri Nisargadatta, p. 5) In his youth, Maruti performed all the forms of hard labor required by life on a farm. Though he received little or no formal education, he was exposed to spiritual ideas by quietly listening to and absorbing the conversations between his father Sivramprant and the latter's friend, Visnu Haribhau Gore, a pious brahman. Sivrampant died in 1915, and in 1920, a 23-year-old Maruti came to Bombay (after his older brother) to find work to help support the family back home. At first he landed a job as an office clerk, but then he took the initiative to move out on his own, eventually becoming prosperous in business as the owner of a chain of small retail shops with 30-40 employees, primarily selling bidis, hand-rolled leaf cigarettes. In 1924, Maruti married a young woman named Sumatibai. Their family came to include a son and three daughters. At the behest of a friend, one Yasvantrao Bagkar, in 1933 Maruti visited Sri Siddharamesvar Maharaj (1888-1936), a sage of the Navnath Sampradaya, a line of householder gurus tracing its origins to legendary avataras (Divine incarnations) Gorakhnatha (also sometimes traced further back to Lord Dattatreya). The Navnath lineage taught the sublime philosophy and direct, nondual experience of Absolute Being. On Maruti’s third visit to Sri Siddharamesvar (or Siddharameshwar), he received instruction in meditation and formal initiation into the Navnath line (Inchegeri branch). He was given a mantra, and, upon receiving it, began to recite it diligently. Within minutes, he inwardly experienced a dazzling illumination of varied colors and fell into samadhi, complete absorption into the unitary state of non-dual awareness. Eventually Maruti became Siddharamesvar’s leading disciple. He totally obeyed his guru, doing or giving up whatever Siddharamesvar commanded, since the Guru’s word was law unto him. The transformation in his character was so great that all of Maruti’s employees also became initiates of Siddharamesvar. After a year of association with Siddharamesvar, Maruti was asked to give spiritual discourses on numerous occasions; we learn, for instance, that he gave a series of 12 discourse-commentaries on spiritual books at the hometown of his friend Bagkar in 1935. Maruti began to impress people, not only with his cognitive understanding of spirituality but also his radiant exemplification of Truth. In those days, he gave spontaneous talks to anyone coming to his shop seeking his spiritual wisdom. Some brought their sick relatives to him, hoping for cures. He sent the afflicted to a cafe at the street corner, telling them to drink a glass of water therein— and in doing so, they were often healed. Siddharamesvar learned of this and asked Maruti to stop intending such healings, which are trivial in light of the need for spiritual awakening from the ultimate "dis-ease" of identifying with the body-mind personality. Nevertheless, over the years, many miracles and synchronicities still occurred. Maruti eventually took on the name Nisargadatta, meaning “naturally-given truth” or “one dwelling in the natural state.” As he later told a dear disciple and successor, Jean Dunn: “At one time I was composing poems. Poems used to flow out of me and, in this flow, I just added ‘Nisargadatta.’ I was reveling in composing poems until my Guru cautioned me, ‘You are enjoying composing these poems too much; give them up!’ What was he driving at? His objective was for me to merge in the Absolute state instead of reveling in my beingness.” (Consciousness and the Absolute: The Final Talks of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, pp. 7-8.) Nisargadatta became primarily interested only in practicing the meditation as prescribed by his Guru and singing devotional bhajan songs. In his meditations, Nisargadatta experienced strange and colorful divine lights, various divine forms of God and saints, visions of beautiful landscapes never seen before, and deep trance states of samadhi. These manifestations of initial “imbalance” ceased after a while, giving way to absorptions–later, final absorption—in the utterly natural state of nisarga samadhi, or sahaja samadhi. This “extraordinarily ordinary,” “unconditioned condition” is formless Awareness abiding unto ItSelf while a form-full world of changing appearances arises. It has been likened to “waking sleep” by the illustrious sage, Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879- 1950), wherein one experiences the utter peace and care-free bliss of formless deep sleep while clearly aware of arising forms of experience. This nisarga or sahaja samadhi transcends all dramatic, flashy “experiences”—for such experiences are changing and transient, and rooted in the dualistic, subject-object split. Nisargadatta himself tells of his time with his Guru, and what transpired in the more mature phase of his spiritual practice (sadhana): My association with my Guru was scarcely for two and a half years. He was staying some 200 kilometers [120 miles] away, and he would come here once every four months, for fifteen days. This [realization] is the fruit of that. The words he gave me touched me very deeply. I abided in one thing only: the words of my Guru are the truth, and he said, "You are the Parabrahman [Absolute Reality]." No more doubts and no more questions on that. Once my Guru conveyed to me what he had to say I never bothered about other things— I hung on to the words of the Guru.