Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was ‘born’ in Bombay in March 1897 as Maruti Shivrampani Kampli. His birthday coincided with the auspicious day of Hanuman Jayanti; hence the name Maruti. The young Maruti’s childhood was spent in Kandalagaon, a village some distance from Bombay, where his father had moved in ‘the year of the plague’. I remember Maharaj saying that perhaps his earliest personal memory is being carried on his father’s shoulders, as he was making his way up a hill just as the sun was shining over the top.
After their father’s death in 1915, first the eldest son, and then Maruti himself, had to return to Bombay to provide for the family. Maruti started his career as a clerk in a private company, but with his independent and adventurous temperament, he soon started trading on his own. Maruti Kampli started its business with one shop making and selling bidis (handmade local cigarettes) and in a relatively short time became the owner of eight such shops.
In 1924 he married. There were four children: a son and three daughters. His mere material prosperity could not give Maruti much satisfaction. A deeply religious atmosphere and ritual tradition in the family, and his early association in Kandalgaon with a learned Brahmin named Vishnu Gore in particular, had raised in his mind early in life the inevitable questions about the relationship between man, the world outside and God. It was to a friend of his, one Yeshwantrao Bagkar, that Maruti owed his introduction to Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj of the Navanath Sampradaya. Soon after, Maruti received his initiation from his guru and pursued spiritual activities with his innate zeal and determination until they culminated in attaining realization. This happened between 1933 and 1936.
In 1937, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj suddenly decided to abandon his family and his prosperous business and wander around the country. After visiting several holy places and temples in southern India, on his way north to spend the rest of his life in the Himalayas, he happened to meet a fellow disciple. After a conversation with him, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj came to the conclusion that such wanderings were not actually necessary and that an active life of emotionless action was much more meaningful. When he returned to Bombay, he found all his shops, but one had been lost, but calmly decided that this was sufficient for his worldly needs.
As he quietly and efficiently went about his business in his bidi shop, a friend came to him and the conversation was always on the same topic: Paramartha – the ultimate meaning. Such conversations were so widely publicized by word of mouth that there was always a small crowd outside the shop listening to the pearls of wisdom. So when his son was able to take over the running of the shop, Maharaj retreated to the attic he had built in his home for his personal use, and which has since quietly assumed the sanctity of an Ashram.
Maharaj repeatedly summarizes his teachings by asking his listeners to go beyond his words “BACK TO THE SOURCE” and remain there – the Source is REALITY, one’s true state, before the advent of Consciousness, when there was no need whatsoever, the state prior to the illusion of the flow of events (like a disease in a normal healthy body) – the conception, the birth of the body, a whole life and finally the death of the body.
To know with clear conviction, says Maharaj, that you are neither physical nor mental, although you are aware of both, is already self-knowledge. Liberation is not a matter of acquisition, but a matter of faith and belief that you have ALWAYS been FREE, and a matter of courage to act on this belief. There is nothing to change; only when the idea of change is seen as false can the unchangeable come into its own!
Overcoming Fear: An Interview with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Questioner: I don’t know what I am, I only know that I am in pain; I know that much.
Maharaj: These are the opposites of pain and pleasure.
Q: This is slightly different from regular pain.
M: Some of your sympathies are tainted; that’s why you experience that feeling.
Question: How did Maharaj know this?
M: That cannot be explained. I can’t tell you how I woke up or went to sleep.
Q: Can you help me with my pain?
M: Forget body consciousness. You don’t have to be looking for fun. Whatever you call pleasure is not the Ultimate.
Question: I am not looking for pleasure or happiness, but what worries me must go.
M: There isn’t. It is only your imagination, your concept that you have that pain. There is nothing purer than you. That pain is just your imagination, an illusion, a concept.
Q: How can you throw away that concept?
M: What is there to throw away? That you were born – how did you come up with that concept?
Question: Should I ignore it?
M: Just know, just observe, be the witness – nothing else can be done. Don’t try anything. Just know what you are.
Question: So I have no salvation, I have to witness all these problems?
M: Yes. You have to look straight at it, at its origin, at the whole of it, and find out where it comes from. Look at that center from which this knowledge has appeared upon you. Just concentrate on that. When you reach that core, you will see rays of light coming out of it. Whatever you see is just the play of light. Absorb yourself in that center, be one with it.
Question: What will happen to the universe around me that I have rejected?
M: You are the center, and if you turn within, you will find that the entire universe you see is created through that alone.
Question: I see that Maharaj has arranged his own life. Why doesn’t he tell us what to do from morning to evening?
M: Don’t pay attention to what you have to do from morning to evening. Just don’t pay attention to this: you are not the body-mind.
Question: How come Maharaj arranged his life?
M: I am beyond time and life. The life of the universe depends on me; I am not dependent on the universe.
Q: Maybe so, but what we see is a well-regulated life.
M: I am unaffected by the five elements. Apparently it looks like I’m taking actions, but there’s no action for me. Once you catch a glimpse of your true state, you must stabilize there for eternity.
My mother told me that I am a boy; she never asked me to memorize it, to repeat, “I’m a boy.” She only told me once, and I remembered it. You don’t have to repeat, ‘I am not the body.’ Once you understand it, it’s done. You must be convinced of it.
Question: What should I meditate on?
M: Meditate on the fact that you are, on your being.
Question: Why do you call this “I Amness” the food essence?
M: This “I Amness” is just a sign indicative of the Absolute, but the sign is not you.
The body is a puppet made from the raw material of this manifest universe. It is constantly changing and evaporating into the manifested universe.
When this becomes exhausted, it merely transforms itself into space. When this body is completely transformed in space, there is no more intellect. That intelligence only exists in the body. From space it is re-formed. In the process of that formation there is no intelligence.
Question: Your one and only “I Amness” defines time.
M (to another): Do you have any questions?
Question: Last year I came to India to find a guru who could guide me to self-realization. I came up with the idea of finding a form that would give me detailed instructions step by step. When I met Maharaj, instead of finding a guru with a form, I just walked away with an empty frame or mirror. I discovered that I had no form whatsoever. Just pure space that is constantly changing.
When I think of Maharaj, sometimes I see him as myself, sometimes I see him as nothing. The person I see before me is constantly changing. There’s nothing I can point to and say, “That’s him.” It’s scary and the fear has increased.
M: What you said is very appropriate, completely correct. Whatever you perceive is nothing but your Self. Get rid of body image as yourself. Whatever you have seen is your Self.
Question: Often the concepts, the ideas that are in the books, or that are discussed here, come to my mind, or his image comes to my mind. Immediately after, not before, comes the feeling that there is nothing, that what I hear is not what it is, but only after I think of him do I feel this space.
M: Who realizes that nothing is, that everything is gone? And when everything is gone, what is left?
Q: That’s the scary thing.
M: If all goes well, you’re the Real One.
Q: As a concept, I understand that. For a moment I realize it, and then I go back to the unreal. I bond with my family, my wife, my children. It’s a habit.
M: You are so used to the support of concepts that when your concepts leave you, even if it is your true state, you become afraid and try to cling to them again. That is the meeting point of that immanent principle and the Eternal, the borderland. Why then is the intellect confused? That being that you experience melts away. When that concept of ‘I Am’ disappears, so does the intellect. So the intellect gets that frightening experience of ‘I’m going’.
Question: How can I overcome the fear?
M: Just look at that moment. One who feels ‘I am dying’ is not Jnani. Your true state is beyond the primary concept of ‘I Am’. Consciousness is the primary concept, but this ‘I-am-being’ or consciousness is the product of the food body. You, the Absolute, are not.
Death comes through the quality of ‘I Amness’, which is a product of the food. but the Absolute always prevails. This is the ultimate knowledge. This knowledge was expounded by Lord Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield, with the horses in balance, at the point of battle. He never advised Arjuna to shave his head and go into the forest and make tapas. Nothing of the sort. Once you understand this ultimate knowledge, do whatever you want. Lord Krishna said: “With true dynamism you fight this battle”; and I say, once you understand this, you carry out your worldly life with full zeal and enthusiasm, but understand that your true identity is beyond this quality of ‘I Am’.
For a Jnani, the moment of so-called death is the most blissful, because he goes to the source of bliss. Eternity is bliss, the ocean of nectar, immortal.
This article is taken from Seeds of Consciousness: The Wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj of Nisargadatta Maharaj. Reprinted with permission from Grove Press, Inc. Copyright 1982 by Imogene Dunn.
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