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17 April 1897: Nisargadatta Maharaj, Indian spiritual guru, was born
YB WEB DESK. Dated: 4/17/2021 10:56:26 AM
Nisargadatta Maharaj, an Indian spiritual guru who taught the philosophy of Advaita (Nondualism), was born on 17 April 1897. As a child he was originally called Maruti Shivrampant Kambli. Born in Bombay, he was raised in a village in present-day Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district. He had four sisters and two brothers. His father, who worked in Bombay as a domestic help, died in 1915, after which Maruti went to Bombay. He did odd jobs, including selling beedis and working as a clerk. He married Sumatibai in 1924. A life-changing event occurred in 1933 when he met Siddharameshwar Maharaj, his guru. Almost instantly, there was a connection between the two. Maruti became Siddharameshwar’s beloved disciple, and obeyed his guru in totality. His guru urged him to focus on the sense of the words “I am”. Nisargadatta Maharaj would spend many days in silence and meditation. Much later, he recalled: “My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realised within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am — unbound.” A new awakening After Siddharameshwar’s death in a few years, Nisargadatta became the spiritual leader of the Inchegeri wing of Navnath Sampradaya. He started to visit places across the country in 1937 but came back to his family in Bombay next year. For the rest of his life he would remain in Bombay. From the early 1950s his following started growing. According to Nisargadatta Maharaj, all personalities and memories of oneself are ultimately illusions, and only the Divine Self is real. Therefore, he would tell disciples and visitors, when quizzed about his past, that nothing of the sort had really happened. In 1973 the book I Am That: Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was published in Marathi and English. It is considered to be an important work on his teachings. Throughout his life he remained committed to the teachings of his own guru. As Nisargadatta Maharaj once said: “The guru and shishya [dis are like two kernels in one jack-fruit, one raw, the other ripe.