Published February 5, 2026 03:01PM
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was “born” in Bombay as Maruti Shivrampani Kampli, in March, 1897. His birthday coincided with the auspicious day of Hanuman Jayanti; hence the name Maruti. Young Maruti’s childhood was spent at Kandalagaon, a village some distance from Bombay, to which his father had moved in “the year of the plague.” I remember Maharaj saying that perhaps his earliest personal recollection is being carried on his father’s shoulders, heading toward a hill just as the sun was peeping over the top.
After their father’s death in 1915, first the eldest son, and then Maruti himself, had to go back to Bombay to earn the family livelihood. Maruti started his career as a clerk with a private firm, but with his independent and adventurous temperament, he soon took to trading on his own. Maruti Kampli started his business venture with one shop making and selling bidis (handmade local cigarettes), and in a comparatively short period became the owner of eight such shops.
In 1924 he married. There were four children—one son and three daughters. His mere material prosperity could not bring Maruti much contentment. A deeply religious atmosphere and ritualistic tradition in the family, and his early association at Kandalgaon with a learned Brahmin named Vishnu Gore in particular, had kindled in him, quite early in life, the inevitable questions regarding 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 thereafter, Maruti received his initiation from his Guru and pursued spiritual activities with his native zeal and determination until they culminated in his 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 about the country. After visiting several holy places and temples in Southern India, when he was on his way to the North to spend the rest of his life in the Himalayas, he happened to meet a fellow disciple. After a discussion with him, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj came to the conclusion that such wanderings were really not necessary and that an active life of dispassionate action was far more meaningful. When he returned to Bombay, he found all his shops but one had been lost, but calmly decided that it sufficed for his worldly needs.
As he would sit at his bidi shop transacting his business quietly and efficiently, some friend would come to see him and the talk would always be on the same subject, Paramartha—the ultimate meaning. Such talks received so much publicity by word of mouth that there would always be a small crowd outside the little shop listening to the pearls of wisdom. So when his son was able to take charge of the shop, Maharaj retired to the loft he had constructed in his residence for his personal use, and which has since quietly assumed the holiness of an Ashram.
Maharaj repeatedly sums up his teaching by asking his listeners to go beyond his words “BACK TO THE SOURCE” and abide there—the Source being REALITY, one’s true state, prior to the arrival of Consciousness, when there were no needs of any kind, the state prior to the illusion of the stream of events (like an illness in a normally healthy body)—conception, birth of the body, a lifetime, and finally the death of the body.
To know with definite conviction, says Maharaj, that you are neither in the body nor in the mind, though aware of both, is already self-knowledge. Liberation is not a matter of acquisition, but a matter of faith and conviction that you have ALWAYS been FREE, and a matter of courage to act on this conviction. There is nothing to change; it is only when the very idea of changing is seen as false that the changeless can come into its own!
Overcoming Fear: An Interview With Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Questioner: I don’t know what I am, I only know I am in pain—that much I know.
Maharaj: These are the opposites of pain and pleasure.
Q: This is slightly different from ordinary pain.
M: Some liking of yours has been contaminated; therefore you experience that feeling.
Q: How did Maharaj know this?
M: That cannot be explained. I cannot say how I woke up or went to sleep.
Q: Can you help me in my pain?
M: Forget body consciousness. You need not be after pleasure. Whatever you call pleasure is not the Ultimate.
Q: I am not after pleasure, or happiness, but this thing which is troubling me should go.
M: It is not there. It is only your imagination, your concept that you have that pain. There is nothing purer than you are. That pain is only your imagination, an illusion, a concept.
Q: How to throw away that concept?
M: What is there to throw away? That you were born—how did you get that concept?
Q: I should ignore it?
M: Only know, only observe, be the witness—nothing else is to be done. Don’t attempt anything. Only know what you are.
Q: So I have no salvation, I must witness all this trouble?
M: Yes. You are to look straight at the face of it, the origin of it, the whole of it, and find out from where it is. Look at that center from where this knowledge has appeared on you. Concentrate on that only. When you reach that core you will find rays of light emanating from it. Whatever you see is only the play of light. Merge into that center, be one with it.
Q: What will happen to the universe all around me that I have rejected?
M: You are the center, and when you turn inside you will find that all the universe you see is only through that.
Q: I see that Maharaj has regulated his own life. Why does he not tell us what we should do from morning to night?
M: Give no attention to what you should do from morning to night. Just pay no attention to this: you are not the body-mind.
Q: Then how is it that Maharaj has regulated his life?
M: I am beyond time and life. The life of the universe depends on me; I don’t depend on the universe.
Q: Maybe so, but what we see is a well-regulated life.
M: I am untouched by the five elements. Apparently it seems that I might be rolling in actions, but there is no action for me. Once you get 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 am a boy.” She told me only once, and I remembered it. You need not repeat, “I am not the body.” Once you understand it, it is finished. You must be firmly convinced.
Q: What should I meditate on?
M: Meditate on the fact that you are, on your beingness.
Q: Why do you call this “I Amness” the food essence?
M: This “I Amness” is only a signboard indicative of the Absolute, but the signboard is not you.
The body is a doll made out of the raw material of this manifest universe. It is continuously changing and evaporating into the manifest universe.
When this gets exhausted, it only transforms itself into space. When this body is completely transformed into space there is no intellect. That intelligence is there only with the body. Out of the space it gets formed again. In the process of that formation there is no intelligence.
Q: Your one and net “I Amness” defines the time.
M (to another): Have you brought any questions?
Q: Last year I came to India to find a Guru who could lead me to Self-Realization. I came with the idea of finding a form who would give me detailed instructions, step by step. When I met Maharaj, instead of finding a Guru with a form, all I walked away with was an empty frame or a mirror. I found I didn’t have any form, anything. Just pure space that changes all the time.
When I think of Maharaj, sometimes I see him as myself, sometimes I see him as nothing. The person that I see in front of me changes all the time. There is nothing I can point at and say, “That is he.” It is frightening, and the fear has been growing.
M: What you have said is quite appropriate, quite correct. Whatever you observe is nothing else but your Self only. Get rid of the body image as yourself. Whatever you have seen is your Self.
Q: 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, the feeling comes that there is nothing there, that what I’m hearing is not what it is, but it’s only after thinking of him that I feel this space.
M: Who realizes that nothing is, that everything is gone? And when everything is gone, what remains?
Q: That’s what is frightening.
M: When everything goes, you are the Real.
Q: As a concept I understand that. For a second I realize, and then I go back to the unreal. I attach myself to 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, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling to them again. That is the meeting point of that immanent principle and the Eternal, the borderland. Why is the intellect puzzled then? That beingness which you are experiencing is melting away. When that concept of “I Am” goes, intellect also goes. So the intellect gets that frightening experience of “I Am going.”
Q: How to overcome the fright?
M: Just watch that moment. One who feels “I am dying”” is not a Jnani. Your true state is beyond the primary concept of “I Am.” Consciousness is the primary concept, but this “I Amness” or consciousness is the product of the food body. You, the Absolute, are not that.
Death comes to the quality of “I Amness,” which is a product of the food. but the Absolute prevails always. This is the Ultimate knowledge. This knowledge was expounded by Lord Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield, the horses poised, on the point of battle. He never advocated to Arjuna that he should shave his head and go into the forest and perform tapas. Nothing of the sort. Once you understand this ultimate knowledge, then do what you like. 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 enthusiasm, full of zest, but understand that your true identity is beyond this quality of “I Amness.”
For a Jnani the moment of so-called death is the most blissful, because he is going to the very source of bliss. Eternity is bliss, the very ocean of nectar, immortal.
This article was excerpted from Seeds of Consciousness: The Wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj by Nisargadatta Maharaj. Reprinted with permission of Grove Press, Inc. Copyright 1982 by Imogene Dunn.