Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj - Awaken to the Eternal

"I am that by which I know 'I am'"

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was born in Mumbai (Bombay) in March, 1897. His parents, who gave him the name Maruti, had a small farm at the village of Kandalgaon in Ratnagiri district in Mahrashtra. His father, Shivrampant, was a poor man who had been a servant in Bombay before turning to farming.
Maruti worked on the farm as a boy. Although he grew up with little or no formal education, he was exposed to religious ideas by his father's friend Visnu Haribhau Gore, a pious Brahman.

When Maruti was 34, a friend of his, Yashwantrao Baagkar, introduced him to his guru, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, the head of the Inchegeri branch of the Navanath Sampradaya. The guru gave a mantra and some instructions to Maruti and died soon after. Sri Nisargadatta later recalled:

My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am'. It may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked!

Within three years, Maruti realized himself and took the new name Nisargadatta. He became a saddhu and walked barefoot to the Himalayas, but eventually returned to Mumbai where he lived for the rest of his life, working as a cigarette vendor and giving religious instruction in his home.

source link : http://www.realization.org/page/topics/nisargadatta.htm

"I am that by which I know 'I am'"
http://www.prahlad.org/gallery/nisargadatta_maharaj.htm

Review of Nisargadatta's book "I Am That"
(From Amazon.Com)

Reviewer: Shachie Aranke from Augusta, Georgia

I want to echo what another reader said: Read with courage. It is one of the Most Amazing books I've ever read. It is unique in its clarity, forthrightness, and transformative power. We are tremendously fortunate that such a being is speaking openly about his state.

I've read literally thousands of pages on books related to consciousness expansion and eastern spirituality. But after reading Nisargadatta's Maharaj, something in me has totally shifted. I can never think about things in the same way. His practice of "I am-ness" is so simple and has deepened the more I practice it. Nisargadatta Maharaj was a totally unique being who speaks directly to the core of our being.

It's amazing that he had barely any formal education (therefore he is not teaching what he has read in books, but from his experience), lived almost unknown, in a tenement in Bombay. As he says he was a simple man who sincerely followed what his guru (From an authentic and revered Indian spiritual lineage) taught him and regained his "natural state" (which is what we are all trying to do). He never established any large ashram or following, as he could have easily done if he was looking for ego gratification. He simply was himself and gave of himself naturally to those around him.

More short reviews : http://www.newvision-psychic.com/bookshelf/iamthatn.html

Wolinsky - Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8176175212783439931#

Nisargadatta Maharaj - Awaken to the Eternal
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AA2091A22CA4F33A

video source link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW1QUhc9rA0