11. He Who Beats The Drum.

Nisargadatta Maharaj.

"Use everything as an opportunity to go within!

  Ask Yourself - 'To whom does all this happen!'

  Light your way by burning up obstacles in the 

                    intensity of awareness."

To all appearances Nisargadatta Maharaj looked like a simple bidi (leaf-rolled cigarette) seller, a married man, plying his trade in order to support a wife and children.  His home was in a red light district of Bombay next to a public latrine.

He was a man who assumed no airs, and who bowed to none, but his Guru. A man whose eyes shone with an inner fire.  

One day a young Polish-man who had been living many years in India, Maurice Frydman, was strolling down a back lane in this Bombay district when he noticed this bidi seller in the midst of an animated conversation with several other men.

He had learnt to speak Marathi, the main dialect spoken in Maharastra, a state in the West of India.  So he was able to understand much of what was being spoken and it stopped him in his tracks.

Maurice Frydman had a knack of picking out 'jnanis' (liberated beings) even in the midst of an ordinary throng. While listening to the conversation taking place he was astounded at the wisdom and profound clarity of understanding of this 'simple bidi walla'.

He joined the group and listened carefully.  The following day he returned, and the next and many there after. In time he formed a close bond with Maharaj that lasted right up until his death.  Frydman wrote the spiritual classic, 'I Am That'. This book is essentially an english translation of talks and answers to questions put to Maharaj by the various people who came to visit him.


Nisargadatta Maharaj had been the most ordinary of men, until, one day a friend insisted that he come with him to meet his Guru.  Until that time Maharaj had strongly resisted all efforts of his friends to take him here or there to meet various teachers.  However this day, when his friend would not be put off, he grudgingly agreed to go along.


This teacher, whose name was Siddharameshwar Maharaj, told him quietly, that he was 'not what he thought himself to be'.  He gave him some simple instructions to 'pay attention to the sense "i am". 


 'I just obeyed.  I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures.  Whatever happened, i turned my attention away from it and remained 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!'


Maharaj taught tirelessly, relentlessly and uncompromisingly about the truth of 'I Am'.


"By all means do feel lost!
 As long as you feel competent and confident,
 reality is beyond your reach.
 Unless you accept inner adventure as a way of life,
 discovery will not come to you.
 Be nothing,
 Know nothing,
 Have nothing.
 This is the only life worth living,
 The only happiness worth having."


Nisargadatta Maharaj.