Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nisargadatta Maharaj was an Indian guru who worked in the Marathi language, born in Mumbai on April 17, 1897, during the period of the British Raj.
He was born under British colonial jurisdiction, a fact reflected in library records that list his citizenship as belonging first to the British Raj and then to the Dominion of India. He was born in Mumbai and died in that same city on September 8, 1981. His life spanned eighty-four years, a period documented by major bibliographic authorities including the Library of Congress, which records his dates as 1897 to 1981.
Nisargadatta Maharaj was a citizen of India and a practitioner of the Marathi language. These two facts together locate him within a specific cultural and national context: an Indian man, working in Marathi, whose life began in the era of British colonial rule and ended in 1981. His presence in international library catalogues — including records held by the Library of Congress, the German National Library, and VIAF — indicates that his work attracted sufficient documentation to enter formal bibliographic systems.
The role that consistently defines him across these records is that of guru. Marathi was the language he used, and the dates 1897 to 1981 mark the boundaries of a life lived in India, beginning in Mumbai and ending there as well. It is his identity as a guru working within the Marathi-language tradition that recurs across the sources that document him.
Quotes by Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nisargadatta Maharaj's insights on:
In nature nothing is at standstill, everything pulsates, appears and disappears. Heart, breath, digestion, sleep and waking – birth and death – everything comes and goes in waves. Rhythm, periodicity, harmonious alternation of extremes is the rule. No use rebelling against the very pattern of life.
Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the NOW.
The real is behind and beyond words, incommunicable, directly experienced, explosive in its effect on the mind. It is easily had when nothing else is wanted.
All that happens is the cause of all that happens. Causes are numberless; the idea of a sole cause is an illusion.
In the great mirror of consciousness, images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material – destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence – vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion, “I am so-and-so,” obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.
Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.
For me the moment of death will be a moment of jubilation, not of fear. I cried when I was born and I shall die laughing.
Consciousness is power. Be aware of what needs be done and it will be done. Only keep alert – and quiet. Once you reach your destination and know your real nature, your existence becomes a blessing to all. You may not know, nor will the world know; yet the help radiates.
