For a complete online transcription of "I Am That" Click Here

An Ongoing Course in
Meditation
and the Teachings of
Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Wednesday Evenings
6:30pm
$20 per class

For further information, call Katy Guard at 619 677-2747

According to Gnana Yoga, the world we see in our waking state is NOT REAL. (it is imagined or made up by the MIND. The Gnani, the Realized one, knows that, has experienced that, and with full authority says: "the world is of your creation." ..continued

INTRODUCTION TO THE TEACHINGS
by Katy Guard

Let’s begin at the “Beginning.” Where do most life stories begin? Where is the start? Of course at the “Birth,” so we tell the Maharaj, the subject of our story. “Maharaj, we intend writing about you. Tell us, when and where were you born?”

“I was never born and I must also tell you that I will never die.” What an answer! Could the man be a little crazy, a bit inebriated?

“Maharaj, I see you are eating something at this time. Tell me, what are you eating?” His answer: “I am not eating, nor am I drinking, nor smoking. Eating, drinking, smoking are all just happening. These actions have nothing to do with me. I am not concerned about them.”

Such answers you would readily accept from the man just released from a lunatic asylum. But here is a sage -- a modern-day sage, perhaps the sagest of the sages -- whose words enrapture you. . .words that for us lucky ones drop from his lips like pearl after pearl, needing to be engraved in the world’s spiritual dictionary. The best part:: you do not have to be an intellectual to get, to understand his words. You do not need a doctorate in theosophy, or even philosophy. You do not even need to have gone to college or even to school!

Maharaj’s schooling stopped at a very young age. His father died in his forties and Maharaj and his older brother left the little village of their birth in search of work – menial work – in the alleys of the great mega metropolis of Bombay. After working as a junior clerk and collecting some money, he opened a tiny smoke shop, lived a common man’s life, married and had four children.

It is easy to delve into the “spiritual” in India. The country throbs with spirituality. Every other day is a festival day, reminding the Jain, the Sikh, the Moslem, the Parsi and thousands of other religious followers to “wake up! It’s your day, Celebrate! Join the throng!” People, including grownups and almost naked kids, jump and dance to the drums and pipes that lead one and all, including the skinny dogs howling, their morning siesta disturbed. Year in, year out, day in day out, some tens of thousands are rejoicing in their religious belief. You cannot help being spiritual in such an environment,.

Maharaj’s parents had introduced him to a wise and kindly sage at a young age, and the young man had developed a curiosity about “what is life? How did the world come about?” and so forth. Thus in his late thirties, he gravitated to a guru of an ancient Hindu sect called the Nath Sampradaya. He was ripe, ready to follow his guru. With earnestness he followed every word of his guru and in three years, by his own admission, he was Realized.

Maharaj spoke in Marathi, an Indian language. People began coming to him, crowding his little shop, asking questions, receiving answers, always the most correct, the most appropriate, the most “TRUTH-FULL” answer. Nothing but the TRUTH can leave the lips of an embodiment of TRUTH, and thus started what one may call (he never called it that) “NISARGA-YOGA” or the Natural Yoga. Seekers outside India started coming to him. As was common and as is common today, the average seeker jumps from “guru” to “guru” waiting for an answer. As Maharaj said, “only when the fruit is ripe will it fall.” Maharaj’s simple and direct responses are amazing – amazingly simple and direct – no religious jargon, no quotes from the scriptures, just plain words a mother would use to answer her child.

Maurice Frydman, a gnani according to Maharaj, translated these questions and answers from Marathi into English, thereby bringing before us, by the Grace of the Guru, “I AM THAT,” a 500-page spiritual classic. The author in the foreword to the book in its 1981 edition says:

That there should be yet another edition of I AM THAT is not surprising, for the sublimity of the words spoken by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, their directness and lucidity with which they refer to the Highest, have already made this book a literature of paramount importance, In fact, many regard it as the only book of spiritual teaching really worth studying.

How fortunate we are to be able to imbibe this sage’s teachings! We must be “ripe” I believe, else how could that fruit have fallen into our lap?

I urge you to read the book slowly, read, re-read the words. At first glance, or second or even third reading, if the message does not reach, close your eyes, go inward and be still. You WILL “GET IT.” Acknowledge this assurance gratefully. You deserve it. I deserve it. We all, beings as we are of light and love, have earned it, and deserve it.

In order to ignite that spark of spiritual curiosity, I will give some quotes from Maharaj’s “I AM THAT.” Later, perhaps, we may sit and meditate on some selected chapters.

QUOTES FROM "i AM THAT"

"That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman -- That Thou Art."

"You need not know what you are. It is enough to know WHAT YOU ARE NOT. As long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already kown, there can be no such thing as SELF-KNOWLEDGE, because what you are cannot be escried except as TOTAL NEGATION."

"Desire not, fear not; observe the actual as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens."

"Desire is the memory of Pleasure, Fear the memory of Pain. Both make the mind restless."

. . . . .MORE QUOTES