CONTEMPORARIES

Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj (1888-1936) was guru to Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981).  I posted excerpts from the latter’s book “I AM THAT” on 1/14/15.  It was the former who taught Nisargadatta about self-enquiry.  He said to Nisargadatta, “You are not what you take yourself to be.  Find out what you are.  What’s the sense ‘I am’?  Find your real self.”

In Nisargadatta’s words, “I obeyed my guru because I trusted him.  I did as he told me.  All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence.  And what a difference it made, and how soon.  It took me only three years to realize my true nature.  My guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference.  I remembered what he told me and proceeded.  The fruit of it is here with me.”

If the notion of self-enquiry sounds familiar, it should.  Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), a contemporary of Siddharameshwar’s and Nisargadatta’s, originated the idea.
   
Self-enquiry, according to Ramana Maharshi, was the constant attention to the inner awareness of “I” or “I am.”  He warned against considering it merely an intellectual exercise.  Properly done, it involved fixing the attention firmly and intensely on the feeling of “I,” without thinking on it.  Attention must be fixed on the “I,” he said, until the sense of “I” disappears and the true self is realized.

Maurice Frydman, aka Swami Bharatananda, translated Nisargadatta’s talks for the book “I Am That.” Frydman, it so happened, was deeply influenced by Ramana Maharshi’s teachings which would have been a factor regarding Nisargadatta.