TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
Maharaj often noted that "all of this [these teachings and this understanding] is really very simple," yet oh how it has been complicated over the years.
Why?
Because it matters not if humans are eating ice cream or if they are seeking to taste supposed "nectar of immortality," some in the former case will like vanilla but will hate strawberry, some will prefer chocolate, some will prefer vanilla with chocolate syrup poured over it, and some will prefer strawberry over any other flavors; and in the latter case, some prefer The Direct Path Method of teaching non-duality while others have only been exposed to The Neo-Advaita Method or The Neo-Vedanta Method or The Traditional Method or even The Pseudo-Advaita Method.
What else has complicated the teachings and hindered the transmission of a simple understanding?
Personality types (which always complicate).
For example, Types Ones and Types Fives are driven subconsciously by their desire to know. Ones want to be seen as Knowers; Type Fives want to accumulate knowledge and know but do not necessarily show off their knowledge as much (often being isolationists). Both are of a mindset which provides their mantra or motto: "Just to make a short story long." Thus, they never move beyond the Jnana Yoga. [Maharaj fixated there for a period.]
Others are only exposed to Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga / Radja Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Karma Yoga, ad infinitum. A few are exposed to Nisarga Yoga. Such overload preempts any chance for the driven seeker to find anything that is simple as the mind becomes over-filled with methodologies and versions and permutations and variations and adaptations and renderings and this yoga or that yoga.
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And what else has complicated the teachings and hindered the transmission of the simple understanding? The evolution of teachers.
Take Maharaj's shifts for example:
He began by offerings a Hindu / non-dual compounded version of the Ultimate Medicine.
Later, when Westerners began showing up in the loft, he shifted to offering a spiritual / non-dual compounded version of the Ultimate Medicine.
Later, when he came to understand that the Ultimate Sickness is a mental sickness, he offered a psychological / non-dual compounded version of the Ultimate Medicine.
Yet consider how long it took for him to settle into that final understanding. The same happened with “Floyd as well. In the case of Maharaj, his evolution covered more than a forty-year span.
Only after trying many methodologies and versions of the Ultimate Medicine did he finally settle into offering a purely Nisargan message. Sure, he spoke of it early on and through the decades, but it was decades before he finally focused on it singularly. Same here.
How long did the evolution take for his understanding to ripen fully? That depends on when one marks the beginning of his "teaching career."
In 1935 he offered a series of observations of certain spiritual books, and those talks were well-received by many who took themselves to be “devout Hindus” and / or “spiritual persons.”
If that marks the beginning of his “teaching days,” then the period ran just shy of a half century.
Some suggest the teachings really began after his “Forest Dweller / Renunciant” period when he returned to Bombay in 1938 and began sharing with the people who visited with him regularly in his shop. About the same time, he added a small mezzanine loft to the high-ceiling flat where he lived in order to practice - privately - meditation / samadhi, the singing of bhajans, the practicing of devotion as well as guru-bhakti, and the reading of Hindu scriptures that dealt to one degree or another with non-duality.
(Note that none of that had anything at all to do with Nisarga Yoga or Nisargan abidance.)
Around 1941, he began to come into close and regular contact with K.A. Sabnis (a.k.a., Sri Bhainath Maharaj) and his seeking became driven by such high levels of OCD that he was often out with Bhainath in all sorts of weather until many hours past midnight. His health took a toll, exacerbated (beginning in 1941 and continuing for the next seven years) by the events surrounding World War Two and the subsequent war for India’s independence.
By 1951, he finally agreed to initiate seekers who came his way. Using that date, his teaching career can be said to have lasted nearly thirty years.
Over the next fifteen years, more seekers of a Hindu bent found their way into the loft-type area that Maharaj has originally built as a private “getaway” where he could complete in solitude his own “religious and spiritual exercises.” One may mark 1966 as the date when the loft was being used several times a day for reading and singing, etc., but visitors were coming earlier on an informal, "unofficial" basis. Use that date, though, and the truly intensive portion of his teaching career spanned fifteen years.
Take whatever time frame you want, Maharaj’s evolution can still be seen to have spanned some forty-plus years as he shared pointers and discussed dogma; and then discussed spirituality and Self-Inquiry; and then finally abandoned all of those and began focusing on the mind as the root of the Ultimate Sickness.
So the evolutionary nature of his process should be clear. Even after he took the name “Nisargadatta,” his focus was not solely on the Nisargan Yoga message.
The name pointed to “nisarga” which means “naturally” (which is about living or abiding in a natural manner) and “datta” (which is about “one’s manner of dwelling in the natural state”). In other literal interpretations, “nisarga” can means “without parts” and points toward one’s Original Nature and to overlaying the Absolute / Awareness / THAT mode on the relative existence (hence, “I AM THAT; I AM”). See? Equal billing for both.
Finally, addiction can complicate the teachings and hindered the transmission of the simple understanding.
Some are addicted to seeking. Their subconscious agenda will block then from finding because then "The Super Seeker" would exist no more as mere "being" replaces the "going and doing and zooming" involved with seeking.
Some are addicted to chaos. They really do not want a simple existence because they find that boring and must, therefore, constantly gin up activity.
And almost all persons are driven by humankind's primary addiction to have control) and humankind's secondary addiction (to have power - or a Power - which will allow them to control, so they think).
Might it be time to abandon all of the complicated and seek the simple and be done once and for all with all of the activities which religions and spirituality and meetings and seeking and doing require?
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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