Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981), one of the most important spiritual preceptors of the twentieth century, lived and taught in a small apartment in the slums of Bombay, India. A realized master of the Tantric Nath Lineage, Maharaj had a wife and four children. For many years, he supported himself and his family by selling cheap goods in a small booth on the streets outside his tenement. His life was a telling parable of the absolute non duality of being. The profound yet simple words of this extraordinary teacher are designed to jolt us into awareness of our original nature. Like the Zen masters of Old, Nisargadatta’s style is abrupt, provocative, and immensely profound cutting to the core and wasting little effort on the trigger shifts in consciousness, just by gearing, or even reading them. A study stream of Indians and Westerners, those fortunate enough to discover Maharaj during his lifetime, came to sit at his feet in the small loft where he received visitors. In the radition of the sage Ramana Maharishi, he shared the highest Truth of non duality in his own unique way, from the depths of his own realization. In this volume Nisargadatta provides advanced instructions for spiritual aspirants. The Ultimate Medicine is not for those who like their spirituality watered down, but for serious students who will find herein powerful antidotes to unawareness.
Most of the discourses presented in these pages were given within the last year before Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's death and can therefore be considered, like those published in The Nectar of Immortality, as the final teachings in more than one sense of the word. They are characterized by Maharaj's desire, in the waning days of his life, to address only the key issues involved and to do so on the deepest level possible. One cannot help but detect a great sense of urgency and a desire to economize on his dwindling physical energy. This did not allow him to give much time to beginners in dealing with repetitive questions and elementary principles-what Maharaj used to call "kindergarten spirituality." Some readers of the earlier Nisargadatta books have noticed several inconsistencies in the material. They must bear in mind, however, that it does not concern a textbook of spirituality; writings present a record of private conversations with a wide variety of inquirers with greatly different backgrounds, levels of spiritual development and capacities for understanding. |
