On the other hand, Nisargadatta is an enigma. He appeared agitated, uncomfortable, was brusk, irritable, and rude. Yet his words seemed more true than Robert’s because he was so brilliantly clear in his exposition of Advaita in everyday terms, describing the spontaneous arising of consciousness, and our truest identity as the nothingness to which we will return.
Robert spun out a beautiful tale about Brahman, transcendence, and nothingness, but Nisargadatta broke the whole of the manifest and unmanifest into baby steps that led to a progressive realization in baby steps that are very compelling to the mind that he teaches us to go beyond.If I had to say it, I’d judge Robert as being deeper than Nisargadatta, more thoroughly embedded in emptiness, more at rest. But Maharaj was more engaging, more forceful in his exposition of the ways of consciousness and its relation to the absolute, the noumenal, nothingness.
That is why I refer to Nisargadatta so often, because his teachings were so clear and methodology also so clearly laid out. Robert on the other hand, taught dozens of meditation methods, mantras, and used many superlatives about consciousness that did not seem to convey anything useful.
But it was not until I had a personal awakening to myself as Atman, as the incarnated God-principle, that the brilliance of Nisargadatta’s teaching became fully realized by me.Unlike Robert, Nisargadatta spoke of realizing oneself as the totality of manifest consciousness first, staying there for a bit, then going into Nirvana. Robert said nothing of this step, which was my experience. He did not distinguish between satchitananda and nothingness. Nisargadatta did.
