Early life
Sri Nisargadatta was born on April 17, 1897, at break of dawn, the full moon in the month of Chaitra, to Shivrampant Kambli and Parvatibai, in Bombay. The day was also the birthday of Lord Hanuman, hence the boy was named 'Maruti', after Lord Hanuman himself. Maruti Shivrampant Kambli was brought up in Kandalgaon, a small village in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, where he grew up amidst his family of six silblings, two brothers and four sisters, and deeply religious parents. His father, Shivrampant, worked as a domestic servant in Mumbai and later became a petty farmer in Kandalgaon.
In 1915, after his father passed away, he moved to Bombay, to support his family back home, following his elder brother. Initially he worked as a junior clerk at an office, but quickly opened a small goods store, mainly selling bidis – leaf-rolled cigarettes, and soon owned a string of eight retail shops.
In 1924 he married Sumatibai and they had three daughters and a son.
Awakening
In 1933, he was introduced to his guru, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, the head of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya by his friend Yashwantrao Baagkar. His guru told him, "You are not what you take yourself to be...". He then gave Nisargdatta simple instructions, which he followed verbatim, as he himself recounted later:
My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am'. It may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked!
-- I Am That, Chapter 75, p. 375.
Following his guru's instructions of concentrate on the feeling "I Am", he utilized all his spare time looking at himself in silence, and remained in that state, for the coming years, practicing meditation and singing devotional bhajans.
After an association that lasted hardly two and a half years, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, his guru, died on November 9, 1936, though by that time he had done his task, Maruti had reached self-awareness. Soon he adopted a new name, 'Nisargadatta' meaning 'the one who dwells in the natural state'.
In 1937, he left Mumbai and travelled across India. Though realizing the shortcomings of a totally unworldly life and the greater spiritual fruitfulness of dispassionate action, he eventually returned to his family in Mumbai in 1938. It was there that he spent the rest of his life, working as a bidi vendor at his nearby shop, and giving teachings at his home.
Later years
Between, 1942-1948, he suferred two personal losses, first the death of his wife, Sumatibai, followed by the death of his daughter. He started taking disciples in 1951, only after a personal revelation from his Guru Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj.
Sri Nisargadatta continued to live the life of an ordinary Indian working-man together with conducting daily meetings with seekers discussing his teaching. The meetings of the early years are documented in his master-work "I Am That" . Devotees traveled from all over the world to hear Nisargadatta's unique message until his death. Maharaj left his body in 1981 after suffering from throat cancer.
