A simple man, Nisargadatta Maharaj, was a householder and petty shopkeeper in Bombay where he lived, and died in 1981 at the age of 84. He had not been educated formally, but came to be respected and loved for his insights into the crux of human pain and the extraordinary usidity of his direct discourse. Hundreds of diverse seekers traveled the globe and sought him out in his unpretentious home to hear him. To all of them he gave hope that “beyond the real experience is not the mind, but the self, the light in which everything appears…the awareness in which everything happens.”