Siddharameshwar Maharaj

Siddharameshwar Maharaj was an Indian Advaita master of the Inchegeri (Inchagiri) Sampradaya, a twentieth-century branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, the lineage of the Nine Masters.

Born in 1888 in the village of Pathri in the Solapur district, he was initiated in 1906 by his guru Bhausaheb Maharaj and went on to become a sadguru in his own right. He is best known for articulating two complementary approaches to realization: the slow, meditative “Ant’s Way” (Pipilika Marg) of his own guru, and the swift, direct “Bird’s Way” (Vihangam Marg) that he himself championed, which uses discrimination and self-inquiry to arrive immediately at the knowledge of the Self.

His central theme was Atma Vidya, the knowledge of the Self, taught through an investigation of the four bodies, the gross, subtle, causal, and great-causal, and the pure awareness that lies beyond them. Siddharameshwar’s importance to the Atlas is as the upstream source of the modern “I Am” nonduality that reaches the West.

He was the guru of Nisargadatta Maharaj, whose talks became the landmark text I Am That, as well as of Ranjit Maharaj, and his instruction to abide in the felt sense of being is the seed of Nisargadatta’s whole method.

Though he died young in 1936 and taught chiefly in Marathi to a regional following, his discourses, later collected as Master of Self-Realization and Amrut Laya, carry the rigorous, discriminative pole of Advaita, locating liberation in clear seeing rather than acquisition.

He thus stands at the headwaters of the contemporary-nondual branch, the teacher behind the teacher most Western seekers know.