1897 - 1981 · Mumbai
The beedi-seller who spoke as the Absolute
A Bombay shopkeeper with a family and a beedi stall, Maruti Kampli met his guru Siddharameshwar Maharaj in the Navnath Sampradaya and received one instruction: attend to the sense I am. He obeyed with total earnestness — and within three years, by his own account, realization dawned. He continued selling beedis; the room above the shop became one of the great satsang halls of the century.
The dialogues recorded there, published as I Am That, carried the Navnath teaching across the world in language of startling directness. He claimed nothing, charged nothing, softened nothing — and turned every question back to the questioner's own being.
The practice he gave is the one he received: hold on to the sense I am — not I am this or that, just the pure sense of being — giving it your attention throughout the day, returning to it as to a home. Stay with it, he taught, and it will itself deliver you to what is beyond it.
