1888 - 1936 · Maharashtra
The Navnath master of the bird's way
A master of the Inchegiri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya — the very stream honored in this site's Reading Room — Siddharameshwar Maharaj received the traditional meditation from his guru Bhausaheb Maharaj, practiced it to its depths, and then made a momentous discovery: beyond the slow ant's way of gradual practice lies the bird's way — direct flight through discrimination and self-knowledge.
In a short life he taught that way with rigorous clarity, and his discourses, gathered in works like Master Key to Self-Realization, remain among the most systematic maps of the direct path ever spoken in Marathi. Among his disciples were Nisargadatta Maharaj and Ranjit Maharaj, through whom his teaching reached the world.
The practice he gave joins meditation to understanding: meditate on the Self as taught by the master, and simultaneously discriminate — I am not the body, not the breath, not the mind — until the knowledge I am rests in its source. Understanding, he taught, is itself the highest worship.
