Nisargadatta: Poet, Philosopher, or Teacher?

When I first read Nisargadatta Maharaj many years ago, I was already seasoned in Buddhist practice and beginning to explore Neo-Advaita. His dialogues fascinated me. I didn’t understand everything, but many passages resonated. He seemed to be speaking from a place of radical freedom.

Later, skeptical of the “Neos” and wanting to get closer to the source, I turned to traditional Advaita Vedanta—a systematic tradition with a proven methodology. Advaita moves in clear stages: karma yoga and upasana yoga as preparation, then jnana yoga (knowledge) through shravana (listening), manana (removing doubts), and nididhyasana (assimilation). The order of texts matters. You don’t begin with the Mandukya Upanishad and Gaudapada’s Karika; you start with Tattva Bodha, then Bhagavad Gita, then Vivekachudamani, and only later graduate to more advanced works. There are no short-cuts.

So when I revisited I Am That years later, after immersing myself in traditional study, I felt both appreciation and frustration. Appreciation, because many of Nisargadatta’s statements still shone with the ring of truth. Frustration, because I now recognized how little method there was in his presentation.

In most of his recorded dialogues, Nisargadatta responds only from the standpoint of the Self. “You were never born and will never die.” “You are beyond the body and mind.” To someone who has not yet grasped the Self, this can sound cryptic, even bizarre. Seekers often left bewildered.

This is not because they were foolish. Many of them were sincere and intelligent. But without context, his words encouraged projection: seekers began to think of Nisargadatta himself as extraordinary, someone living in another realm where ordinary rules of human life no longer applied. He came to be seen as a modern oracle, dispensing riddles from on high.

What frustrated me was not his brilliance, but his pedagogy. A good teacher meets students where they are, builds step by step, dismantles misunderstandings, and speaks from all standpoints: jiva (individual), jagat (world), Ishvara (God), and atman (Self). Nisargadatta often bypassed all of that, leaving students to connect the dots themselves.

In short, he was dazzling but—by traditional standards—not a good teacher.

And yet, even in that frustration, I Am That stands apart. Rereading it, I noticed something odd: I Am That has a power and coherence missing in most of his other books, such as Seeds of Consciousness or Prior to Consciousness. Those later works often feel repetitive, even banal.

The difference, I suspect, lies in Maurice Frydman, Nisargadatta’s early translator and editor. Frydman didn’t just transcribe words; he captured them with a philosophical ear and a literary hand. His translation reads like literature—sharp, lyrical, aphoristic. Later collections, compiled by others, reveal the rawer reality: much of Nisargadatta’s teaching was ordinary, blunt, and sometimes meandering. Frydman made him into a poet.

So was Nisargadatta himself a poet-philosopher, or was it Frydman who rendered him as one? Perhaps it was a collaboration: the sage improvising truth in performance, the translator catching its music. Together they created a book that survives as scripture, even if the source material was less polished.

David Godman’s reminiscences help clarify this picture. He portrays Nisargadatta not as a systematic teacher but as a spiritual doctor. He rarely spoke of his life or lineage. His walls were covered with photos of saints, but he never explained them. His “medicine” was his presence and uncompromising words. Above all, he was a man of devotion. For decades after his Guru’s death, he still sang five bhajans (devotional songs) daily—not because they held meaning for him anymore, but because his Guru had asked him to.

Seen in this light, his brusqueness was not negligence but temperament. He wasn’t trying to be an acharya (traditional teacher) of Advaita Vedanta who carefully guides students step by step. He was a man of raw devotion to his Guru and uncompromising truth in dialogue. In daily life, this meant obeying instructions to sing bhajans long after he felt them unnecessary. In satsang, it meant refusing to dilute his message or cater to a seeker’s confusion. In both, the same trait appears: fidelity to what he saw as essential, without adornment or accommodation.

So what do we make of him? My original critique still holds: Nisargadatta was not a traditional teacher. He offered no scaffolding, no ladder of texts and practices. He often spoke in ways that baffled and alienated. He might even appear to some seekers as being a "jerk."

But thanks to Godman, and thanks to seeing the role of Frydman’s hand in shaping I Am That, I no longer read him only as a failed teacher. I see him as something else: a poet-philosopher of Advaita, an improviser of presence, a performer of truth. His dialogues sometimes feel less like lessons and more like performance art—startling, jagged, unforgettable.

Nisargadatta left behind no curriculum, only fragments. Some of them cut, some of them heal, some of them soar like poetry. He was not a conventional teacher, and perhaps he never intended to be. What remains is not method but medicine, not ladder but mirror.