With Easter Day just around the corner, what standing is a student of non-duality, follower of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, supposed to take?
Yes, this was my personal dilemma only a few days ago. Having my spirituality strongly rooted in the Catholic faith, am I supposed to forget Maharaj for a day or two, and worship the Risen Lord with all my heart? It is reassuring to hear Maharaj’s words: “Christ is a great Sage. Meditate on Him, be yourself sanctified with His memory; in the process you will be purified. No form will be left of you.”

Easter - the Lord has risen!

Not surprisingly, there’s no conflict. Both, Jesus Christ and Nisargadatta Maharaj are one in preaching Love. Yes, despite the apparent differences in their respective teachings and methodology, the essence is the same: the love of the Self.
More importantly though, from the perspective of Easter, the message of hope and the conviction that we all are THAT (the images of God, God’s children) and are destined, sooner or later, to realize that. That THAT is in Maharaj’s terminology, the Absolute – we are the rays of the Absolute…

Both were teaching us about the illusoriness of the world, the passing existence and importance of the body and the mind, and the supreme role of the universal consciousness. Said Nisargadatta Maharaj: “This Christ-consciousness is existing; is it faith in a man? As a man, Christ was crucified, but that universal consciousness which was his lives today.”

What drives us, students of spirituality, is the hope of one day emerging from the veils of illusion and realizing THAT that we always have been. The Risen Lord has left the ego of humanity on the cross, and became one with the universal consciousness – with you and I. Live by it, this Easter and always!