Maurice Frydman’s introduction to Nisargadatta Maharaj was anything but ceremonious. In the late 1960s, after years spent translating Sanskrit texts and working alongside Gandhi’s circle, Frydman found himself searching for a living embodiment of the Self he’d long studied on paper. A local devotee in Bombay casually mentioned a “mystic shopkeeper” whose simple presence seemed magnetic. Armed with little more than curiosity and that recommendation scrawled on a scrap of paper, Frydman caught the No. 19 bus from Churchgate to Mahim, climbed a narrow staircase in a modest chawl and, almost on a whim, knocked on the door of Janata Building.

Inside, there was no formal puja room, no chanting choir—just a small, cluttered space where a stout Maharashtrian gentleman sat quietly, his gaze both hospitable and piercing. That was Shri Nisargadatta. Their very first exchange was so straightforward it could’ve been overlooked: a question from Frydman about what “I am” truly meant, and a reply that cut through academic layers like a knife. In the months that followed, the engineer-turned-sanskritist found in Nisargadatta’s no-frills teaching the living thread tying every Upanishadic insight to direct, prickly, heart-level experience.

Today’s mindfulness apps and online satsangs echo that impulse to connect, yet Frydman’s pilgrimage reminds us that sometimes the most profound wisdom resides behind the humblest doors. His journey—leaping from well-thumbed manuscripts into one man’s modest room—proves that genuine revelation often arrives in plain clothes, with no fanfare attached. In 2025, as digital gurus multiply, this chance encounter still whispers its age-old lesson: the Self isn’t found in high-flown theories, but in the clear, unadorned look one seeker gave another.