Meeting Nisargadatta Maharaj
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Alexander Smit Interview


Alexander Smith was a Dutch student of Nisargadatta Maharaj.  He became a well-respected teacher in Europe.  I saw the the following interview by Belle Bruins in Amigo the free web magazine when Kees Schreuders posted the link at the Nisargadatta discussion group.


Alexander (Smith) met Nisargadatta in September of 1978. In the beginning of September of that year Jacques Lewenstein had been in India and come back with the book I AM THAT and tapes of Nisargadatta.

In the beginning of September of that year Jacques Lewenstein had been in India and came back with the book I AM THAT and tapes of Nisargadatta.

Alexander Smith, "That book came into the hands of Wolter Keers. He was very happy with it, because after the death of Krishna Menon (Wolter's spiritual master)
he had not heard anything so purely advaita. After Wolter had read the book
he decided to translate and publish it 'because this is so extremely good'.
Wolter gave me the book immediately and I was very moved by it."...

I told him (Nisargadatta) that Maurice Frydman was the decisive
reason for my coming. Frydman was a friend of Krishnamurti and
Frydman was planning to publish all of the earlier work of
Krishnamurti at Chetana Publishers in Bombay, And that he had heard
from Mr. Dikshit , the publisher, that there was someone in Bombay
who he had to meet. (I AM THAT was of course not yet published at
that time because Frydman had yet to meet Nisargadatta). Frydman went
there with his usual skeptical ideas. He came in there, and within
two weeks things became clear to him that had never become clear with
Krishnamurti. And I thought then: if it all became clear to Frydman
within two weeks, how will it go with me?
I told all this to Nisargadatta and he said: 'That says nothing about
me, but everything about Frydman.' And he also said: 'People who
don't understand Krishnamurti don't understand themselves.' I thought
that was beautiful, because all the gurus I knew always ran everyone
down."
The complete interview can be found in Amigo, the free web magazine about non dual approaches  http://www.ods.nl/am1gos/am1gos2/indexframe2_us.html