An ordinary shopkeeper in the backlanes of Bombay, India.
In middle age Truth exploded within him dissolving the sense of individual forever.  

Be true to your own self, love your self absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them. Don’t pretend to be what you are not, don’t refuse to be
what you are.

Maharaj: To be one with THAT because of which we know we exist is meditation. There are a number of names which have been given to Gods, all of them represent the same things - they represent this knowledge that one is, this beingness, consciousness. This knowledge does not refer to an individual, but to the sense of presence as a whole. Instead of accepting this knowledge as a total functioning, one wants to cut up the knowledge into bits and pieces, taking a part for himself, based on some concept. Any knowledge based on a concept is not true knowledge…

When you are dwelling in this consciousness you see that you are not doing anything, it is all happening spontaneously. There is no question of your trying to do anyting. You cannot try to be your Self, because you are your Self.

Nisargadatta, a realized master of the Tantric Nath lineage, had a wife and four children and lived in a small apartment in the slums of Bombay. For many years he supported himself and his family by selling cheap goods in a small booth on the streets outside his tenement. His life was a telling parable of the absolute nonduality of Being.

“There is no question of going anywhere, arriving anywhere, or doing anything; you are there already.

“One has to work in the world; naturally, carry on your worldly affairs, but understand that that which has come about by itself - that is, this body, mind and consciousness - has appeared in spite of the fact that nobody has asked for it. .. The life force and the mind are operating, but the mind will tempt you to believe that it is “you”. Therefore, understand always that you are the timeless, spaceless witness. And even if the mind tells you that you are the one who is acting, don’t believe the mind. Always keep your identity separate from that which is doing the working, thinking and talking. That which has happened - that is, the apparatus which is functioning - has come upon your original essence, but you are not that apparatus.”

>From ‘PRIOR TO CONSCIOUSNESS Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’ Edited by 
Jean Dunn, The Acorn Press 1990, ISBN: 0-89386-024-7