Papaji’s emergence as a teacher of Advaita Vedanta unfolded out of a long arc of spiritual seeking that began in childhood. Born into a Krishna-devotional environment, he immersed himself in intense bhakti, including visions and mystical experiences centered on Krishna. Yet, despite the depth of this devotion, there remained a subtle sense of incompleteness, a feeling that something essential had not yet been resolved. This inner tension between profound experience and lingering dissatisfaction prepared the ground for a more radical shift in understanding.

That turning point came through his meeting with Ramana Maharshi at Tiruvannamalai. Seeking a direct encounter with Krishna, Papaji was instead confronted by Ramana’s simple but penetrating inquiry: “Who is the one who wants to see Krishna?” Under Ramana’s guidance, attention was redirected from the object of devotion—the divine form—to the subject, the one who perceives. Through this self-inquiry, he recognized his true nature as the Self, pure consciousness, beyond the individual seeker and identical with the nondual reality described in Advaita Vedanta. This recognition did not merely add another experience to his devotional life; it recontextualized it, revealing the formless ground in which all visions and practices arise.

After this decisive awakening, Papaji returned to an outwardly ordinary life, living as a householder while remaining established in that nondual recognition. He did not initially set himself up as a formal guru or institutional leader, and there was no elaborate proclamation of a new role. Rather, his clarity and presence quietly began to affect those around him, and seekers were naturally drawn to him for guidance. Over time, especially in later decades, more and more people came to sit with him, and his role as a teacher emerged organically from this shared space of inquiry and silence.

In his way of sharing, Papaji remained faithful to the essential thrust of what he had received from Ramana Maharshi. He emphasized direct pointing to the Self, often through satsang and the use of self-inquiry, encouraging questioners to turn attention back to the source of all thoughts and experiences. Instead of prescribing long preparatory disciplines, he stressed the immediacy of realization, the possibility of recognizing one’s true nature here and now. In this sense, his teaching was less a constructed system and more an ongoing expression of the very realization that had ended his own search, inviting others to discover that the seeker and the sought are not two.