Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

In nature nothing is at standstill, everything pulsates, appears and disappears. Heart, breath, digestion, sleep and waking - birth and death - everything comes and goes in waves. Rhythm, periodicity, harmonious alternation of extremes is the rule. No use rebelling against the very pattern of life.

To find reality you must be real in the smallest daily action; there can be no deceit in the search for truth.

Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers.

In my world love is the only law. I do not ask for love, I give it.

Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.

You must realize first of all that you are the proof of everything, including yourself. None can prove your existence, because his existence must be confirmed by you first. Your being and knowing you owe nobody. Remember, you are entirely on your own. You do not come from somewhere, you do not go anywhere. You are timeless being and awareness.

Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the NOW.

When you desire the common good, the whole world desires with you. Make humanity's desire your own and work for it. There you cannot fail.

When I see I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see I am everything, that is love. My life is a movement between these two.

See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for inquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be lazy to think.

The innermost light, shining peacefully and timelessly in the heart, is the real Guru. All others merely show the way.

Truth gives no advantage. It gives no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and freedom from the false.

To understand suffering, you must go beyond pain and pleasure. Your own desires and fears prevent you from understanding and thereby helping others. In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else. If you are serious about the suffering of mankind, you must perfect the only means of help you have, yourself.

You are not in the world...the world is in you," what did he mean? [That is, you are not in the world," that is, there is no "you" that is real or in any world. "The world is in you" means that the world is in your "mind" and is nothing more than a figment of your programming-and-conditioning-induced imaginings.]

Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.

The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. To be free in the world, you must die to the world. Then the universe is your own, it becomes your body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light.

I am told I was born. I do not remember.

Don't ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind. Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.

True happiness cannot be found in things that change and pass away. Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably. Happiness comes from the Self and can be found in the Self only. Find your real Self and all else will come with it.

There is only one meditation - the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts.

In peace and silence, the skin of the 'I' dissolves and the inner and the outer become one.

To see Reality is as simple as to see one’s face in a mirror. Only, the mirror must be clear and true. A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all the levels, is needed to reflect the Reality. Be clear and quiet; alert and detached, all else will happen by itself.

Come to the conclusion: I am unborn, I was unborn and I shall remain unborn

All you can teach is understanding. The rest comes on its own.

If you want to sin, sin wholeheartedly and openly. Sins too have their lessons to teach the earnest sinner, as virtues the earnest saint. It is the mixing up of the two that is so disastrous. Nothing can block you so effectively as compromise, for it shows lack of earnestness, without which nothing can be done.

In my world, nothing ever goes wrong.

Refuse to think in terms of this or that. All pain needs investigation. The mind is nothing else but the self. Assumption obscures reality without destroying it. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false..Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time.The mind creates time and space and takes its own creations for reality.

With self-awareness you grow more intelligent. In awareness you learn, in self-awareness you learn about yourself. Of course, you can only learn what you are not. To know what you are, you must go beyond the mind. Awareness is the point at which the mind reaches out beyond itself into reality. In awareness you seek not what pleases, but what is true.

In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife; you are the love between two.

Life is love and love is life.

To go beyond you need alert immobility, quiet attention.

All is a play in consciousness. All divisions are illusory. You can know the false only. The true you must yourself be.

I do not suffer; I cannot suffer because I am not an object. Of course there is suffering. But do you realize what this suffering is? I am the suffering. Whatever is manifested, I am the functioning. Whatever is perceptible I am the perceiving of it. Whatever is done I am the doing of it; I am the doer of it, and, understand this, I am also that which is done. In fact, I am the total functioning.

Multiplicity without strife is joy.

No particular thought can be mind's natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience, or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.

Earnestness is the most important thing.

Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it.

Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?

Until we can look at fear and accept it as the shadow of personal existence, as persons we are bound to be afraid.

Nothing troubles me. I offer no resistance to trouble - therefore it does not stay with me. On your side there is so much trouble. On mine there is no trouble at all. Come to my side.

In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.

The real is behind and beyond words, incommunicable, directly experienced, explosive in its effect on the mind. It is easily had when nothing else is wanted.

Between the banks of pleasure and pain flows the river of life. If you spend much time on either bank you will miss out on life.

If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. Its your restlessness that causes chaos.

Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; your next, to long intensely for liberation. The very intensity of longing will guide you; you need no other guide.

You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.

Do you realize the unimaginable greatness, the holiness of what you so casually call 'consciousness'? It is the unmanifest Absolute aware of its awareness through the manifestation, of which your mind-body is presently a part.