Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

If you believe in God, work with Him. If you do not, become one.

I am timeless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past or imagine the future.

Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention. Don't look for quick results; there may be none within your noticing. Unknown to you, your psyche will undergo a change; there will be more clarity in your thinking, charity in your feeling, purity in your behavior. You need not aim at these - you will witness the change all the same. For, what you are now is the result of inattention and what you become will be the fruit of attention.

Don’t try to understand! It’s enough if you do not misunderstand.

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both.

Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to happen to, a conscious separate center. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose yourself in it.

Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.

You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don't get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it.

Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.

All I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect

Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you up. If you don't want to suffer, don't go to sleep.

Only the people who have gone beyond the world can change the world.

The real you is timeless and beyond life and death.

Leave greatness to others. Become so small that no one can see you. This conviction results from growing devotion to the supreme reality.

Concentration, Full Confidence, Pure Will. With these 3, what cannot be accomplished?

The legitimate function of the mind is to tell you what is not. But if you want positive knowledge, you must go beyond the mind.

Words can bring you only up to their own limit; to go beyond, you must abandon them. Remain as the silent witness only.

Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive.

Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it.

Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.

Stay open and quiet, that is all. What you seek is so near you that there is no place for a way.

Get hold of the main thing: That the world and the self are one and perfect. Only your attitude is faulty and needs readjustment.

In reality there are no others, and -helping yourself you help everybody else.

You are not what you think yourself to be, I assure you. The image you have of yourself is made up from memories and is purely accidental.

My actual experience is not different. It is my evaluation and attitude that differ. I see the same world as you do, but not the same way. There is nothing mysterious about it. Everybody sees the world through the idea he has of himself. As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be. If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.

Your own self is your ultimate teacher. The outer teacher is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal

Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind.

It is not the right advice that liberates, but the action based on it.

Truth is not a reward for good behaviour, nor a prize for passing some tests. It cannot be brought about. It is the primary, the unborn, the ancient source of all that is. You are eligible because you are. You need not merit truth. It is your own....Stand still, be quiet.

It is only your self-identification with your mind that makes you happy or unhappy. Rebel against your slavery to your mind, see your bonds as self-created and break the chains of attachment and revulsion. Keep in mind your goal of freedom, until it dawns on you that you are already free, that freedom is not something in the distant future to be earned with painful efforts, but perennially one's own, to be used! Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, the courage to believe that you are free already and to act on it.

Give all your attention to the question: 'What is it that makes me conscious?', until your mind becomes the question itself and cannot think of anything else.

Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn on you.

Having realized that you cannot influence the results, pay no attention to your desires and fears. Let them come and go. Don't give them the nourishment of interest and attention.

Having never left the house you are looking for the way home

Surrender to your own self, of which everything is an expression.

Nothing perceivable is real.Your attachment is your bondage. You cannot control the future.There is no such thing as free will. Will is bondage.You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.

The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.

Who was born first, you or the world? As long as you give first place to the world, you are bound by it; once you realize, beyond all trace of doubt, that the world is in you and not you in the world, you are out of it. Of course your body remains in the world and of the world, but you are not deluded by it.

Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless.

The silence before the words were spoken, is it different from the silence that came after?

It is your fixed idea that you must be something or other, that blinds you.

Whatever state I am in, I see it as a state of mind to be accepted as it is.

You know that you are. Don't burden yourself with names, just be. Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.

Knowledge gives power. In practice it is very simple. To control yourself, know yourself.

Do not neglect this body. This is the house of God; take care of it, only in this body can God be realized.

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the supreme state will come to you uninvited and unexpected.

Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances.

Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen, and you need not search for truth; truth will find you.