Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

There is only life, there is nobody who lives a life.

You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself.

The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world - God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts - fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems - all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone, all suffering ends.

Moods are in the mind and do not matter. Go within, go beyond. Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness. When you reach the deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind's surface-play affects you very little.

Steady faith is stronger than destiny. Destiny is the result of causes, mostly accidental, and is therefore loosely woven. Confidence and good hope will overcome it easily.

Meditation is a deliberate attempt to pierce into the higher states of consciousness and finally go beyond it. The art of meditation is the art of shifting the focus of attention to ever subtler levels, without losing one's grip on the levels left behind. (...) Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind had built around you. Believe me, you will not regret.

As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher.

Our usual attitude is of 'I am this'. Separate consistently and perseveringly the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', and try to feel what is means to be, just to be, without being 'this' or 'that'.

You are so used to the support of concepts that when your concepts leave you, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling to them again.

What kind of Yoga do you want to practice, the Yoga of getting or the Yoga of giving?... One enslaves, the other liberates.

Would people know that nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would achieve much more with less expenditure of energy.

We grow through investigation, and to investigate we need experience. We tend to repeat what we have not understood. If we are sensitive and intelligent, we need not suffer. Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.

There are no steps to self-realization. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly and is irreversible. You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere abstractions. Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realization you see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.

Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of 'I'

These moments of inner quiet will burn out all obstacles without fail. Don't doubt its efficacy. Try it.

The world you think of is in your own mind.

To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it.

When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realisation the person ceases.

All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance - these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss.

The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Set your mind right and all will be right. When you know that the world is one, that humanity is one, you will act accordingly. But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.

I am dead already. Physical death will make no difference in my case. I am timeless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past or imagine the future. Where there are no names and shapes, how can there be desire and fear? With desirelessness comes timelessness. I am safe, because what is not, cannot touch what is. You feel unsafe, because you imagine danger. Of course, your body as such is complex and vulnerable and needs protection. But not you. Once you realize your own unassailable being, you will be at peace.

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

If you imagine yourself as separate from the 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.

Even for a moment do not think that you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence reality is found.

You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself.

Awareness neither dies nor is re-born. It is the changeless reality itself.

Meditation will help you to find your bonds, loosen them, untie them and cast your moorings. When you are no longer attached to anything, you have done your share. The rest will be done for you.

Don't pretend to be what you are not. Don't refuse to be what you are.

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet.

You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over.

When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognise it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.

You are not the mind. If you know you are not the mind, then what difference does it make if it's busy or quiet? You are not the mind.

To see myself in everybody, and everybody in myself, most certainly is love.

The root of fear is the feeling of not being what you are.

The first steps in self-acceptance are not at all pleasant, for what one sees is not a happy sight. One needs all the courage to go further.

Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be.

All you need is to stop searching outside for what can be found only within. Set your vision right before you operate. You are suffering from acute misapprehension . Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life - this is the quickest way to a change in your world.

When pain is accepted for what it is, a lesson and a warning, and deeply looked into and heeded, the separation between pain and pleasure breaks down, both become just experience - painful when resisted, joyful when accepted.

The relinquishing of the lesser is the gaining of the greater. Give up all and you gain all.

You have put so much energy into building a prison for yourself. Now spend as much on demolishing it.

To see the unreal is wisdom. Beyond this lies the inexpressible.

The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind - the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.

Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.

Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear.

Punishment is but legalized crime. In a society built on prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions will be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body.

There is nothing to do, just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say "be yourself" since you do not know yourself. Just be.

By being with yourself, the 'I am', by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface, and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies.

The old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new ones. You must realize yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.