Nisargadatta Maharaj citations

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“Those who know only scriptures know nothing. To know is to be. I know what I am talking about; it is not from reading, or hearsay.”

“The talk is in your world. In mine – there is eternal silence. My silence sings, my emptiness is full. I lack nothing. You cannot know my world until you are there.”

“Everything yields to earnestness.”

“(…) Salvation is to see things as they are. (…)”

“That in which consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we call the ether of consciousness. All the objects of consciousness form the universe. What is beyond both, supporting both, is the supreme state, a state of utter stillness and silence. Whoever goes there, disappears. It is unreachable by words, or mind. You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless and spontaneous state, beyond being and not being.”

“By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror-like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.”

“(…) A weak mind cannot control its own projections. Be aware, therefore, of your mind and its projections. You cannot control what you do not know. On the other hand, knowledge gives power. In practice it is very simple. To control yourself – know yourself.”

“All this is temporary, while I am dealing with the eternal. Gods and their universes come and go, avatars follow each other in endless succession, and in the end we are back at the source. I talk only of the timeless source of all gods with all their universes, past, present and future.”

“(…) Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don’t be lazy to think.”

“Your weakness is due to your conviction that you were born into the world. In reality the world is ever recreated in you and by you. See everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being. You will find that in that light there is love and infinite energy.”

“(…) There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. (…) What makes the present so different? Obviously, my presence. I am real for I am always now, in the present, and what is with me now shares in my reality.”

“And what is death? It is the change in the living process of a particular body. Integration ends and disintegration sets in. (…) In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.”

“Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate? Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all. It is untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble. It always wants, expects, demands. Being false, it is empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance. It is afraid of and avoids enquiry. It identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary. Whatever it gets, it loses and asks for more. (…).”

“(…) I live on courage. Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. (…) I have the courage to be as nothing and to see the world as it is: nothing. It sounds simply, just try it!”

“Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide. As long as your urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with you. Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and 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.”

“(…) one is always free. You are both conscious and free to be conscious. Nobody can take this away from you. (…)”

“The entire purpose of a clean and well-ordered life is to liberate man from the thralldom of chaos and the burden of sorrow. (…) What is wrong with a life which is free from problems? Personality is merely a reflection of the real. (…) Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.”

“(…) Spiritual practice is will asserted and re-asserted. Who has not daring will not accept the real even when offered. Unwillingness born out of fear is the only obstacle.”

“(…) To see myself in everybody and everybody in myself most certainly is love.”

“My experience is that everything is bliss. But the desire for bliss creates pain. Thus bliss becomes the seed of pain. The entire universe of pain is born of desire. Give up the desire for pleasure and you will not even know what is pain. (…) for the sake of pleasure you are committing many sins. And the fruits of sin are suffering and death.”

“Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss consciously. Because you take your mind off yourself and make it dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being, of being well. (…) True happiness is spontaneous and effortless. (..)”

“Surely you can change your world if you work at it. (…) a world of which you are the only source and ground is fully within your power to change. What is created can always be dissolved and re-created. All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it. (…)”

“Want the best. The highest happiness, the greatest freedom. Desirelessness is the highest bliss. (…) Only God’s energy is infinite – because he wants nothing for Himself. Be like Him and all your desires will be fulfilled. The higher your aims and vaster desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfillment. Desire the good of all and the universe will work for you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn it the hard way. (…).”

“Purify yourself by a well-ordered and useful life. Watch over your thoughts, feelings, words and actions. This will clear your vision.”

“(…) All you can do is to grasp the central point, that reality is not an event and does not happen and whatever happens, whatever comes and goes, is not reality. (…).”

“(…) This must be well grasped; the world hangs on the thread of consciousness, no consciousness, no world.”

“(…) creation itself is rooted in ignorance; matter itself is ignorance. Not to know, and not to know that one does not know, is the cause of endless suffering.”

“(…) To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow. 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.”

“(…) All kind of experience may come to you – remain unmoved in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient, and only ‘I am’ endures.”