Nisargadatta Maharaj

Know yourself as beyond space and time - in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable - you will be afraid no longer. Know yourself as you are - against fear there is no other remedy.

One thing is quite clear to me; all that is, lives and moves and has its being in consciousness and I am in and beyond that consciousness. (…)

(…) Theories are neither right nor wrong. They are attempts at explaining the inexplicable. It is not the theory that matters, but the way it is being tested. (…) Experiment with any theory you like – if you are truly earnest and honest, the attainment of reality will be yours. (…) It is the earnestness that liberates and not the theory.

To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with
people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself, you need
nothing. Be what you are — conscious being — and don't stray away from
yourself.

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.

Sri Maharaj Nisargadatta. (2005). I am That. Durham, NC: The Acorn Press. .

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. (…).

Your begging bowl may be of pure gold, but as long as you do not know it, you are a pauper. You must know your inner worth and trust it and express it in the daily sacrifice of desire and fear.

Happiness is never your own; it is where the ‘I’ is not. It is beyond your reach; you have only to reach out beyond yourself and you will find it.

Whatever you do against your better knowledge is sin. (…) Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. (…)

You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first. Letting in the light makes everything easy. So, let us wait to improve others until we have seen ourselves as we are - and have changed.

By focusing the mind on “I am,” on the sense of being, “I am so-and-so” dissolves; “I am a witness only” remains and that too submerges in “I am all.” Then the all becomes the One and the One - yourself

The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing of value can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing the mind can visualize and want is of much value.

It is only when you are satiated with the changeable and long for the unchangeable that you are ready for turning around and stepping into what can be described (when seen from the level of the mind) as emptiness and darkness.

When you go deep inside nothing is all there is. There is no 'I am'. The 'I am' merges in the Absolute.