Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

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

It may seem arduous, but it is easy if you are earnest, and quite impossible if you are not. Everything yields to earnestness.

People are afraid to die, because they do not know what is death. The gnani has died before his death, he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. (…) The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description. (…).

To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor non-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror; it becomes a part of living.

(…) The problem is not yours – it is your mind's only. Begin by disassociating yourself from your mind. Resolutely remind yourself that you are not the mind and that its problems are not yours. (…) 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.

There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates. It is self-created in the sense that at its very centre is the false idea of oneself as a thing different and separate from other things. (...).

Your ideas about yourself change from day to day and from moment to moment. Your self image is the most changeful thing you have. It is utterly vulnerable, at the mercy of a passerby. A bereavement, the loss of a job, an insult, and your image of yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. And to know what you are not, you must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go with the basic fact: “I am.” Our usual attitude is of “I am this.” Consistently and perseveringly separate the “I am” from “this” or “that” and try to feel what it means to be, without being “this” or “that.” All our habits go against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps significantly. The more clearly you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the more quickly you will come to the end of your search and realize your limitless being.

To work in the world is hard, to refrain from all unnecessary work is even harder.

(...) Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or virtuous person what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative.

Everything happens all the time, but you must be ready for it. Readiness is ripeness. You do not see the real because your mind is not ready for it.

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.

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.

An infant knows its body, but not the body-based distinctions. It is just conscious and happy. After
all, that was the purpose for which it was born. The pleasure to be is the simplest form of self-love, which later grows into love of the self. Be like an infant with nothing standing between the body and the self. The constant noise of the psychic life is absent. In deep silence the self contemplates the body. It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet. Be like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to be.

(…) Just know that you are above and beyond all things and thoughts. What you want to be, you are it already. (…) desire nothing, for you lack nothing. The very seeking prevents you from finding.

Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting that, truly, by losing all you gain all.