Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

You love yourself and you want yourself to be secure and happy. Don’t be ashamed of it; don’t deny it. It is natural and good to love oneself. Only, you should know exactly what it is that you love. It is not the body that you love, it is Life: perceiving, feeling, thinking, doing, loving, striving, creating. It is that Life you love, which is you, which is all. Realize it in its totality, beyond all divisions and limitations, and all your desires will merge in it, for the greater contains the smaller. Therefore find yourself, for in finding that you find all. Everybody is glad to be. But few know the fullness of it. You come to know by dwelling in your mind on “I am,” “I know,” “I love” - with the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words.

There is nothing wrong in the idea of a body, nor even in the idea 'I am the body.' But limiting oneself to one body only is a mistake. In reality all existence, every form, is my own, within my consciousness. (…).

The light which you see outside arises from your own light. The light of the sun and the moon cannot be compared to the light of your Self.

If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.

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. (...).

Do not undervalue attention. It means interest and also love. To know, to do, to discover, or to create you must give your heart to it – which means attention. All the blessings flow from it.

And spirituality or what you call “religion” is mainly to understand this: that you don’t require anything, you are a part of the totality, or reality.

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.

Everything is subjective, but the real is objective. (…) It does not depend on memories and expectations, desires and fears, likes and dislikes. All is seen as it is. (…) It is solid, steady, changeless, beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh. (…) Desirelessness and fearlessness will take you there.

Merely assuaging fears and satisfying desires will not remove this sense of emptiness you are trying to escape from; only self-knowledge can help you.

We shall suffer as long as our thoughts and actions are prompted by desires and fears.

(...) In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears. All there is is me, all there is is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings – I am. All has its being in me, in the “I am,” which shines in every living being. (...).

The source of consciousness cannot be the object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. (…)

(...) Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not set you free. Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.

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.