Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

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. (…)

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.

(...) 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.

(…) if you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed. To change the picture you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen! (…) Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life – this is the quickest way to a change of your world.

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

Leave alone your desires and fears and give your entire attention to the subject, to he who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: who desires? Let each desire bring you back to yourself.

I leave my human nature to unfold according to its destiny. I remain as I AM.

Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginning-less, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. (…).

(...) When we are absorbed in other things, in the not-self, we forget the self. There is nothing unnatural about it. But, why forget the self through excess of attachment? Wisdom lies in never forgetting the self as the ever-present source of both the experiencer and his experience.

Without my sense of being, what is the value of the world?

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.

Question: You seem to advise me to be self-centered to the point of
egoism. Must I not yield even to my interest in other people?

Maharaj: Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-
oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only
as far as they enrich, or enoble your own image of yourself.
And the ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection,
preservation and multiplication of one's own body. By body I
mean all that is related to your name and shape — - your family,
tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one's name and
shape is selfishness. A man who knows that he is neither body
nor mind cannot be selfish, for he has nothing to be selfish for.
Or, you may say, he is equally 'selfish' on behalf of everybody
he meets; everybody's welfare is his own. The feeling 'I am the
world, the world is myself' becomes quite natural; once it is es-
tablished, there is just no way of being selfish. To be selfish
means to covet, to acquire, accumulate on behalf of the part
against the whole.

I Am That

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.

Each pleasure is wrapped in pain. You soon discover that you cannot have one without the other … Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances … Real happiness flows from within.

(…) 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.