Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

Study the prison you have inadvertently built around yourself.

What problems can there be which the mind did not create? Life and death do not create problems; pains and pleasures come and go, experienced and forgotten. It is memory and anticipation that create problems of attainment or avoidance, colored by like and dislike. Truth and love are man’s real nature, and mind and heart are the means of its expression.

You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need

In reality, nothing happens. Onto the screen of the mind, destiny forever projects its pictures, memories of former projections, and thus illusion constantly renews itself. The pictures come and go - light intercepted by ignorance. See the light and disregard the picture.

Humanity's problem lies in the misuse of the mind only.
All the treasures of nature and spirit are open to man who will use his mind rightly.

I shall tell you how my Guru's Guru died. After announcing that his end was nearing, he stopped eating, without changing the routine of his daily life. On the eleventh day, at prayer time he was singing and clapping vigorously and suddenly died! Just like that, between two movements, like a blown out candle. Everybody dies as he lives. I am not afraid of death, because I am not afraid of life. I live a happy life and shall die a happy death. Misery is to be born, not to die. All depends how you look at it.

God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: 'here and now I am.' Remove the 'here and now' the 'I am' remains, unassailable. (…). All I can say truly is: 'I am,' all else is inference (…). The sense 'I am' is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, Reality or by any other name. (…).

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.

When there is total surrender, complete relinquishment of all concern with one’s past, present and future, with one’s physical and spiritual security and standing, a new life dawns, full of love and beauty; then the guru is not important, for the disciple has broken the shell of self-defense. Complete self-surrender is liberation by itself.

Don’t try to understand! It’s enough if you do not misunderstand.

You must know your own true being as indomitable, fearless, ever victorious. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone.

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.

What refuses to die cannot be reborn.

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

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.