Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

(…) To the Self the world is but a colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

(…) Desire what is worth desiring and desire it well. Just like you pick your way in a crowd, passing between people, so you find your way between events, without missing your general direction. It is easy, if you are earnest.

Your mind projects a structure and you identify yourself with it. It is in the nature of desire to prompt the mind to create a world for its fulfillment. Even a small desire can start a long line of action; what about a strong desire? Desire can produce a universe; its powers are miraculous. Just as a small matchstick can set a huge forest on fire, so does a desire light the fires of manifestation. (…)

My experience is that everything is bliss. But the desire for bliss creates pain. Thus bliss becomes the seed of pain. The entire universe of pain is born of desire. Give up the desire for pleasure and you will not even know what is pain. (…) for the sake of pleasure you are committing many sins. And the fruits of sin are suffering and death.

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. (...).

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.

Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. (...)

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.

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 not-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the mind-body is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.

"(…) Can there be renewal without death? Even the darkness of sleep is refreshing and rejuvenating. Without death we would have been bogged for ever in eternal senility. (…) When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as two aspects of one being, that is immortality. (...).

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.

The gnani is afraid of nothing. But he pities the man who is afraid. After all, to be born, to live and to die is natural. To be afraid is not. (…).

(…) I live on courage. Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. (…) I have the courage to be as nothing and to see the world as it is: nothing. It sounds simply, just try it!

The entire purpose of a clean and well-ordered life is to liberate man from the thralldom of chaos and the burden of sorrow. (…) What is wrong with a life which is free from problems? Personality is merely a reflection of the real. (…) Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.