Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

Indian guru (1897-1981)

Nisargadatta Maharaj (17 April 1897 – 8 September 1981) was a spiritual teacher of nonduality, who lived and taught in Bombay, India. He was very much admired for his direct and informal teaching. He is most famous for the work I Am That.

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Alternative Names: Maruti Shivrampant Kambli

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Increase and widen your desires until nothing but reality can fulfill them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means, be devoted to the real, the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well.

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.

When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation.

The sensation of beingness is a matter of experience, but I am beyond that. Some people claim that they have memories of past lives. I do not have even the experience of myself at anytime.

Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek or find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the “I am.” Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge or, rather, it will take you in.

You are concerned with your own happiness and I am telling you that there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own, it is where the ‘I’ is not.

The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours. Make your hooks straight and nothing can hold you.

What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really care to help the world, you must step out of it.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience, “I am the world, the world is myself,” you are free from desire and fear on one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other.

Our minds are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves, they come and go. As ocean, they are infinite and eternal. Know yourself as the ocean of being, the womb of all existence.

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.

What refuses to die cannot be reborn.

You cannot be alive, for you are life itself.

Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all.
It is untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble.

Self-realization definitely comes first. The mind cannot go beyond itself by itself. It must explode.