Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes & Sayings

Look at your mind dispassionately; this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet, you can go beyond it. Do not keep it busy all the time. Stop it - and just BE. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Know yourself to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind. That is enough. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

An infant knows its body, but not the body-based distinctions. It is just conscious and happy. After
all, that was the purpose for which it was born. The pleasure to be is the simplest form of self-love, which later grows into love of the self. Be like an infant with nothing standing between the body and the self. The constant noise of the psychic life is absent. In deep silence the self contemplates the body. It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet. Be like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to be. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Whatever you come across- go beyond — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Punishment is but legalized crime. In a society built on prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions will be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is only your self-identification with your mind that makes you happy or unhappy. Rebel against your slavery to your mind, see your bonds as self-created and break the chains of attachment and revulsion. Keep in mind your goal of freedom, until it dawns on you that you are already free, that freedom is not something in the distant future to be earned with painful efforts, but perennially one's own, to be used! Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, the courage to believe that you are free already and to act on it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment,
harmony with things as they happen. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In my world love is the only law. I do not ask for love, I give it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is in the body, a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body. Discover that current and stay with it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Until we can look at fear and accept it as the shadow of personal existence, as persons we are bound to be afraid. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

True happiness cannot be found in things that change and pass away. Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably. Happiness comes from the Self and can be found in the Self only. Find your real Self and all else will come with it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The personal needs a base, a body to identify oneself with, just as a colour needs a surface to appear on. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Concentration, Full Confidence, Pure Will. With these 3, what cannot be accomplished? — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Having never left the house you are looking for the way home — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance - these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The first steps in self-acceptance are not at all pleasant, for what one sees is not a happy sight. One needs all the courage to go further. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

One who is afraid of time becomes a prey of time. But time itself becomes a prey of that one who is not afraid of it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it. By being a slave to your desires and fears, you disturb peace. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realisation the person ceases. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind. Also you must have moments of complete inner peace and quiet, when your mind is absolutely still. If you miss it, you miss the entire thing. If you do not, the silence of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The world has only as much power over you as you give it. Rebel. Go beyond duality. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Freedom is from something. What are you to be free from? Obviously, you must be free from the person you take yourself to be, for it is the idea you have of yourself that keeps you in bondage. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and you have imprisoned yourself in it. Break the spell and be free. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The only thing required of you is to allow all your raging desires to relax into preferences. Then everything will be done through you and for you, not by you. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Do you realize the unimaginable greatness, the holiness of what you so casually call 'consciousness'? It is the unmanifest Absolute aware of its awareness through the manifestation, of which your mind-body is presently a part. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Would people know that nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would achieve much more with less expenditure of energy. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except Self-knowledge, is wisdom. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

All you can teach is understanding. The rest comes on its own. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one. But as long as you do not even doubt yourself to be Mr. So-and-so, there is little hope. When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you be shown? — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just as every drop of the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry the taste of eternity. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are not the body. You are the immensity and infinity of consciousness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your burden is of false self-identifications - abandon them all. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning-it is not as hard as you think. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realize that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelled, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

My stand is clear; produce to distribute, feed before you eat, give before you take, think of others before you think of yourself. Only a selfless society based on sharing can be stable and happy. This is the only practical solution. If you do not want it, then - fight. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The real is behind and beyond words, incommunicable, directly experienced, explosive in its effect on the mind. It is easily had when nothing else is wanted. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Give all your attention to the question: 'What is it that makes me conscious?', until your mind becomes the question itself and cannot think of anything else. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Don't pretend to be what you are not. Don't refuse to be what you are. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen, and you need not search for truth; truth will find you ... — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To see Reality is as simple as to see one's face in a mirror. Only, the mirror must be clear and true. A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all the levels, is needed to reflect the Reality. Be clear and quiet; alert and detached, all else will happen by itself. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Being oneself is completely beyond all motivation. You cannot be yourself for some reason. You are yourself, and no reason is needed. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To understand suffering, you must go beyond pain and pleasure. Your own desires and fears prevent you from understanding and thereby helping others. In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else. If you are serious about the suffering of mankind, you must perfect the only means of help you have, yourself. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Forgetting your Self is the greatest injury; all the calamities flow from it. Take care of the most important, the lesser will take care of itself. You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first. Letting in the light makes everything easy. So, let us wait with improving others until we see ourselves as we are/ and have changed. There is no need to turn round and round in endless questioning; find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To go beyond the mind, you must be silent and quiet. Peace and silence, silence and peace - this is the way beyond. Stop asking questions. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Believe me, there is no goal, nor a way to reach it. You are the way and the goal, there is nothing else to reach except yourself. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In peace and silence, the skin of the 'I' dissolves and the inner and the outer become one. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

When all names and forms have been given up, the real is with you. You need not seek it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Between the banks of pleasure and pain flows the river of life. If you spend much time on either bank you will miss out on life. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is the mind that tells you that the mind is there. Don't be deceived. All the endless arguments about the mind are produced by the mind itself, for its own protection, continuation and expansion. It is the blank refusal to consider the convolutions and convulsions of the mind that can take you beyond it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

All will come through, not a single soul (jiva) shall be lost. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of nonduality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being. In the state of nonduality, all separation ceases. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn on you. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Whatever comes and goes, is not reality. See the event as event only. Then you are vulnerable to reality, no longer armoured against it, as you were when you gave reality to events and experiences. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You will get to your maturity quickly if you stay in the nothingness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly life , given to search for truthand to helping people, and realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas . — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of 'I' — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The ultimate point of view is that there is nothing to understand, so when we try to understand, we are only indulging in acrobatics of the mind. Whatever you have understood, you are not. Why are you getting lost in concepts? You are not what you know, you are the knower. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In reality there are no others, and -helping yourself you help everybody else. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

All is a play in consciousness. All divisions are illusory. You can know the false only. The true you must yourself be. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are not what you think yourself to be, I assure you. The image you have of yourself is made up from memories and is purely accidental. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is no such thing as unconsciousness for it is not experienceable. We infer unconsciousness when there is a lapse in memory or communication. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Having realized that you cannot influence the results, pay no attention to your desires and fears. Let them come and go. Don't give them the nourishment of interest and attention ... — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Even for a moment do not think that you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence reality is found. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to happen to, a conscious separate center. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose yourself in it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Multiplicity without strife is joy. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You must realize first of all that you are the proof of everything, including yourself. None can prove your existence, because his existence must be confirmed by you first. Your being and knowing you owe nobody. Remember, you are entirely on your own. You do not come from somewhere, you do not go anywhere. You are timeless being and awareness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Love.. is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind - the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I do not suffer; I cannot suffer because I am not an object. Of course there is suffering. But do you realize what this suffering is? I am the suffering. Whatever is manifested, I am the functioning. Whatever is perceptible I am the perceiving of it. Whatever is done I am the doing of it; I am the doer of it, and, understand this, I am also that which is done. In fact, I am the total functioning. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

By all means be selfish; the right way. Wish yourself well, labour at what is good for you. Destroy all that stands between you and happiness. Be all; love all; be happy; make happy. No happiness is greater. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am - unbound. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I ask you what is the taste of your mouth all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter, nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just keep in mind the feeling 'I am', merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling 'I am'. Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Laugh with people laughing, cry with people crying, but don't fall into the river of world illusion. Stay on the banks. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; your next, to long intensely for liberation. The very intensity of longing will guide you; you need no other guide. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is no need of a way out! Don't you see that a way out is also part of the dream All you have to do is see the dream as dream ... Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one ... — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

These moments of inner quiet will burn out all obstacles without fail. Don't doubt its efficacy. Try it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting. It is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To see myself in everybody, and everybody in myself, most certainly is love. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Let the dream unroll itself to its very end. You cannot help it. But you can look at the dream as a dream, refuse it the stamp of reality. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something [the Reality] beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of Pure Awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In the light of consciousness all sorts of things happen and one need not give special importance to any. The sight of a flower is as marvelous as the vision of God. Let them be. Why remember them and then make memory into a problem? Be bland about them; do not divide them into high and low, inner and outer, lasting and transient. Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the self that is the same whatever happens. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Surrender to your own self, of which everything is an expression. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is only one meditation - the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The world is an illusion. Why is it unreal? Because none of the knowledge is going to remain permanent, as real knowledge. I had a number of identities; I was a child, I was a boy, I was a teenager, I was a middle-aged man, I was an old man. Like other identities I thought would remain constant, they never remained so. Finally, I became very old ... So which identity remained honest with me? — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The relinquishing of the lesser is the gaining of the greater. Give up all and you gain all. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj