181 Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes & Pointers

“As long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, you seem short-lived and vulnerable, and of course you will feel anxious to survive. But when you know yourself to be beyond space and time you will be afraid no longer.”

“You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.”

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing, love tells me I am everything. Between the two, my life flows.”

“I cannot but see you as myself. It is in the very nature of love to see no difference.”

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

“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. If you give it a rest, it will settle down and recover its purity and strength. Constant thinking makes it decay.”

“The unchangeable can only be realized in silence. Once realized, it will deeply affect the changeable, itself remaining unaffected.”

“All that a guru can tell you is: ‘My dear Sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you take yourself to be.’”

“When self-control becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper levels of existence and action.”

“It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”

“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.”

“To locate a thing you need space, to place an event you need time; but the timeless and spaceless defies handling. It makes everything perceivable, yet itself is beyond perception. The mind cannot know what is beyond the mind, but the mind is known by what is beyond it.”

“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.”

“Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive.”

“You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself.”

“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.”

“To reach the deeper layers of suffering you must go to its roots and uncover their vast underground network, where fear and desire are closely interwoven and the currents of life’s energy oppose, obstruct and destroy each other… This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind.”

“When I met my Guru, he told me: ‘You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am,’ find your real Self.’ I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon! My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am — unbound. I simply followed (my teacher’s) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being ‘I am,’ and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared — myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.”

“My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense ‘I am,’ it may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked! Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires and fears.”

“This amassing of knowledge is not going to help you, because it is in a dream. This dream will repeat itself.”

“The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind. It is when you do not know, that you are free to investigate.”

“All your identities at the body-mind level have been changing continuously, and none of them has been constant and faithful to you. Why then are you attracted to any of these identities by stating ‘I am like this’ or ‘I am like that?’”

“The body-mind is like a room. It is there, but I need not live in it all the time.”

“The mind persists as long as the body-identity is there. When this is gone, where is the mind?”

“Whatever you understand, you are not that. In non-understanding you understand yourself.”

“The task seems hopeless until suddenly all becomes clear and simple and so wonderfully easy. But, as long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will shirk from the final leap into the unknown.”

“To want nothing and do nothing — that is true creation! To watch the universe emerging and subsiding in one’s heart is a wonder.”

“You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself.”

“The mind and the world are not separate. Do understand that what you think to be the world is your own mind.”

“Distrust those who put a distance between you and your true being and offer themselves as a go-between.”

“Think of yourself as momentary, without past and future, and your personality dissolves.”

“Work neither for yourself nor for others, but for the work’s own sake. A thing worth doing is its own purpose and meaning. Make nothing a means to something else.”

“The world cannot give what it does not have; unreal to the core, it is of no use for real happiness.”

“One has to work in the world; naturally, carry on your worldly affairs, but understand that which has come about by itself — that is, this body, mind and consciousness — has appeared in spite of the fact that nobody has asked for it. I did not ask for it; it has come upon my original state which is timeless, spaceless and without attributes. So that whatever has happened is doing this business in the world. The life force and the mind are operating, but the mind will tempt you to believe that it is ‘you.’ Even if the mind tells you that you are the one who is acting, do not believe the mind.”

“You are not the mind. So whether the mind is quiet or unsteady, how are you concerned?”

“As long as one is conscious, there will be pain and pleasure. You cannot fight pain and pleasure on the level of consciousness. To go beyond them you must go beyond consciousness.”

“It may seem to be an attitude of cold aloofness, but it is not really so. Once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness. If it is not there, you are merely interested — for some personal reasons.”

“Once you realise that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end. It is only when you fully accept your responsibility for the little world in which you live, and watch the process of its creation, preservation and destruction, that you may be free from your imaginary bondage.”

“Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren’t any.”

“There is nothing to practise. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don’t disturb your mind with seeking.”

“Nothing compels. You are as you believe yourself to be. Stop believing.”

“A jnani is not born and he does not die. But when the body of a jnani drops off, people around him may weep in sorrow, because they identify with their bodies. They therefore consider a jnani to be an embodied person, which, however, he is not.”

“Conflict arises only when desire and fear refer to the same object.”

“The correct understanding will be when you realise that whatever you have understood so far, is invalid.”

“Leave it all behind you. Forget it. Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”

“Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person.”

“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.’”

“The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it will destroy the world in which you live. But if your motive is love of truth and life, you need not be afraid.”

“For meditation, you should sit with identification with the knowledge ‘I am’ only and have confirmed to yourself that you are not the body. You must dwell only in that knowledge ‘I am’ — not merely the words ‘I am.’ The design of body does not signify your identification. And also, the name which is given to you or to the body is not your correct identity.”

“All your problems are your body’s problems — food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, name, fame, security, survival — all these lose their meaning the moment you realize that you may not be a mere body.”

“How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of ‘I am’ is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the ‘I am’ without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalized but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it — body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions, etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.”

“Refuse all thoughts except one: the thought ‘I am.’ The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally without any interference on your part.”

“It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are.”

“What you can point out as ‘this’ or ‘that’ cannot be yourself.”

“You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor imagination.”

“You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.”

“Without an experiencer the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience.”

“Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realisation that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you.”

“My life is a succession of events, just like yours. Only I am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them.”

“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. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens.”

“Surely, the memory of an event cannot pass for the event itself. Nor can the anticipation. There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. There is a livingness about it, an actuality; it stands out as if illuminated. There is the ‘stamp of reality’ on the actual, which the past and the future do not have.”

“There is no place for effort in reality. It is selfishness, due to self-identification with the body, that is the main problem and the cause of other problems. And selfishness cannot be removed by effort, only by clear insight into its causes and effects. Effort is a sign of conflict between incompatible desires. They should be seen as they are — then only they dissolve.”

“No one is born; no one dies. What is born is only a concept. There is no entity to be freed. Not understanding this fact constitutes the bondage of ignorance; apperception of it is the freedom of truth.”

“You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you! They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting.”

“In reality things are done to you, not by you. Your desire just happens to you along with its fulfilment or non-fulfilment. You can change neither. You may believe that you exert yourself, strive and struggle. Again, it all merely happens, including the fruits of the work. Neither is by you and for you. All is in the picture exposed on the cinema screen, nothing in the light, including what you take yourself to be, the person. You are the light only.”

“All desires are bad, but some are worse than others. Pursue any desire, it will always give you trouble. Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not set you free. Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.”

“The very first step in understanding is in giving up the false concept of ‘I’ as a separate entity. It is also the last step.”

“You are free once you understand that your bondage is of your own making and you cease forging the chains that bind you.”

“The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.”

“To me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-like, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never out of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity.”

“In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has a name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and shapeless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace — immersed in the deep silence of reality.”

“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.”

“Reincarnation implies a reincarnating self. There is no such thing. The bundle of memories and hopes, called the ‘I,’ imagines itself existing everlastingly and creates time to accommodate its false eternity. To be, I need no past or future. All experience is born of imagination; I do not imagine, so no birth or death happens to me. Only those who think themselves born can think themselves re-born. All exists in awareness, and awareness neither dies nor is re-born. It is the changeless reality itself.”

“You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don’t be afraid of a world you yourself have created.”

“The true guru will never humiliate you, nor will he estrange you from yourself. He will constantly bring you back to the fact of your inherent perfection and encourage you to seek within. He knows you need nothing, not even him, and is never tired of reminding you. But the self-appointed guru is more concerned with himself than with his disciples.”

“Whatever you understand is not the truth and it is to be thrown overboard. You are trying to catch hold of something and cling to it. Accept, as it is, what I am telling you. Don’t be carried away by concepts. Don’t employ any words, and look at yourself as you are.”

“Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer teacher (Guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher, that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal.”

“Be friendly with your undifferentiated state, your true Self. There was never any division, but you are under the delusion that you are not one with it. I have understood my true nature: it is always alive, but not in the way everybody thinks.”

“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.’”

“You must come to a firm decision. You must forget the thought that you are a body and be only the knowledge ‘I Am,’ which has no form, no name. Just be.”

“When you stabilize in that beingness it will give all the knowledge and all the secrets to you, and when the secrets are given to you, you transcend the beingness, and you, the Absolute, will know that you are also not the consciousness.”

“When consciousness mixes with itself, that is samadhi. When one doesn’t know anything — and doesn’t even know that he doesn’t know anything — that is samadhi.”

“Prior to taking this form you were formless; spontaneously the form came, and when the form came there was a natural longing to return to the formless state. When you want to return to the formless, desireless state, then only you come here, to seek what you are.”

“Accept this identification only: that you are this manifest pure beingness, the very soul of the universe, of this life that you observe, and presently you are just wearing this bodily attire.”

“All is due to your having forgotten your own being. Having given reality to the picture on the screen, you love its people and suffer for them and seek to save them. It is just not so. You must begin with yourself. There is no other way.”

“The world and the mind are states of being. The supreme is not a state. It pervades all states, but it is not a state of something else. It is entirely uncaused, independent, complete in itself, beyond time and space, mind and matter.”

“All happens by itself. You are asking the question and you are supplying the answer. And you know the answer when you ask the question. All is a play in consciousness. All divisions are illusory. You can know the false only. The true you must yourself be.”

“The reason the world appeared is that you came to know that you are.”

“When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace — immersed in the deep silence of reality.”

“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 realization the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself.”

“Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper, so is the supreme state in the very center of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness. It is as if an opening in the mind through which the mind is flooded with light. The opening is not even the light.”

“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.”

“When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as two aspects of one being, that is immortality. To see the end in the beginning and beginning in the end is the intimation of eternity. Definitely, immortality is not continuity. Only the process of change continues.”

“My life was the common kind, with common desires and fears. When, through my faith in my teacher and obedience to his words, I realised my true being, I left behind my human nature to look after itself, until its destiny is exhausted.”

“Realization is but the opposite of ignorance. 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.”

“Why bring in all this tall talk? Reading scriptures is all right for the ignorant. The next step is to give it up and try to understand what you are. Shake off all that you have read and try to understand now.”

“The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source.”

“Refuse all thoughts except one: the thought ‘I am.’ The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally, without any interference on your part.”

“Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of ‘I am’ is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the ‘I am,’ without moving, you enter a state, which cannot be verbalized, but which can be experienced. All you need to do is to try and try again. After all the sense of ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it — body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions and so on. All these self-identifications are misleading, because of these you take yourself to be what you are not.”

“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.”

“Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and realize the full import of the only true statement you can make: ‘I am.’ 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.”

“Do not bother about anything you want, or think, or do, just stay put in the thought and feeling, ‘I am,’ focusing ‘I am’ firmly in your mind. All kinds of experience may come to you — remain unmoved in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient and only the ‘I am’ endures.”

“No way to self-realization is short or long, but some people are more in earnest and some are less. I can tell you about myself. I was a simple man, but I trusted my Guru. What he told me to do, I did. He told me to concentrate on ‘I am’ — I did. He told me that I am beyond all perceivables and conceivables — I believed. I gave my heart and soul, my entire attention and the whole of my spare time (I had to work to keep my family alive). As a result of faith and earnest application, I realized my self (‘swarupa’) within three years. You may choose any way that suits you; your earnestness will determine the rate of progress. Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of ‘I am.’ This is the beginning and also the end of all endeavour.”

“To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not. And to know what you are not, you must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go with basic fact ‘I am.’ The ideas: I am born at a given place, at a given time, from my parents and now I am so-and-so, living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so on, are not inherent in the sense ‘I am.’ Our usual attitude is ‘I am this’ or ‘that.’ Separate consistently and perseveringly the ‘I am’ from ‘this’ or ‘that’ and try to feel what it means to be, just to ‘be,’ without being ‘this’ or ‘that.’ All our habits go against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a lot. The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realize your limitless being.”

“‘I am’ itself is God, the seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor the mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love. What do you love now? The ‘I am.’ Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing else. This when effortless and natural, is the highest state. In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.”

“By focusing the mind on ‘I am,’ on the sense of being, ‘I am so-and-so’ dissolves; ‘am a witness only’ remains and that too submerges in ‘I am all.’ Then the all becomes the One and the One — yourself, not to be separate from me. Abandon the idea of a separate ‘I’ and the question of ‘whose experience?’ will not arise. On a deeper level my experience is your experience. Dive deep within yourself and you will find it easily and simply. Go in the direction of ‘I am.’”

“At the root of everything is the feeling ‘I am.’ The state of mind ‘there is a world’ is secondary, for to be, I do not need the world, the world needs me.”

“My advice to you is very simple — just remember yourself, ‘I am,’ it is enough to heal your mind and take you beyond, just have some trust. I don’t mislead you. Why should I? Do I want anything from you? I wish you well — such is my nature. Why should I mislead you? Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfill a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.”

“It is right to say ‘I am,’ but to say ‘I am this,’ ‘I am that,’ is a sign of not enquiring, not examining, of mental weakness or lethargy. Practice (sadhana) consists of reminding oneself forcibly of one’s pure ‘beingness,’ of not being anything in particular, not a sum of particulars, not even the totality of all particulars, which make up a universe.”

“Be content with what you are sure of. And the only thing you can be sure of is ‘I am.’ Stay with it and reject everything else. This is Yoga.”

“When I say ‘I am,’ I do not mean a separate entity with a body as its nucleus; I mean the totality of being, the ocean of consciousness, the entire universe of all that is known. I have nothing to desire for I am complete forever.”

“Self-remembrance, awareness of ‘I am’ ripens man powerfully and speedily. Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be. Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one thing thoroughly. That is all.”

“All I can say is ‘I am,’ all else is inference. But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and sleeping. The sense ‘I am’ is a manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call Self, God, Reality or by any other name. The ‘I am’ is in the world but it is the key which can open the door out of the world.”

“The sense ‘I am’ is composed of pure light and the sense of being. The ‘I’ is there even without the ‘am.’ So is the pure light there, whether you say ‘I’ or not. Become aware of that pure light and you will never lose it. The beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience — that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.”

“‘I am’ is ever fresh. You do need to remember in order to ‘be.’ As a matter of fact, before you can experience anything, there must be the sense of being. At present your being is mixed up with experiencing. All you need to do is to unravel being from the tangle of experiences. Once you have known pure being, without being this or that, you will discern it among experiences, and you will no longer be misled by names and forms.”

“My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind, in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am — unbound.”

“I am now 74 years old. And yet I feel that I am an infant. I feel clearly that in spite of all the changes I am a child. My Guru told me that the child, which is you even now, is your real self (‘swarupa’). Go back to that state of pure being, where the ‘I am’ is still in its purity before it gets contaminated with ‘this I am’ or ‘that I am.’ Your burden is of false self-identification — abandon them all. My Guru told me — ‘Trust me. I tell you, you are divine. Take it as the absolute truth. Your joy is divine; your suffering is divine too. All comes from God. Remember it always. You are God, your will alone is done.’ I did believe him and soon realized how wonderfully true and accurate were his words. I did not condition my mind by thinking: ‘I am God, I am wonderful, I am beyond.’ I simply followed his instruction, which was to focus the mind on pure being, ‘I am’ and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared — myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.”

“Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you feel miserable? Try the other way: indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither seeking, nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which ‘I am’ is timelessly present. Soon you will realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels that disturbs. Avoid the disturbance, that is all. To seek there is no need; you would not seek what you already have. You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality. To begin with, trust me, trust the teacher. It enables you to make the first step — and then your trust is justified by your own experience.”

“The ‘I am’ is a thought, while awareness is not a thought; there is no ‘I am aware’ in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not, one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all — being as well as non-being.”

“There is the body and there is the Self, between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as ‘I am.’ Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body and not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within.”

“There must be love in the relation between the person who says ‘I am’ and the observer of the ‘I am.’ As long as the observer, the inner self; the ‘higher’ self considers himself apart from the observed, the ‘lower’ self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the observer (‘vyakta’) accepts the person (‘vyakti’) as a projection or manifestation of himself, and so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of ‘I’ and ‘this’ goes and the identity of the outer and the inner, the Supreme Reality manifests itself.”

“Tirelessly I draw your attention to the one incontrovertible factor — that of being. Being needs no proofs — it proves itself. If only you go deep into the fact of being and discover the vastness and the glory, to which the ‘I am’ is the door, and cross the door and go beyond, your life will be full of happiness and light. Believe me; the effort needed is as nothing when compared with the discoveries arrived at.”

“Hold on to the sense ‘I am’ to the exclusion of everything else. When this mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all comes spontaneously; you need only to hold on to the ‘I am.’”

“Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am.’ Yet it is not extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more. Who would remain even to say ‘I am the witness’? When there is no ‘I am,’ where is the witness? In the timeless state there no self to take refuge in.”

“Trust the teacher. Take my case. My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense ‘I am,’ it may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked! Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires and fears.”

“The sense of ‘I am’ is both unreal and real. Unreal when I say ‘I am this or that.’ It is real when we mean ‘I am not this nor that.’ The ‘I am’ and the witness are not one, but without one the other cannot be.”

“The witness and consciousness appear and disappear together. The witness or the sense ‘I am’ too is transient but is given importance to break the spell of the known; the illusion that only the perceivable is real. Presently for you perception is primary and witnessing secondary, revert it to make witnessing primary and perception secondary (The ‘I am’ is just a device to revert).”

“Look at yourself steadily — it is enough. The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out. The ‘I am’ is the door. Stay at it until it opens. As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open.”

“Keep the ‘I am’ in the focus of awareness, remember that you ‘are,’ watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. It is transfigured and becomes the real Self, the ‘sadguru,’ the eternal friend and guide. To go deeper, meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking. In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered.”

“All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the ‘I am.’ Once you realize that all happens by itself (call it destiny or the will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed.”

“All the glories will come with mere dwelling on the feeling ‘I am.’ It is the simple that is certain, not the complicated. Somehow, people do not trust the simple, the easy, the always available. Why not give an honest trial to what I say? It may look very small and insignificant, but it is like a seed that grows into a mighty tree. Give yourself a chance.”

“I was taught to give attention to my sense of ‘I am’ and I found it supremely effective. Therefore, I can speak of it with full confidence. But often people come with bodies, brains and minds so mishandled, perverted and weak that the state of formless attention is beyond them. In such cases some simpler token of earnestness (like repeating a ‘mantra’) is appropriate. After all it is the earnestness that is indispensable, the crucial factor. ‘Sadhana’ is only a vessel and it must be filled to the brim with earnestness, which is but love in action. For nothing can be done without love.”

“Theoretically you always have a chance for self-realization. In practice a situation must arise, when all the factors necessary for self-realization are present. This need not discourage you. Your dwelling on the fact of ‘I am’ will soon create another chance. For attitude attracts opportunity. All you know is second-hand. Only ‘I am’ is first-hand and needs no proofs. Stay with it.”

“The knowledge ‘I am’ is the soul of the entire world. The witness of the knowledge ‘I am’ is prior to the knowledge ‘I am.’ Try to understand yourself as you are, do not add any qualifications.”

“The ‘I am’ is the sum total of everything you perceive. It appears spontaneously and disappears, it has no dwelling place. It is like a dream world. Do not try to be something, even a spiritual person. You are the manifested. The tree is already there in the seed. Such is the ‘I am.’ Just see it as it is.”

“Once you have grasped the truth that the world is full of suffering, that to be born is a calamity, you will find the urge and the energy to go beyond. Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you up. If you do not want to suffer, don't go to sleep. You cannot know yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your very nature. You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find enlightenment.”

“Just realise 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 to be done.”

“No university can teach you to be yourself. The only way to learn is by practice.”

“To know you are a prisoner of the mind is the dawn of wisdom.”

“The problem is not yours. It is your mind’s only.”

“You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over.”

“Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.”

“There is no need of a way out! Don't you see that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is to 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 realise 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.”

“Realize that your world is only a reflection of yourself and stop finding fault with the reflection. Attend to yourself, set yourself right; mentally and emotionally. The physical self will follow automatically.”

“Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear.”

“In my world, nothing ever goes wrong.”

“Words can bring you only up to their own limit; to go beyond, you must abandon them. Remain as the silent witness only.”

“In the mirror of your mind all kinds of pictures appear and disappear. Knowing that they are entirely your own creations, watch them silently come and go. Be alert, but not perturbed. This attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of yoga. You see the picture, but you are not the picture.”

“Know yourself to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind. That is enough.”

“Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what it is that you have never lost.”

“Shift your attention from words to silence and you will hear.”

“We miss the real by lack of attention, and create the unreal by excess of imagination.”

“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.”

“When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognise it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it.”

“If you have contact with pure consciousness even for a moment, you are liberated.”

“All worldly activities are being done for the sake of entertainment of the consciousness of every living being.”

“Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.”

“A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without effort on your part.”

“There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don’t disturb your mind with seeking.”

“You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting.”

“There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot.”

“Don’t ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind. Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.”

“The world has only as much power over you as you give it. Rebel. Go beyond duality.”

“The sense of ‘I am’ is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying, I am young; I am rich, and so on. But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.”

“The sun is always there, there is no night to it; the mind blinded by the ‘I-am-the-body’ idea spins out endlessly its thread of illusion.”

“You will not admit that your conclusions bind nobody but you. Do see that the image you have of me may be altogether wrong. Your image of yourself is wrong too, but that is your problem. But you need not create problems for me and then ask me to solve them. I am neither creating problems nor solving them.”

“Freedom from desire means this. The compulsion to satisfy is absent.”

“You can know reality only when you are astonished.”

“The knowledge ‘I am’ itself is a cheat. When the beingness appears, that love for existence is the result of the primary illusion. Once you come to know that you exist, you feel like enduring eternally. You always want to be, to exist, to survive. And so the struggle begins.”

“There is no place for effort in reality.”

“Why should I bother about others? Who else is there? In that state of ‘Aloneness,’ ‘I’ only exist.”

“All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one…”

“I see what you too could see, here and now, but for the wrong focus of your attention. You give no attention to your Self. Your mind is all with things, people and ideas, never with your Self. Bring your Self into focus, become aware of your own existence.”