Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj quotes:

You cannot change the course of events, but you can change your attitude, and what really matters is the attitude and not the mere event.

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.

There is nothing to do, just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say "be yourself" since you do not know yourself. Just be.

Suffering is primarily a call for attention, which itself is a movement of love. More than happiness, love wants growth, the widening and deepening of awareness and consciousness and being. Whatever prevents that, becomes a cause of pain, and love does not shirk from pain.

If you are angry or in pain, separate yourself from anger and pain and watch them. Externalization is the first step to liberation.

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

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.

Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends. You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself.

Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind.

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.

What is beautiful? Whatever is perceived joyfully is beautiful. Bliss is the essence of beauty.

Refuse to think in terms of this or that. All pain needs investigation. The mind is nothing else but the self. Assumption obscures reality without destroying it. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false..Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time.The mind creates time and space and takes its own creations for reality.

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 I look beyond the mind, I see the witness. Beyond the witness, there is infinite intensity of emptiness and silence.

For me the moment of death will be a moment of jubilation, not of fear. I cried when I was born and I shall die laughing.

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

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

Once you say 'I want to find Truth', all your life will be deeply affected by it. All your mental and physical habits, feelings and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo a most radical transformation.

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.

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.

If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds.

Easier to change, than to suffer. Grow out of your childishness.That is all.

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

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.

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

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the supreme state will come to you uninvited and unexpected.

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.

Sometimes I feel I am everything, I call that Love. Sometimes I feel I am nothing, I call that Wisdom. Between Love and Wisdom my life continuously flows.

Life is love and love is life.

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

Use your mind. Remember. Observe. You are not different from others. Most of their experiences are valid for you too. Think clearly and deeply, go into the structure of your desires and their ramifications. They are a most important part of your mental and emotional make-up and powerfully affect your actions. Remember, you cannot abandon what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself.

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.

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.

The relinquishing of the lesser is the gaining of the greater. Give up all and you gain all.

I am timeless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past or imagine the future.

If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. Its your restlessness that causes chaos.

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

Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.

You want to know yourself. For this keep steadily in the focus of consciousness, the only clue you have: your certainty of being. Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality.

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

Increase and widen your desires till 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.

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.

Nothing troubles me. I offer no resistance to trouble - therefore it does not stay with me. On your side there is so much trouble. On mine there is no trouble at all. Come to my side.

As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory.

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am - unbound.

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

"I AM" itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither body nor mind, but the love of the self in you 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.

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet.

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 any effort on your part

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

Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.

Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far.

Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far. The secret is in action - here and now. It is your behavior that blinds you to yourself. Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect - whatever your idea of perfection may be. All you need is courage.

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.

All I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect

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

All that happens is the cause of all that happens. Causes are numberless; the idea of a sole cause is an illusion.

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

All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it.

All you can teach is understanding. The rest comes on its own.

All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing -- glue your self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.

All you need is to stop searching outside for what can be found only within. Set your vision right before you operate. You are suffering from acute misapprehension . Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life - this is the quickest way to a change in your world.

All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well...desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience. It is choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing-food, sex, power, fame-will make you happy is to decieve oneself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.

All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well.

As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. "I Am That" - pg 188

Awareness neither dies nor is re-born. It is the changeless reality itself.

Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention. Don't look for quick results; there may be none within your noticing. Unknown to you, your psyche will undergo a change; there will be more clarity in your thinking, charity in your feeling, purity in your behavior. You need not aim at these - you will witness the change all the same. For, what you are now is the result of inattention and what you become will be the fruit of attention.

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

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.

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.

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.

By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.

By being with yourself, the 'I am', by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface, and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies.

Come to the conclusion: I am unborn, I was unborn and I shall remain unborn

Concentration, Full Confidence, Pure Will. With these 3, what cannot be accomplished?

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 not-being.

Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it. It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condition.

Cooperate with your destiny, don't go against it, don't thwart it. Allow it to fulfill itself.

Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow. You need not seek anything, all will come to you most naturally and effortlessly.

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.

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 .

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

Do not neglect this body. This is the house of God; take care of it, only in this body can God be realized.

Do not try to know the truth, for knowledge by the mind is not true knowledge. But you can know what is not true-which is enough to liberate you from the false. 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. And there can be no salvation, without investigation, because non investigation is the main cause of bondage.

Do what you believe in and believe in what you do. The rest is a waste of time and energy.

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.

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

Don't pretend to be what you are not. Don't refuse to be what you are.

Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether.

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

Earnestness is the most important thing.

Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it.

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.

Forget the known, don't be all the time immersed in your experiences.

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.

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.

Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.

Get hold of the main thing: That the world and the self are one and perfect. Only your attitude is faulty and needs readjustment.

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.

Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be.

Give up the idea of being a person, that is all. You need not become what you are anyhow. There is the identity of what you are and there is the person superimposed on it. All you know is the person, the identity - which is not a person - you do not know, for you never doubted, never asked yourself the crucial question: 'Who am I?'

Give your real being a chance to shape your life. You will not regret it.

Having never left the house you are looking for the way home

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....

How can an unsteady mind make itself steady? Of course it cannot. It is the nature of the mind to roam about. All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.

How do you go about finding anything? By keeping your mind and heart on it. Interest there must be and steady remembrance. To remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success. You come to it through earnestness

I am dead already. Physical death will make no difference in my case. I am timeless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past or imagine the future. Where there are no names and shapes, how can there be desire and fear? With desirelessness comes timelessness. I am safe, because what is not, cannot touch what is. You feel unsafe, because you imagine danger. Of course, your body as such is complex and vulnerable and needs protection. But not you. Once you realize your own unassailable being, you will be at peace.

I am that by which I know 'I am'

I am told I was born. I do not remember...

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.

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.

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.

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.

I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: "I know nothing, I want nothing." Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all my knowledge is ignorance, that "I do not now" is the only true statement the mind can make....I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do....

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.

If you believe in God, work with Him. If you do not, become one.

If you imagine yourself as separate from the the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.

If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such or so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.

If you want to sin, sin wholeheartedly and openly. Sins too have their lessons to teach the earnest sinner, as virtues the earnest saint. It is the mixing up of the two that is so disastrous. Nothing can block you so effectively as compromise, for it shows lack of earnestness, without which nothing can be done.

Imagine a dense forest full of tigers and you in a strong steel cage. Knowing that you are well protected by the cage, you watch the tigers fearlessly. Next, you find the tigers in the cage and yourself roaming about in the jungle. Last, the cage disappears and you ride the tigers!