Book:I Am That - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Can there be the sense of ‘I am’ without being somebody or other?

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.

Many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the foundation, the timeless and spaceless 'possibility' of all experience.

Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own.

I am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them.

Your high opinion of me is your opinion only. Any moment you may change it. Why attach importance to opinions, even your own?

There is consciousness in which everything happens.

One thing is certain: the real is not imaginary, it is not a product of the mind.

Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly.

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. Ultimately even the observer you are not.

The inclusive mind is love in action, battling against circumstances, initially frustrated, ultimately victorious.

Mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.

Time, space, causation are mental categories, arising and subsiding with the mind.

The so-called law of causation contradicts itself. No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing;

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

When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity and creative freedom takes its place.

This source is not a cause and no cause is a source. Because of that, I say everything is uncaused. You may try to trace how a thing happens, but you cannot find out why a thing is as it is.

Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears at death.

In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.

The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.

We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: 'I am this, I am that', continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps.

The world - I see it as appearing in consciousness, which is the totality of the known in the immensity of the unknown.

The world can be said to appear, but not to be. Whatever is time bound is momentary and has no reality.

I see the world as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness

Only by negation, as uncaused, independent, unrelated, undivided, uncomposed, unshakable, unquestionable, unreachable by effort. Every positive definition is from memory and, therefore, inapplicable. And yet my state is supremely actual and, therefore, possible, realisable, attainable.

My world is an open world, common to all, accessible to all. In my world there is community, insight, love, real quality; the individual is the total, the totality -- in the individual. All are one and the One is all.

Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally without any interference on your part.

Just live your life as it comes, but alertly, watchfully, allowing everything to happen as it happens, doing the natural things the natural way, suffering, rejoicing -- as life brings.

Happiness comes from the self and can be found in the self only. Find your real self (swarupa) and all else will come with it.

Realise one, and you will realise all.

The very search for pleasure is the cause of pain. It is a vicious circle.

Be alert. Question, observe, investigate, learn all you can about confusion, how it operates, what it does to you and others.

All you need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself.

The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it.

Karma is the law that works for righteousness; it is the healing hand of God.

When you desire the common good, the whole world desires with you. Make humanity's desire your own and work for it. There you cannot fail.

By knowing what you are not, you are free of it and remain in your own natural state. It all happens quite spontaneously and effortlessly.

You are what you are and that is all.

You are the pure awareness that illuminates consciousness and its infinite content.

Watch over your thoughts, feelings, words and actions. This will clear your vision.

First thing first -- know yourself, all else will come with it.

You must watch yourself continuously -- particularly your mind -- moment by moment, missing nothing. This witnessing is essential for the separation of the self from the not-self.

There is but one state of being, including and transcending the three mental states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.

Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. 

To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy.

Be free of name and form and of the desires and fears they create, then what remains?

The void is full to the brim. It is the eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.

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

You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.

Your mind is focussed in the world, mine is focussed in reality.

The universe works by itself -- that I know. What else do I need to know?

I am timeless and spaceless.

A state of utter stillness and silence - Whoever goes there, disappears. It is unreachable by words, or mind. You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless and spontaneous state, beyond being and not being.

This state is entirely one and indivisible, a single solid block of reality. The only way of knowing it is to be it. The mind cannot reach it. To perceive it does not need the senses; to know it, does not need the mind.

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

At the moment of realisation the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself.

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.

The supreme is not a state.

When all names and forms have been given up, the real is with you. You need not seek it. Plurality and diversity are the play of the mind only. Reality is one.

From the highest point of view the world has no cause.

Once you create for yourself a world in time and space, governed by causality, you are bound to search for and find causes for everything. You put the question and impose an answer.

What moves is the film -- which is the mind.

Who came first -- you or your parents? You imagine that you were born at a certain time and place, that you have a father and a mother, a body and a name. This is your sin and your calamity!

Work and knowledge should go hand in hand.

You think God knows you? Even the world He does not know.

When you are free of the world, you can do something about it.

A man willing to die for truth will get it.

The jnani is the supreme and also the witness. He is both being and awareness. In relation to consciousness he is awareness. In relation to the universe he is pure being.

Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind.

Want the best. The highest happiness, the greatest freedom. Desirelessness is the highest bliss.

The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfilment. Desire the good of all and the universe will work with you.

All kinds of experience may come to you -- remain unmoved in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient, and only the 'I am' endures.

To know is to be.

The real is beyond. The witness is the door through which you pass beyond.

Seeing the false as the false, is meditation. This must go on all the time.

Your earnestness will determine the rate of progress.

To realise the Eternal is to become the Eternal, the whole, the universe, with all it contains. Every event is the effect and the expression of the whole and is in fundamental harmony with the whole. All response from the whole must be right, effortless and instantaneous.

Delayed response is wrong response. Thought, feeling and action must be one and simultaneous with the situation that calls for them.

Only in the dissolution of the problem in the universal solvents of enquiry and dispassion, can its right solution be found.

I contain all, nothing contains me.

Causality is in the mind, only; memory gives the illusion of continuity and repetitiveness creates the idea of causality.

To see God is to be God.

Call it as you like. It is solid, steady, changeless, beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh.

The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very being. It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything, but the Supreme.

Only desires motivated by love, goodwill and compassion are beneficial to both the subject and object and can be fully satisfied.

The entire universe strives to fulfil a desire born of compassion.

Freedom from desire means this: the compulsion to satisfy is absent.

Desire for embodied existence is the root-cause of trouble.

What is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death.

Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate? Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all. 

Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.

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

At the level of the absolute there are no persons;

The impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears.

It is Being -- Wisdom -- Love -- all absolute. 

True virtue is divine nature (swarupa).

Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. 

"Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up".

When you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will be not far away.

All that the outer does is merely in response to the inner.

It is the inner that can control the outer. The outer will be wise to obey.

Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence.

He does not identify himself with the name and shape. He uses memory, but memory cannot use him.

You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost -- your own being.

There is no duality whatsoever. You are merely projecting your own ideas. Your scriptures and your gods have no meaning here.

In mine I have being only. Nothing else. You people are rich with your ideas of possession, of quantity and quality. I am completely without ideas.

See your world as it is, not as you imagine it to be. Discrimination will lead to detachment; detachment will ensure right action; right action will build the inner bridge to your real being.

Give up the desire for pleasure and you will not even know what is pain.

You were never born nor will you ever die, but you believe that you were born at a certain date and place and that a particular body is your own.

Salvation is to see things as they are. I really do not see myself related to anybody and anything. Not even to a self, whatever that self may be. I remain forever -- undefined. I am -- within and beyond -- intimate and unapproachable.

Destiny unfolds itself and actualises the inevitable. You cannot change the course of events, but you can change your attitude and what really matters is the attitude and not the bare event.

Replace self-love by love of the Self and the picture changes.

Everything must be scrutinised and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed.

Free from memory and expectation, I am fresh, innocent and wholehearted.

There is only one Self, the Supreme Reality, in which the personal and the impersonal are one.

Supreme Self never sleeps and never dies.

Mind you, I do nothing. I just see them happen.

When a thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it, disappears.

When a jnani joins the universal mind, all his goodness and wisdom become the heritage of humanity and uplift every human being.

The real is experienced in silence.

Surely, you must sleep in order to wake up. You must die in order to live.

How is one to work then? - Neither for yourself nor for others, but for the work's own sake.

To me, nothing exists by itself. All is the Self, all is myself. To see myself in everybody and everybody in myself most certainly is love.

Things happens as they happen -- not because I make them happen, but it is because I am that they happen. In reality nothing ever happens.

The basic unity operates in spite of all.

In realisation there is nothing to hold on to and nothing to forget. Everything is known, nothing is remembered.

Bodies come and go in consciousness and consciousness itself has its roots in me. I am life and mine are mind and body.

In the real, the question 'what is real?' does not arise. The manifested (saguna) and unmanifested (nirguna) are not different.

When you discern and let go all that is unreal, what remains is real.

The world has no existence apart from you. At every moment it is but a reflection of yourself. You create it, you destroy it.

It is not the universe that needs improving, but your way of looking.

It is a stage on which a world drama is being played. The quality of the performance is all that matters; not what the actors say and do, but how they say and do it.

You have a purpose only as long as you are not complete (purna); till then completeness, perfection, is the purpose. But when you are complete in yourself, fully integrated within and without, then you enjoy the universe; you do not labour at it.

God is not only true and good, he is also beautiful (satyam-shivam-sundaram). He creates beauty -- for the joy of It.

Whatever is perceived blissfully is beautiful. Bliss is the essence of beauty.

Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss consciously. 

True happiness is spontaneous and effortless.

Pleasure and pain alternate. Happiness is unshakable. What you can seek and find is not the real thing. Find what you have never lost, find the inalienable.

Weak desires can be removed by introspection and meditation, but strong, deep-rooted ones must be fulfilled and their fruits, sweet or bitter, tasted.

At the root of everything, is the feeling 'I am'.

True growing up depends on getting the body out of the way.

A life lived thoughtfully, in full awareness, is by itself Nisarga Yoga.

Living in spontaneous awareness, consciousness of effortless living, being fully interested in one's life -- all this is implied.

Humility and silence are essential for a sadhaka, however advanced. Only a fully ripened jnani can allow himself complete spontaneity.

Yes, the inner fruit must ripen. Until then the discipline, the living in awareness, must go on. Gradually the practice becomes more and more subtle, until it becomes altogether formless.

Pure experience does not bind; experience caught between desire and fear is impure and creates karma.

All are being liberated. It is not what you live, but how you live that matters. The idea of enlightenment is of utmost importance. Just to know that there is such possibility, changes one's entire outlook.

The very meeting a Guru is the assurance of liberation. 

Just being aware and affectionate -- intensely.

Remember facts, forget opinions.

Whatever the way of approach, in the end all becomes one.

All is one.

I live on courage. Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not.

Pure being cannot be described.

One is always bliss, but never blissful.

The self by its nature knows itself only.

Noble friendship (satsang) is the supreme remedy for all ills, physical and mental.

Seek within. Your own self is your best friend.

All suffering is born of desire. True love is never frustrated. How can the sense of unity be frustrated? What can be frustrated is the desire for expression. Such desire is of the mind.

Life itself without love is evil.

You are love itself.

Living is life's only purpose.

When one is fully matured, realisation is explosive. 

In complete obedience to nature there is no effort.

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

Rare is the realised man who discloses his realisation and fortunate are those who have met him, for he does it for their abiding welfare.

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.

I flow with life -- faithfully and irresistibly.

Remove the sense of separateness and there will be no conflict.

When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.

To control yourself -- know yourself.

To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor notliving. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.

I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.

Humanity's problem lies in this misuse of the mind only. All the treasures of nature and spirit are open to man who will use his mind rightly.

Fear and greed cause the misuse of the mind. The right use of mind is in the service of love, of life, of truth, of beauty.

First realise 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 will follow automatically.

If you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed.

Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life -- this is the quickest way to a change of your world.

You must conquer your own mind and for this you must go beyond it.

Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfil 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.

To help others, one must be beyond the need of help.

The happiness you cannot share is spurious. Only the shareable is truly desirable.

Life itself is the Supreme Guru; be attentive to its lessons and obedient to its commands. When you personalise their source, you have an outer Guru; when you take them from life directly, the Guru is within. Remember, wonder, ponder, live with it, love it, grow into it, grow with it, make it your own -- the word of your Guru, outer or inner. Put in all and you will get all. I was doing it. All my time I was giving to my Guru and to what he told me.

Beyond comfort of mind and body what happiness do you know?

A jnani is aware of himself as neither conscious nor unconscious, but purely aware, a witness to the three

states of the mind and their contents.

Self-forgetfulness is the darkness.

Think of yourself by all means. Only don't bring the idea of a body into the picture. There is only a stream of sensations, perceptions, memories and ideations. The body is an abstraction, created by our tendency to seek unity in diversity -- which again is not wrong.

There is nothing wrong in the idea of a body, nor even in the idea 'I am the body'. But limiting oneself to one body only is a mistake. In reality all existence, every form, is my own, within my consciousness.

I am beyond consciousness and, therefore, in consciousness I cannot say what I am. Yet, I am. The question 'Who am I' has no answer. No experience can answer it, for the self is beyond experience.

I remain what I am: the 'I am' immovable, unshakable, independent. What you call the universe, nature, is my spontaneous creativity. Whatever happens -- happens. But such is my nature that all ends in joy.

I know that it is in the nature of awareness to set things right. Let consciousness look after its creations!

The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. To be free in the world, you must die to the world. Then the universe is your own, it becomes your body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

Attachment is bondage, detachment is freedom. To crave is to slave.

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

Don't be afraid, don't resist, don't delay. Be what you are. There is nothing to be afraid of. Trust and try. Experiment honestly. Give your real being a chance to shape your life. You will not regret.

The real does not begin; it only reveals itself as beginningless and endless, all-pervading, all-powerful, immovable prime mover, timelessly changeless.

Leave alone your desires and fears, give your entire attention to the subject, to him who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: 'who desires?' Let each desire bring you back to yourself.

Reality is beyond the subjective and objective, beyond all levels, beyond every distinction.

The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else.

The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for further help. 

Forget your past experiences and achievements, stand naked, exposed to the winds and rains of life and you will have a chance.

Find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place.

The body exists in time and space, transient and limited, while the dweller is timeless and spaceless, eternal and all-pervading.

There is a universal power which is in control and is responsible.

To imagine that you are in control and responsible for one body only is the aberration of the body-mind.

See that birth and death are mere ideas.

The power that created the body takes care of it.

Abandon all conceptualisation and stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about it and all will be well with you.

But ultimately there is no inner, nor outer; the light of consciousness is both the creator and the creature, the experiencer and the experience, the body and the embodied. Take care of the power that projects all this and your problems will come to an end.

The particular and the universal are inseparable.

Beyond the body there is only the One.

What is the root of desire? The urge to find yourself. All creation toils for its self and will not rest until it returns to it.

By all means help the world. You will not help much, but the effort will make you grow.

Deep down there is utter fullness.

The jnani belongs to all. He gives himself tirelessly and completely to whoever comes to him. If he is not a giver, he is not a jnani. Whatever he has, he shares.

Mine is a silent language. Learn to listen and understand.

Turn within and you will come to trust yourself.

Go beyond the illusion of time.

The real remain real, regardless of conditions in which it is reflected.

Where there is neither time nor space, how can there be death? The jnani is already dead to name and shape.

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

The Supreme is both creation and dissolution, concretion and abstraction, the focal and the universal. It is also neither. Words do not reach there, nor mind.

The jnani is the Changeless Reality, which makes the changeful possible.

Desire nothing, for you lack nothing. The very seeking prevents you from finding.

Compassion and love are my very core.

Enlightenment is the highest good. Once you have it, nobody can take it away from you.

The state of witnessing is full of power.

I am nothing, have nothing, can do nothing. Yet all comes out of me -- the source is me; the root, the origin is me.

You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you.

The words of a jnani have the power of dispelling ignorance and darkness in the mind. It is not the words that matter, but the power behind them.

After all, the realised man is the most earnest man. Whatever he does, he does it completely, without limitations and reservations. Integrity will take you to reality.

When all the false selfidentifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love.

Stay open and quiet, that is all. What you seek is so near you, that there is no place for a way.

You are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it.

Once you realise that the world is your own projection, you are free of it.

Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be too lazy to think.

How does personality, come into being? By memory. By identifying the present with the past and projecting it into the future. Think of yourself as momentary, without past and future and your personality dissolves.

Because I am, all is.

Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfil them.

Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.

Awareness is unattached and unshaken. It is lucid, silent, peaceful, alert and unafraid, without desire and fear. Meditate on it as your true being and try to be it in your daily life, and you shall realise it in its fullness.

When one is found, all are found. 

Do nothing, just be. In being all happens naturally.

Life is to be lived; there is no time for analysis. The response must be instantaneous -- hence the importance of the spontaneous, the timeless. It is in the unknown that we live and move. the known is the past.

The real does not die, the unreal never lived.

Your sadhana is to be.

It is desires and fears that make the mind restless. Free from all negative emotions it is quiet.

Some unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting. You are merely watching what happens, without being able to influence it in any way.

Your burden is of false self-identifications -- 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'.

There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche.

You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality.

You are the all-pervading, all transcending reality. Behave accordingly: think, feel and act in harmony with the whole and the actual experience of what I say will dawn upon you in no time. 

It is not the body that you love, it is Life --perceiving, feeling, thinking, doing, loving, striving, creating. It is that Life you love, which is you, which is all. realise it in its totality, beyond all divisions and limitations, and all your desires will merge in it, for the greater contains the smaller.

All will happen by itself. You need not do anything, only don't prevent it.

Love is will, the will to share your happiness with all. Being happy -- making happy -- this is the rhythm of love.

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

If you just try to keep quiet, all will come -- the work, the strength for work, the right motive. Must you know everything beforehand? Don't be anxious about your future -- be quiet now and all will fall in place. The unexpected is bound to happen, while the anticipated may never come.

No experience will hurt you, provided you don't make it into a habit.

Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. 

Keeping away from all desires and contentment in what comes by itself is a very fruitful state -- a precondition to the state of fullness.

As body, you are in space. As mind, you are in time. But are you mere body with a mind in it? Have you ever investigated?

Your idea that you were born and that you will die is absurd.

There is no such thing as body, it is but a state of mind.

Life weaves eternally its many webs. The weaving is in time, but life itself is timeless. Whatever name and shape you give to its expressions, it is like the ocean -- never changing, ever changing.

Behave as if you were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. Don't oppose it and deny it all the time. Keep an open mind at least. Yoga is bending the outer to the inner. Make your mind and body express the real which is all and beyond all.

The person (vyakti) flickers, awareness (vyakta) contains all space and time, the absolute (avyakta) is.

When you are love itself, you are beyond time and numbers. In loving one you love all, in loving all, you love each. One and all are not exclusive.

Life is now only. Do not talk to me about past and future -- they exist only in your mind.

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.

Don't assume what is not true and you will see things as I see them. Pain and pleasure, good and bad, right and wrong: these are relative terms and must not be taken absolutely. They are limited and temporary.

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.

Pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering.

Unless your time has come, you will have neither the desire nor the strength to go for self-enquiry whole-heartedly.

Trust and obey your Guru, for he is the messenger of your Real Self.

The Guru is always ready; you are not ready. You have to be ready to learn; or you may meet your Guru and waste your chance by sheer inattentiveness and obstinacy.

The entire universe is your Guru. You learn from everything, if you are alert and intelligent.

Obversely, suffering is due to nonacceptance.

When pain is accepted for what it is, a lesson and a warning, and deeply looked into and heeded, the separation between pain and pleasure breaks down, both become experience -- painful when resisted, joyful when accepted.

The wholehearted acceptance of pain releases the springs of happiness.

Watch your mind with great diligence, for there lies your bondage and also the key to freedom.

Contradiction is the mark of the false; the real never contradicts itself.

The moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity. This is the function of the Guru -- to make us see the madness of our daily living. Life makes you conscious, but the teacher makes you aware.

In my world love is the only law. I do not ask for love, I give it. Such is my nature.

Everything happens, but there is a continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.

There is nothing wrong with your world, it is your thinking yourself to be separate from it that creates disorder. Selfishness is the source of all evil.

No memory of past pleasure or pain is left. Each moment is newly born.

In awareness you grow.

There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life.

The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.

You must gain your own experience. You are accustomed to deal with things, physical and mental. I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy, neither body nor mind. Once you have a glimpse of your own being, you will not find me difficult to understand.

The idea that you are the body is the worst.

There is no effort in witnessing.

If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself: 'Who am I?', the answer comes at once, though it is wordless and silent. 

Even for a moment do not think that you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape.

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.

You must be extreme to reach the Supreme.

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.

If you are earnest, whatever way you choose will take you to your goal.

Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined.

Reality is what makes the present so vital, so different from the past and future, which are merely mental.

The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.

Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself your own. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience. Don't be greedy for experience; you need none.

You just are -- a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused.

You must realise yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.

The general attitude will be of affectionate detachment, enormous goodwill, without expectation of return, constant giving without asking. In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife; you are the love between the two.

You realise that the person you became at birth and will cease to be at death is temporary and false. You are not the sensual, emotional and intellectual person, gripped by desires and fears. Find out your real being.

Self-realisation is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost.

Only the people who have gone beyond the world can change the world.

Keep on remembering: I am neither the mind nor its ideas: do it patiently and with convictions and you will surely come to the direct vision of yourself as the source of being -- knowing -- loving, eternal, all-embracing all-pervading. You are the infinite focussed in a body. Now you see the body only. Try earnestly and you will come to see the infinite only.

In it all desires and fears are absent, not because they were given up, but because they have lost their meaning.

There are no steps to self-realisation. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly and is irreversible. You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere abstractions. Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realisation you see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.

You are the changeless background, against which changes are perceived.

As a man recognises a man, so a jnani recognises a jnani.

The real is simple, open, clear and kind, beautiful and joyous. It is completely free of contradictions. It is ever new, ever fresh, endlessly creative. Being and non-being, life and death, all distinctions merge in it.

It is by The Guru's grace that your mind is engaged in search for truth and it is by his grace that you will find it. It works unwaringly towards your ultimate good. And it is for all.

Being -- awareness -- love will shine in full splendour. Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person.

To know what you are, you must go beyond the mind.

M: Awareness is the point at which the mind reaches out beyond itself into reality. In awareness you seek not what pleases, but what is true.

You concentrate, you meditate, you torture your mind and body, you do all sorts of unnecessary things, but you miss the essential which is the elimination of the person.

To me, all delay is a waste of time. You can skip all the preparation and go directly for the ultimate search within.

After all, there is no such thing as mind apart from thoughts which come and go obeying their own laws, not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in them.

When you truly love, you do not say: 'I love you'; where there is mentation, there is duality.

Were you well-grounded in your self, change of place would not affect it.

Death is essential for renewal.

The words 'outer' and 'inner' are relative to the body only; in reality all is one, the outer being merely a projection of the inner. 

Relatively -- yes. Absolutely -- there are no things.

The reward of self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self.

The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

Existence is momentary, always in time and space, while reality is changeless and all-pervading.

In the realm of non-duality everything is complete, its own proof, meaning and purpose. 

Truth cannot be described, but it can be experienced.

To be, you must be nobody. To think yourself to be something, or somebody, is death and hell.

He can give all kinds of initiations, but the initiation into Reality must come from within.

There must be the immense longing for truth, or absolute faith in the Guru. 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.

In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else. If you are serious about the sufferings of mankind, you must perfect the only means of help you have -- Yourself.

Once you are inwardly integrated, outer knowledge comes to you spontaneously. At every moment of your life you know what you need to know. In the ocean of the universal mind all knowledge is contained; it is yours on demand. 

Understand that nothing is your own, that all belongs to all. Then only society will change.

There was never any journey. I am, as I always was.

I have no mind of my own; what I need to know the universe brings before me, as it supplies the food I eat.

Clarity and silence of the mind are necessary for the reflection of reality to appear in the mind.

The universe is full of action, but there is no actor.

All waiting is futile. Change can only happen now, never in the future.

Realisation consists in discovering the source and abiding there.

The longing for the self, and your karma will dissolve like a dream.

Every moment carry the taste of eternity.

Once you had the taste of your own self, you will find it everywhere and at all times.

You are perfect, only you don't know it. Learn to know yourself and you will discover wonders.

It is useless to keep accounts, nothing is traceable.

When the film projection ends all remains the same as when it started. The state before you were born was also the state after death, if you remember.

In the timeless all is perfect, here and now.

Words of a realised man never miss their purpose. 

To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom. To want nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is earnestness. Only such earnestness, born of true despair, will make you trust me.

Complete self-surrender by itself is liberation.

Appearances are deceptive. To see clearly, your mind must be pure and unattached. 

Be the right man and the right Guru will surely find you.

The Guru and the disciple are one single thing, like the candle and its flame. Unless the disciple is earnest, he cannot be called a disciple. Unless a Guru is all love and self-giving, he cannot be called a Guru. Only reality begets reality, not the false.

Until you realise yourself, you cannot know who is your real Guru.

You are never without a Guru, for he is timelessly present in your heart. Sometimes he externalises himself and comes to you as an uplifting and reforming factor in your life, a mother, a wife, a teacher; or he remains as an inner urge toward righteousness and perfection. All you have to do is obey him and do what he tells you. What he wants you to do is simple, learn self-awareness, self-control, self-surrender.

Reality is not shapeless mass, a wordless chaos. It is powerful, aware, blissful; compared to it your life is like a candle to the sun.

Direct experience is the final proof.

You know the real by being real.

The real is bliss supreme. Even to talk of it is happiness.

God gives the body and the mind and the Guru shows the way to use them. But returning to the source is your own task.

Investigate what you know to its very end and you will reach the unknown layers of your being. Go further and the unexpected will explode in you and shatter all.

If you stay with the idea that you are not the body nor the mind, not even their witness, but altogether beyond, your mind will grow in clarity, your desires -- in purity, your actions -- in charity and that inner distillation will take you to another world, a world of truth and fearless love.

Real surrender means doing nothing, unless prompted by your Guru. You step, so to say, aside and let your Guru live your life. You merely watch and wonder how easily he solves the problems which to you seemed insoluble.

As long as you have not realised, you will move from Guru to Guru, but when you have found yourself, the search will end.

To live in the known is bondage, to live in the unknown is liberation.

If your motives are pure, if you seek truth and nothing else, you will find the right people.

The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost.

You can do nothing. What time has brought about, time will take away.

Once you realise 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 you can change is only your attitude. There lies your responsibility.

To be a person is to be asleep.

Abandon all personal equations and you shall be free from fear.

You are beyond the mind, that you are truly alone; then all is you.

Non-investigation is the main cause of bondage.

Find your identity with the totality of life. Then the problem of who is used by whom is no more.

Ultimately nothing is mine or yours -- everything is ours. Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the entire universe.

When you do not take yourself to be the body, then the family life of the body, however intense and interesting, is seen only as a play on the screen of the mind, with the light of awareness as the only reality.

Others can give you pleasure, but never happiness.

Liberation is a natural process and in the long run, inevitable. But it is within your power to bring it into the now.

Selfishness is the cause of suffering. 

There is no place for effort in reality... Effort is a sign of conflict between incompatible desires.

Appearances will dissolve on investigation and the underlying reality will come to the surface.

Everybody loves his body, but few love their real being.

Your real being is love itself and your many loves are its reflections according to the situation at the moment.

In peace and silence the skin of the 'I' dissolves and the inner and the outer become one.

Everything affects everything. In this universe, when one thing changes, everything changes. Hence the great power of man in changing the world by changing himself.

At every moment whatever comes to you unasked, comes from God and will surely help you, if you make the fullest use of it. 

Accept life as it comes and you will find it a blessing.

Don't accuse yourself of lack of courage. Self-depreciation will take you nowhere.

Clarity is not enough. Energy comes from love -- you must love to act -- whatever the shape and object of your love.

The realised man lives on the level of the absolutes; his wisdom, love and courage are complete, there is nothing relative about him. 

Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual.

There is no sin, no guilt, no retribution, only life in its endless transformations. With the dissolution of the personal 'I' personal suffering disappears.

Unless you accept inner adventure as a way of life, discovery will not come to you.

Do what you believe in and believe in what you do. All else is a waste of energy and time.

Just be aware of your riches and make full use of them.

The proper role of a Guru is to dispel ignorance in the hearts and minds of his disciples. 

The Guru and man's inner reality are really one and work together towards the same goal -- the redemption and salvation of the mind They cannot fail...The Guru is at home on all levels and his energy and patience are inexhaustible.

You are never left without knowing what your next step should be.

Only what you discover through your own awareness, your own effort, will be of permanent use to you.

At every moment, whatever happens now, is for the best.

Truth remains.

But real communication between people is not verbal. For establishing and maintaining relationship affectionate awareness expressed in direct action is required. 

In reality you are infinite and eternal.

The self you are is the only self there is...It is only your mind that prevents self-knowledge.

To know that you are neither in the body nor in the mind, though aware of both, is already self-knowledge.

Jnani understands a situation fully and knows at once what needs be done. That is all. The rest happens by itself, and to a large extent unconsciously. The jnani’s identity with all that is, is so complete, that as he responds to the universe, so does the universe respond to him.

Go within, go beyond. Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness. When you reach the deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind's surface-play affects you very little.

Wonder is the dawn of wisdom. To be steadily and consistently wondering is sadhana