Quotes from Nisargadatta Maharaj

All depends on you. It is by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in its reality and it will dissolve like a dream. Time can bring down mountains; much more you, who are the timeless source of time. For without memory and expectation there can be no time.

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

The unexpected and unpredictable is real.

To work in the world is hard, to refrain from all unnecessary work is even harder.

And spirituality or what you call "religion" is mainly to understand this: that you don't require anything, you are a part of the totality, or reality.

When you go deep inside nothing is all there is. There is no 'I am'. The 'I am' merges in the Absolute.

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

Each pleasure is wrapped in pain. You soon discover that you cannot have one without the other … Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances … Real happiness flows from within.

In dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all.

Consciousness is power. Be aware of what needs be done and it will be done. Only keep alert – and quiet. Once you reach your destination and know your real nature, your existence becomes a blessing to all. You may not know, nor will the world know; yet the help radiates.

The interval between the beginning of 'I am' (birth or waking) and when you lose it again (death or deep sleep) is called 'time.

Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognize it.

We shall suffer as long as our thoughts and actions are prompted by desires and fears.

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

I am' itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor 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.

The man who carries a parcel is anxious not to lose it -- he is parcel-conscious. The man who cherishes the feeling 'I am' is self-conscious. The jnani holds on to nothing and cannot be said to be conscious. And yet he is not unconscious. He is the very heart of awareness. We call him digambara clothed in space, the Naked One, beyond all appearance. There is no name and shape under which he may be said to exist, yet he is the only one that truly is.

How does the 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.

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.

There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself. And that vastness is also love.

In the great mirror of consciousness, images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material - destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence - vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion, "I am so-and-so," obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.

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.

If you take people to be what they think themselves to be, you will only hurt them as they hurt themselves so grievously all the time. But if you see them as they are in reality, it will do them enormous good.

It is earnestness that will take you through, not cleverness - your own or another's.

Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting that, truly, by losing all you gain all.