Quotes About Awareness

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 … It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally and therefore to me, the world is a home, not a prison.

What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really care to help the world, you must step out of it.

Our minds are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves, they come and go. As ocean, they are infinite and eternal. Know yourself as the ocean of being, the womb of all existence.

In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realization, the person ceases.

By focusing the mind on "I am," on the sense of being, "I am so-and-so" dissolves; "I am a witness only" remains and that too submerges in "I am all." Then the all becomes the One and the One - yourself

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

You are concerned with your own happiness and I am telling you that there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own, it is where the 'I' is not.

Your begging bowl may be of pure gold, but as long as you do not know it, you are a pauper. You must know your inner worth and trust it and express it in the daily sacrifice of desire and fear.

Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek or find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the "I am." Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge or, rather, it will take you in.

Don't try to reform yourself; just see the futility of all change. The changeful keeps on changing while the changeless is waiting.

Study the prison you have inadvertently built around yourself.

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

When the shadow is seen to be only a shadow, you stop following it. You turn around and discover the sun which was there all the time - behind your back!

It is only when you are satiated with the changeable and long for the unchangeable that you are ready for turning around and stepping into what can be described (when seen from the level of the mind) as emptiness and darkness.

You cannot be alive, for you are life itself.

See everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being. You will find that in that light there is love and infinite energy.

Self-realization definitely comes first. The mind cannot go beyond itself by itself. It must explode.

Matter is the shape, mind is the name. Together they make the world. Pervading and transcending is Reality, pure being/awareness/bliss, your very essence.

As you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher.

Happiness is never your own; it is where the "I" is not.

The name given to the body is not your name. What are you beyond the body and its name? For a moment, see that you are without the body and its name.' This is termed 'waiting at the doorstep of God for a moment'. Say what you are without considering the body and its name. Look at yourself without the body and its name. Understand this point and you understand everything.

Without my sense of being, what is the value of the world?

The core of Sri Nisargadatta's simple and direct message is this: focus on the 'I am' (consciousness, beingness) and enquire into its Source. In becoming conscious of consciousness itself, we may discover we are not limited to the body, mind, or any passing identity, thereby realising our unlimited nature in this very life.

prior to consciousness,