Home › Authors › Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes
1897–1981 India
Nisargadatta Maharaj (17 April 1897 – 8 September 1981) was a spiritual teacher of nonduality, who lived and taught in Bombay, India. He was very much admired for his direct and informal teaching.
Random Nisargadatta Maharaj quote
53 quotes
"You need both clarity and earnestness for self-knowledge. You need maturity of heart and mind, which comes through earnest application in daily life of whatever little you have understood. (...)."
"(…) Those who make plans will be born to carry them out. Those who make no plans need not be born."
"(…) Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don’t be lazy to think."
"(…) Salvation is to see things as they are. (…)"
"The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness."
"Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. (...)"
"Whatever you do against your better knowledge is sin. (…) Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. (…)"
"Those who know only scriptures know nothing. To know is to be. I know what I am talking about; it is not from reading, or hearsay."
"(…) All kind of experience may come to you – remain unmoved in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient, and only ‘I am’ endures."
"Everything happens all the time, but you must be ready for it. Readiness is ripeness. You do not see the real because your mind is not ready for it."
"(...) 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."
"(…) Spiritual practice is will asserted and re-asserted. Who has not daring will not accept the real even when offered. Unwillingness born out of fear is the only obstacle."
"(...) one is always free. You are both conscious and free to be conscious. Nobody can take this away from you. (…)"
"The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing of value can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing the mind can visualize and want is of much value."
"(…) In the now you are both the movable and the immovable. (…). Overlook the movable and you will find yourself to be the ever-present, changeless reality, inexpressible, but solid like a rock."
As an 'I am' you are the river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness, you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are, while all else appears.
I Am That (1973)
"(...) Of what use is your arguing for or against God, when you just do not know who is God, and what are you talking about. (…)."
"(…) Just like a deficiency disease is cured through the supply of the missing factor, so are the diseases of living cured by a good dose of intelligent detachment (viveka-vairagya)."
"When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation."
Take the idea "I was born". You may take it to be true. It is not. You were not born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you became mortal.
I Am That (1973)
Topics Nisargadatta Maharaj is quoted on
Works