the world is myself

 

In the mirror of your mind images appear and disappear.

 The mirror remains.

 Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable,

 the unchanging in the changing,

 till you realise that all differences are in appearance only

 and oneness is a fact.

 This basic identity -- you may call God,

 or Brahman, or the matrix (Prakriti),

 the words matters little -- 

is only the realisation that all is one.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience:

 'I am the world, the world is myself','

you are free from desire and fear on one hand 

and become totally responsible for the world

 on the other. 

The senseless sorrow of mankind

 becomes your sole concern.

~ Excerpts from I Am That 

by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

free 'here and now'

 

As long as there is the body and the sense of identity with the body, 

frustration is inevitable. 

All changes in consciousness are due to the "I-am-the-body" idea. 

Divested of this idea, the mind becomes steady. There is pure being, 

free of experiencing anything in particular. 

You are accustomed to dealing with things, physical and mental.

 I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy,

 neither body nor mind. 

While alive, it [the body] attracts attention and fascinates

 so completely that rarely does one perceive one's real nature.

 It is like seeing the surface of the ocean

 and completely forgetting the immensity beneath.

As long as you take yourself to be a person,

 a body and a mind, 

separate from the stream of life,

 having a will of its own, 

pursuing its own aims, 

you are living merely on the surface, 

and whatever you do will be short-lived 

and of little value.

When you desire and fear, and identify yourself with your feelings, 

you create sorrow and bondage. When you create, with love and wisdom, 

and remain unattached to your creations, 

the result is harmony and peace.

 But whatever be the condition of your mind,

 in what way does it reflect on you?

 It is only your self-identification with your mind

 that makes you happy or unhappy.

 Rebel against your slavery to your mind,

 see your bonds as self-created 

and break the chains of attachment and revulsion.

 Keep in mind your goal of freedom, 

until it dawns on you that you are already free, 

that freedom is not something in the distant future

 to be earned with painful efforts,

 but perennially one's own, to be used! 

Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, 

the courage to believe that you are free already 

and to act on it.

We are free 'here and now', 

It is only the mind that imagines bondage. 

Once you know your mind and its miraculous powers, 

and remove what poisoned it 

-the idea of a separate and isolated person- 

you just leave it alone to do its work

 among things for which it is well suited. 

~ Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's

I AM THAT

 

As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities,

one quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality

which is essentially impersonal.

First, we must know ourselves as witnesses only,

dimensionless and timeless centers of observation,

and then realize that immense ocean of pure awareness,

which is both mind and matter and beyond both.

What do you know about yourself?

You can only be what you are in reality;

you can only appear what you are not.

You have never moved away from perfection.

All idea of self-improvement is conventional and verbal.

Yet the mind is nothing else but the self.

Just as a cloud obscures the sun without in any way affecting it,

so does assumption obscure reality without destroying it.

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

All is one -- this is the ultimate solution of every

conflict.

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.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

from I am That

the false dissolves when it is discovered

 

Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active,

 until you realise yourself as one with it.

 It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning

 only to your own natural condition.

Once you realise that all comes from within, 

that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you,

 your fear comes to an end. 

Without this realisation you identify yourself with the externals,

 like the body, mind, society, nation, humanity, even God or the Absolute.

 But these are all escapes from fear. 

It is only when you fully accept your responsibility

 for the little world in which you live and watch the process of its creation,

 preservation and destruction, that you may be free from your imaginary bondage.

 You are in bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. 

You are taking so many things for granted. Begin to question. 

The most obvious things are the most doubtful.

 Askyourself such questions as:

  'Am I really so-and-so?’

 ‘Who am I, anyhow?

  the false dissolves when it is discovered. 

All hangs on the idea 'I am'.

 Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble.

 

It is a sort of skin that separates you from the reality.

 The real is both within and without the skin, but the skin itself is not real.

 This 'I am' idea was not born with you. 

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

from I am That

with thanks to love is a place

express in action what you are

 

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.

After all, what do you really want?

Not perfection; you are already perfect.

What you seek is to express in action what you are.

For this you have a body and a mind.

Take them in hand and make them serve you.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

excerpts from I am That

life as it comes

 

 

 

 

 
Just live your life as it comes.
Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself.
Perception is based on memory and is only imagination.
The world can be said to appear but not to be.
Only that which makes perception possible is real.

You agree to be guided from within

 and life becomes a journey into the unknown. 

Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you.


Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond.
Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness.
It is utterly beyond both.
It gives birth to consciousness.
All else is in consciousness.

Nothing you can see, feel or think is so. Go beyond the personal and see.

 Stop imagining that you were born. You are utterly beyond all existence

 and non-existence, utterly beyond all that the mind conceives.


Question yourself: Who am I?
What is behind and beyond all this?
Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person

 is mere habit built on memory. Inquire ceaselessly.

Just be aware of your being here and now.
There is nothing more to it.
In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility.
Because you are, all can be.
The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. 

You are neither consciousness nor its content.
You are the timeless Source.


Disassociate yourself from mind and consciousness.
Find a foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I am That

art by Duncan Nagonigwane Pheasant (Ojibwe)

 

 

 

unfulfilled desires

The memory of the pasts unfulfilled desires traps energy,

 which manifests itself as a person. 

When its charge gets exhausted, 

the person dies.

 Unfulfilled desires are carried over into the birth. 

Self-identification with body creates ever-fresh desires 

and there is no end to them unless 

this mechanism of bondage is clearly seen.

 It is clarity that is liberating,

 for you cannot abandon desire unless 

its causes and effects are clearly seen.

I do not say that the same person is reborn.

 It dies, 

and dies for good. 

But its memories remain 

and their desires and fears. 

They supply the energy for a new person.

~  Nisargadatta Maharaj

search for?

Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness

 that makes you feel miserable? 

 

Try the other way: indifferent to pain and pleasure, 

neither seeking, nor refusing, 

give all your attention to the level on which

 ‘I am’ is timelessly present. 

Soon you will realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature 

and it is only seeking them through some particular channels that disturbs. 

Avoid the disturbance, that is all. 

 

To seek there is no need;

 you would not seek what you already have. 

You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality. 

To begin with, trust me, trust the teacher. 

It enables you to make the first step - 

and then your trust is justified by your own experience.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

find your real being

There will be marriage, there will be children, 

there will be earning money to maintain a family; 

all this will happen in the natural course of events, 

for destiny must fulfill itself; you will go through it without resistance, 

facing tasks as they come, attentive and thorough, 

both in small things and big. 

But 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 are the clarity and kindness that makes everything orderly and happy. 

It may seem vague to you, but if you think a little, 

you will find that the mystical is most practical, 

for it makes your life creatively happy. 

Your consciousness is raised to a higher dimension, 
from which you see everything much clearer and with greater intensity. 

You realize 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. 

What am I? 
is the fundamental question of all philosophy and psychology. 
Go into it deeply.

~ Nisargadatta

at home everywhere

In reality there is only the source, dark in itself,

making everything shine. 

Unperceived, it causes perception. 

Unfelt, it causes feeling. 

Unthinkable, it causes thought. 

Non-being, it gives birth to being. 

It is the immovable background of motion. 

Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.

–Nisargadatta Maharaj

from I am That

translated by Maurice Frydman

naturally and spontaneously

.

When you know beyond all doubting that you are that life that flows through all, 
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.

 But when you look
 at anything as separate from you, 
you cannot love it for you are afraid of it.
 Alienation causes fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. 
Only self - realization can break it. Go for it resolutely. 

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....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. 

All the universe will be your concern;
 every living thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

from I am that 

find out

When I met my Guru, he told me: 
"You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. 
Watch the sense 'I am', find your real Self."
 I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me.
 All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. 
And what a difference it made, and how soon! 

My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously
 and not to swerve from it even for a moment. 
I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time 
I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. 
All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly.
 This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind 
I saw myself as I am -- unbound. 

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.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

art by Deloros DiCamillo

you need no change

.

Words indicate, but do not explain.
What I teach is the ancient and simple way of liberation through understanding. 

 

 Understand your own mind and its hold on you will snap. 

 The mind misunderstands, misunderstanding is its very nature. 

 Right understanding is the only remedy, whatever name you give it.

 It is the earliest and also the latest, for it deals with the mind as it is.

Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. 

 You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external

 to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all to change?

 

 Realize once and for all that neither your body nor your mind, 

nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in your true nature

 beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there,

 only the clarity of understanding. Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them,

 that is all.

 

 There is nothing to seek and 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.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
.

 

 

progress?

• Questioner:

How am I to know if there is any progress in my spiritual search?
How am I to know if I am progressing?

 
• Maharaj: 

You don't really listen. If you did, such a question should not arise.
 And, if at all it did, you could have easily dealt with it yourself,
 in case if you had listened to me attentively and understood 
what I had been saying. Instead, I find that this question does disturb
 many of you. The problem apparently is about 'progress'. 

Now, who is to make the progress, and progress towards what?

 I have said this repeatedly and untiringly that you are the Conscious Presence,
 the animating consciousness which gives sentience to phenomenal objects; 
that you are not a phenomenal object, which is merely an appearance
 in the consciousness of those who perceive it. How can an 'appearance' 
make any 'progress' towards any objective? 

Now, instead of letting this basic perception impregnate your very being, 
what you do is to accept it merely as an ideological thesis and ask the question. 
How can a conceptual appearance know whether it is making any 
conceptual progress towards its conceptual liberation? 

Perception is not a matter of gradual practice. It can only happen by itself 
instantaneously, there are no stages in which deliberate progress is made. 
There is no 'one' to make any progress.

 Perhaps, one wonders, could it be that the surest sign of 'progress',
 if one cannot give up the concept, is a total lack of concern about 'progress'
 and an utter absence of anxiety about anything like 'liberation', 
a sort of' 'hollowness' in one's being, a kind of looseness, 
an unvolitional surrender to whatever might happen? 



 ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
with thanks to No Mind's Land

just be aware - here and now

.

Just live your life as it comes. 

Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself. 

Perception is based on memory and is only imagination. 

The world can be said to appear but not to be. 

Only that which makes perception possible is real.

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

Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you. 

Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond. 

Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness. 

It is utterly beyond both. 

It gives birth to consciousness. 

All else is in consciousness.

Nothing you can see, feel or think is so. 

Go beyond the personal and see. 

Stop imagining that you were born. 

You are utterly beyond all existence and non-existence, 

utterly beyond all that the mind conceives. 

Question yourself: Who am I? 

What is behind and beyond all this? 

Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person is mere habit built on memory. 

Inquire ceaselessly.

 Just be aware of your being here and now. 

There is nothing more to it. 

In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility. 

Because you are, all can be. 

The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. 

You are neither consciousness nor its content. 

You are the timeless Source. 

Disassociate yourself from mind and consciousness. 

Find a foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

from I am That

watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic

Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic,  
People come and go:  you register without response. 
 It may not be easy in the beginning,  but with some practice
 you will find that your mind can function on many levels 
at the same time and you can be aware of the all. 
 It is only when you have a vested interest in any particular level, 
that your attention gets caught in it and you black out on other levels. 
 Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, 
outside the field of consciousness.

Do not struggle with your memories and thoughts; 
 try only to include in your field of attention the other, 
 more important questions like, "Who am I?"
 "How did I happen to be born?" "Whence this universe around me?",
 What is real and what is momentary?"
 No memory will persist, if you lose interest in it; 
 always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, 
always after happiness and peace. 

 Don't you see that it is your very search for happiness
 that makes you feel miserable?  Try the other way:
 indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking,
 nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which 
"I am" is timeless and present.  Soon you will realize that peace
 and happiness are in your very nature
 and it is only seeking them through 
some particular channels, that disturbs.

~Nisargaddatta Maharaj

somehow

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.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

the dying now to the now

.

When effort is needed, effort will appear. 

When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself. 

You need not push life about. 

Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, 

which is the dying now to the now. For living is dying. 

Without death life cannot be.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

only the Self

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

separation is painful

When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful,

and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being,

you have gone beyond all need of help.

You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your being.

You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you are not.

You can only give what you are - and of that you can give limitlessly.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj

.