Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute nothingness of the self-image.

~ Sri Nisargadatta

The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfillment. Desire the good of all and the universe will work with you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn it the hard way. Before desiring, deserve.

~ Sri Nisargadatta

All desires are bad, but some are worse than others.
Pursue any desire, it will always give you trouble.
Why desire at all? 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.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Truth is not a reward for good behaviour, nor a prize for passing some tests. It cannot be brought about. It is the primary, the unborn, the ancient source of all that is. You are eligible because you are. You need not merit truth. It is your own....Stand still, be quiet.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Like everything mental, 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; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. When the source and ground of everything is the only cause of everything, to speak of causality as a universal law is wrong. The universe is not bound by its content, because its potentialities are infinite; besides it is a manifestation, or expression of a principle fundamentally and totally free.

~ Nisargadatta

My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am', it may look too simple, even crude.

~ Nisargadatta

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

All dependence on another is futile, for what others can give others will take away. Only what is your own at the start will remain your own in the end. Accept no guidance but from within, and even then sift out all memories for they will mislead you. Even if you are quite ignorant of the ways and the means, keep quiet and look within; guidance is sure to come. You are never left without knowing what your next step should be. The trouble is that you may shirk it. The Guru is there for giving you courage because of his experience and success. But only what you discover through your own awareness, your own effort, will be of permanent use to you. Remember, nothing you perceive is your own. Nothing of value can come to you from outside; it is only your own feeling and understanding that are relevant and revealing. Words, heard or read, will only create images in your mind, but you are not a mental image. You are the power of perception and action behind and beyond the image.

~ Sri Nisargadatta

[I am That - Chapter 98]

Do not try to keep quiet, do not make being quiet into a task to be performed. Don't be restless about being quiet, miserable about being happy.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

All I can say is "I am", all else is inference. But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and sleeping. The sense "I am" is a manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, Reality or by any other name. The "I am" is in the world but it is the key which can open the door out of the world.

~ Nisargadatta

Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost.

~ Nisargadatta

We grow through investigation, and to investigate we need experience. We tend to repeat what we have not understood. If we are sensitive and intelligent, we need not suffer. Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.

~ Nisargadatta

You need not to 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.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is all the mind can do – discover the unreal
as unreal. The problem is only mental. Abandon
false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true
ideas. There aren't any.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours.
Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you.
Give up your addictions. There is nothing else to give up.
Stop your routine of acquisitiveness, your habit of looking for results
and the freedom of the universe is yours. Be effortless.

~ Nisargadatta

Discard every self-seeking motive
as soon as it is seen and you need
not search for truth; truth will find
you.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj

There are no conditions to fulfil. There is nothing to be done, nothing to be given up. Just look and remember, whatever you perceive is not you, nor yours. It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are not the field and its contents, nor even the knower of the field. It is your idea that you have to do things that entangles you in the results of your efforts - the motive, the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense of frustration - all this holds you back. Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

To expound and propagate concepts is simple,
to drop all concepts is difficult and rare.
~ Nisargadatta

All will come as you go on. Take the first step first.
All blessings come from within. Turn within.
`I am' you know. Be with it all the time you can spare,
until you revert to itspontaneously. There is no
simpler and easier way.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj