Of a Philosophical Nature: Nisargadatta Maharaj

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. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked!

All you can teach is understanding. The rest comes on its own.

Truth is not a reward for good behavior, 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. Just stop running away by running after. Stand still, be quiet.

My advice to you is very simple – just remember yourself, ‘I am’, it is enough to heal your mind and take you beyond, just have some trust. I don’t mislead you. Why should I? Do I want anything from you? I wish you well – such is my nature. Why should I mislead you? Common sense too will tell you that to fulfill a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.

There is only life, there is nobody who lives a life.

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without effort on your part.

There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking.

When I see I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see I am everything, that is love. My life is a movement between these two.

The real does not die; the unreal never lived. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. The real you is timeless and beyond birth and death; The body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long.

Imagine a big building collapsing. Some rooms are in ruins, some are intact. But can you speak of the space as ruined or intact? It is only the structure that suffered and the people who happened to live in it. Nothing happened to space itself. Similarly, nothing happens to life when forms break down and names are wiped out. The goldsmith melts down old ornaments to make new. Sometimes a good piece goes with the bad. He takes it in his stride, for he knows that no gold is lost.

There is no power as separate from me. It is inherent in my very nature. Call it creativity. Out of a lump of gold you can make many ornaments – each will remain gold. Similarly, in whatever role I may appear and whatever function I may perform – I remain what I am: the 'I am' immovable, unshakable, independent. What you call the universe, nature, is my spontaneous creativity. Whatever happens – happens. But such is my nature that all ends in joy.

All are mere words, of what use are they to you? You are entangled in the web of verbal definitions and formulations. Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence of desire and thought the truth is found.

Keep very quiet and watch what comes to the surface of the mind. Reject the known, welcome the so far unknown and reject it in its turn. Thus you come to a state in which there is no knowledge, only being, in which being itself is knowledge. To know by being is direct knowledge. It is based on the identity of the seer and the seen. Indirect knowledge is based on sensation and memory, on proximity of the perceiver and his percept, confined with the contrast between the two.

Your mind is steeped in the habits of evaluation and acquisition, and will not admit that the incomparable and unobtainable are waiting timelessly within your own heart for recognition. All you have to do is to abandon all memories and expectations. Just keep yourself ready in utter nakedness and nothingness.

All knowledge is like the son of a barren woman. Presently there are only beingness and functioning. The individuality and personality are thrown overboard. There is no personality, so there is no question of birth, life, or death. What remains is only the consciousness without name or form.

The form needs a name, but when both are not there, then the consciousness remains only for so long as the body is there, but without any individuality. The body is of as much use now as it was prior to birth and after death.

How do you know me? You know me only the acquisition of body form, name and form. Do you really see me as I am? I doubt it.

Now the conclusion is that the unborn is enjoying the birth-principle. That principle that is born took so much time to understand this, and is it is the unborn only which prevails. It took so much time for the Self to understand the Self.

We have tied around our necks so many concepts; death, this "I AM", et cetera. Similarly, Concepts, of good and evil are unnecessary. We have developed these concepts and are caught in them.

How does one think about Self-knowledge? Do you abide in the Self or in the process do you think of something else as the Self?

You are wrapped up and lost in your concepts. For instance, you have a concept about friendship. How long do you keep your friends? You keep them so long as they are useful to you. So long as a friend is of some benefit to you, that’s how long you would like to keep that friendship. Now, how can I actually derive benefit out of a friend? I, as an individual, am not there, so how can there be a question of benefit? Benefit, to whom? How can there be a question of friendship at all.

Anybody, who comes here can sit. I will allow him to sit for some time, but later on I will say, "You may leave," Why? Because I have no intention or purpose of having any friendship with that person. Ordinarily, there is some purpose for deriving certain benefits out of an association with another. When you meet someone in friendship, there may be some intention to serve one another. But I have no friends. Even this "I Amness" will not remain as my friend.

I am not able to talk any longer—the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Previously I used to welcome people but now I am not in a position to welcome them. They come, they sit and they go by themselves. I cannot even extend my hospitality. All my knowledge has gone into liquidation. I am unconcerned.