QUOTES FROM SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
The seeker is he who is in search of himself.
Give up all questions except one: 'Who am I?' After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The "I am" is certain. The "I am this" is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.
Discoer all that you are not - body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that - nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.
The clearer you understan that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker qill you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.
- From "I AM THAT" -
Past and future are in the mind only - I am now.
If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. Its your restlessness that causes chaos.
When I see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see that I am everything, that is love. My life is a river between these two.
I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning--it is not as hard as you think.
Use your mind. Remember. Observe.
You are not different from others.
Most of their experiences are valid for you too.
Think clearly and deeply,
go into the structure of your desires
and their ramifications.
They are a most important part of your mental
and emotional make-up
and powerfully affect your actions.
Remember, you cannot abandon what you do not know.
To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself.
The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.
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.
By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.
There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume
and smell of the pot.
All that a guru can tell you is: "My dear Sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you take yourself to be."
When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected
The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind - the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.
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 any effort on your part.
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.
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.
Of the unknowable only silence talks. The mind can talk only of what it knows. If you diligently investigate the knowable, it dissolves and only the unknowable remains. But with the first flicker of imagination, interest in the unknowable is obscured and the known comes to the fore. The known, the changing, is what you live with- the unchangeable is of no use to you. Only when you are satiated with the changeable and long for the unchangeable, are you ready for the turning round and stepping into what can be described, when seen from the level of the mind, as emptiness and darkness. The mind craves content and variety, while reality is, to the mind, contentless and invariable.
The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. There is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts, and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, creating an illusion of continuity.
Only the sense 'I am' persisted- unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changing until you are able to go beyond.
See Meditative Self Inquiry page for a related discussion group on this topic.