338 Quotes by Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is earnestness that will take you through, not cleverness – your own or another’s.

It is your fixed idea that you must be something or other, that blinds you.

You are too much concerned with past and future. It is all due to your longing to continue, to protect yourself against extinction. And as you want to continue, you want others to keep you company, hence your concern with their survival. But what you call survival is but the survival of a dream.

Don’t rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether.

You want to know yourself. For this keep steadily in the focus of consciousness, the only clue you have: your certainty of being. Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality.

Freedom is from something. What are you to be free from? Obviously, you must be free from the person you take yourself to be, for it is the idea you have of yourself that keeps you in bondage.

You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first. Letting in the light makes everything easy. So, let us wait to improve others until we have seen ourselves as we are – and have changed.

I am timeless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past or imagine the future.

Whatever can be understood or perceived can never be the eternal Truth. The Unknown is the Truth.