THEMES;

HOW DO I REALISE WHO I REALLY AM?

A QUIET MIND

THE 'I AM' APPROACH

NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ'S WORLD

THE SUPREME

LOVE

PAIN AND PLEASURE

EARNESTNESS

GUIDANCE

I NEED DO NOTHING

THE PERSON

TRUE HELP

EXPERIENCE

OTHER

HOW DO I REALISE WHO I REALLY AM?

Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment. Co-operate with your destiny, dont go against it, dont thwart it. Allow it to fulfil itself. All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created by the foolish mind. p.311

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 entangle you in 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. p.148

Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is 'try'. Allot enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality, with its addictions and obsessions. Don't ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure. What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are, now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of success. p.509

You need not get at it (Enlightenment), for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly slip into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realisation that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love - worthy and lovable. p.3

acceptance - letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. p.6

Discover all you are not. Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time, space, being and not being, this or that - nothing concrete or abstract you can point out to is you. You must watch yourself continuously - particularly your mind - moment by moment, missing nothing. This witnessing is essential for the separation of the self from the not-self ........be aware of that state which is only, simply being, without being this or that or the other. p.27

I see what you too could see, here and now, but for the wrong focus of attention. You give no attention to your self. Your mind is all with things, people and ideas, never with your self. Bring yourself into focus, become aware of your own existence. See how you function, watch the motives and the results of your actions. Study the prison you have built around yourself, by inadvertence. By knowing what you are not, you come to know your self. The way back to your self is through refusal and rejection. One thing is certain: the real is not imaginary, it is not a product of the mind. Even the sense 'I am' is not continuous, though it is a useful pointer: it shows where to seek, but not what to seek. Just have a good look at it. Once you are convinced that you cannot say truthfully about yourself anything except 'I am', and that nothing can be pointed at can be yourself, the need for the 'I am' is over - you are no longer intent on verbalising what you are. (NM did this practise only in the early part of his 3 years of change) All you need is to get rid of the tendency to define your self. All definitions apply to the body only and to its expressions. Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly. p.5

When you are no longer attached to anything, you have done your share. The rest will be done for you. p.54

Don't look for quick results, there may be none within your noticing. Unknown to you, your psyche will under go a change, there will be more clarity in your thinking and feeling, purity in your behaviour. You need not aim at these - you will witness the change all the same. p.125

Whenever a thought or emotion of desire or fear comes to your mind, just turn away from it......just refuse attention......just turn away.....look between the thoughts....when you do not resist, you meet with no resistance......turn away from your desires and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are at once in your natural state. p.349

The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very being. It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything, but the Supreme. p.66

Humility and silence are essential, however advanced. p.99

Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal. p.173

What is seedless and rootless, what does not sprout and grow, flower and fruit, what comes into being suddenly and in full glory, mysteriously and marvelously, you may call that 'god' It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable, infinitely familiar yet most surprising, beyond all hope yet absolutely certain....You can do nothing to bring it about, but you can avoid creating obstacles. Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. p.188

You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief - not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it. p.189

Treating everything as a dream liberates. p.189

By giving attention to your living, feeling and thinking, you free yourself from them and go beyond them. Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains. Then you go beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just search within yourself....In one [person] you desire and fear, in the other [witness] you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go. p.189

See the event as event only, the transient as transient, experience as mere experience and you have done all you can. Then you are vulnerable to reality, no longer armoured against it, as you were when you gave reality to events and experiences. But as soon as there is some like or dislike, you have drawn a screen. p.190

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! p.195

The desire for truth is the highest of all desires, yet, it is still a desire. All desires must be given up for the real to be.....When all search ceases, it is the Supreme State. p.196

Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be. p.197

Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realise that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear. p.201

All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited yourself. When you do not think yourself to be this or that, all conflict ceases. Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for what is caused by desire can be undone only in freedom from desire. You have enclosed yourself in time and space, squeezed yourself into the span of a lifetime and the volume of a body and thus created the innumerable conflicts of life and death, pleasure and pain, hope and fear. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions.....Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. p.204

Having never left the house you asking for the way home. Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all. Collecting right ideas also will take you nowhere. Just cease imagining.....Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether. p.206

To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in the body or in the mind.....Whatever happens, remind yourself that only your body and mind are affected, not yourself. p.210

Do what you feel like doing. Don't bully yourself. Violence will make you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you take to be obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, enquire. let anything happen - good or bad. But dont let yourself be submerged by what happens. p.220

What you need will come to you, if you do not ask for what you do not need. Yet only few people reach this state of complete dispassion and detachment. It is a very high state, the very threshold of liberation. p.249

Awareness, being lucid harmony in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind and gently, but steadily changes its very substance. This change need not be spectacular; it may be hardly noticeable; yet it is deep and fundamental shift from darkness to light, from inadvertence to awareness. p.272

Just give full attention to what in you is crude and primitive, unreasonable and unkind, altogether childish, and you will ripen. It is the maturity of heart and mind that is essential. It comes effortlessly when the main obstacle is removed - inattention, unawareness. In awareness you grow. p.296

Ask yourself such questions as: 'Was I really born?' 'Am I really so-and-so? 'How do I know that I exist?' 'Who are my parents?' 'Have they created me, or have I created them?' 'Must I believe all I am told about myself?' 'Who am I, anyhow?' p.296

The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. p.302

Realise that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends. p.302

If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself, 'Who am I?', the answer comes at once, though it is wordless and silent. p.303

As long as you are pleased with the lesser, you cannot have the highest. Whatever pleases you, keeps you back. p.304

It is the 'I-am-the-body' idea that is so calamitous. It blinds you completely to your real nature. Even for a moment do not think that you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence reality is found. p.305

But unselfish action, free from all concern with the body and its interests will carry you into the very heart of Reality. p.305

You must be extreme to reach the supreme. p.310

It is your mind that has separated the world outside your skin from the world inside and put them in opposition. This created fear and hatred and all the miseries of living. p.310

It is useless to search for the truth, when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely before truth can dawn on it. p.314

All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. p.317

Whatever is conceived by the mind must be false, for it is bound to be relative and limited. p.315

If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.
It does not mean that you must be brainless and foolhardy, improvident or indifferent: only the basic anxiety for oneself must go. You need some food, clothing and shelter for you and yours, but this will not create problems as long as greed is not taken for a need. Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined. p.316

Either you remain forever hungry and thirsty, longing, searching, grabbing, holding, ever losing and sorrowing, or go out wholeheartedly in search of the state of timeless perfection to which nothing can be added, from which nothing - taken away. In it all desires and fears are absent, not because they were given up, but because they have lost their meaning. p.331

The fruit ripens slowly, but falls suddenly and without return. p.332

Leave it (knowledge) all behind you. Forget it. Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs. Abandon all verbal structures, all relative truth, all tangible objectives. The absolute can be reached by absolute devotion only. Don't be half-hearted. p.340

To be, you must be nobody. To think yourself to be something, or somebody, is death and hell. p.371

Pure awareness is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event, you watch all unconcerned in the full light of clarity and understanding.....once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness. If it is not there, you are merely interested - for some personal reasons. p.382

Learn to look at your consciousness as a sort of fever, personal and private, in which you are enclosed like a chick in its shell, out of this very attitude will come the crisis which will break the shell. p.382

Begin with the admission that you do not know and start from there.....The very admission:'I am ignorant' is the dawn of knowledge. p.384

You are like the man in the cinema house, laughing and crying with the picture, though knowing fully well that the is all the time in his seat and the picture is but the play of light. It is enough to shift attention from the screen to oneself to break the spell......without waiting for the death of the body - it is enough to shift attention to the Self and keep it there. All happens as if there is a mysterious power that creates and moves everything. Realise that you are not the mover, only the observer, and you will be at peace. p.389

Just as every wave subsides into the ocean, so does every moment return to its source. Realisation consists in discovering the source and abiding there. p.411

To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom. p.426

It is only when you are satiated with the changeable and long for the unchangeable, that you are ready for the turning round and stepping into what can be described, when seen from the level of the mind, as emptiness and darkness. For the mind craves for content and variety, while reality is, to the mind contentless and invariable. p.436

Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realise that awareness is your true nature and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own. p.437

But if you stay with the idea that you are not the body nor the mind, not even their witness, but altogether beyond, your mind will grow in clarity, your desires - in purity, your actions - in charity and that inner distillation will take you to another world, a world of truth and fearless love. Resist your old habits of feeling and thinking; keep on telling yourself: 'No, not so, it cannot be so; I am not like this, I do not need it, I do not want it', and a day will surely come when the entire structure of error and despair will collapse and the ground will be free for a new life. p.443

Once you have understood that nothing perceivable, or conceivable can be yourself, you are free of your imaginations. To see everything as imagination, born of desire, is necessary for self-realisation. We miss the real by lack of attention and create the unreal by excess of imagination. p.489

For this (finding reality) you need a well-ordered and quiet life, peace of mind and immense earnestness. At every moment whatever comes to you unasked, comes from God and will surely help you, if you make the fullest use of it. It is only what you strive for, out of your own imagination and desire, that gives you trouble. p.491

Keep quiet, undisturbed, and the wisdom and the power will come on their own. You need not hanker. Wait in silence of the heart and mind. It is very easy to be quiet, but willingness is rare. You people want to be supermen overnight. Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual. p.494

Refuse attention, let things come and go. Desires and thoughts are also things. Disregard them. Since time immemorial the dust of events was covering the clear mirror of your mind, so that only only memories you could see. Brush off the dust before it has time to settle; this will lay bare the old layers until the true nature of your mind is discovered. p.494

The experience (of self-realisation) is unique and unmistakable. it will dawn on you suddenly, when the obstacles are removed to some extent. It is like a frayed rope snapping. Yours is to work at the strands. The break is bound to happen. It can be delayed, but not prevented. p.502

A level of mental maturity is reached when nothing external is of any value and the heart is ready to relinquish all. Then the real has a chance and it grasps it. Delays, if any, are caused by the mind being unwilling to see or to discard. p.514

Relinquish your habits and addictions, live a simple and sober life, don't hurt a living being; this is the foundation of Yoga. p.515

Once you have understood that you are nothing perceivable or conceivable, that whatever appears in the field of consciousness cannot be your self, you will apply yourself to the eradication of all self-identification, as the only way that can take you to a deeper realisation of your self. You literally progress by rejection - a veritable rocket. p.518

A QUIET MIND

When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognise it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but its bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present. p.308

Look at your mind dispassionately; this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet, you can go beyond it. Do not keep it busy all the time. stop it - and just be. If you give it a rest, it will settle down and recover its purity and strength. Constant thinking makes it decay. p.311

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. p.311

Pay no attention [to your thoughts]. Don't fight them. Just do nothing about them, let them be, whatever they are. Your very fighting them gives them life. just disregard. Look through. p.241

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. p.247

As long as you are a beginner certain formalised meditations, or prayers may be good for you. But for a seeker for reality there is only one meditation - the rigorous refusal to harbour thoughts. To be free from thoughts is itself meditation....You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don't get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it....Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognise it. p.224f

When thus the mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all comes spontaneously, you need only hold on to the 'I am' p.332

The silence is one and without it the words could not have been heard. It is always there - at the back of the words. Shift your attention from the words to silence and you will hear it. p.359

Do understand that the mind has its limits: to go beyond, you must consent to silence. p.370

To see reality is as simple as to see one's face in a mirror. Only the mirror must be clear and true. A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all levels, is needed to reflect the reality. Be clear and quiet - alert and detached, all else will happen by itself. p.397

The unchangeable can only be realised in silence. Once realised, it will deeply affect the changeable, itself remaining unaffected. p.437

To go beyond the mind, you must be silent and quiet. Peace and silence, silence and peace - this is the way beyond. p.450

Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover. p.453

What you see as false, dissolves. It is the very nature of illusion to dissolve on investigation. Investigate - that is all. You cannot destroy the false, for you are creating it all the time. Withdraw from it, ignore it, go beyond, and it will cease to be. p.455

This attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of yoga. You see the picture, but you are not the picture. p.469

You cannot see the true unless you are at peace. A quiet mind is essential for right perception, which again is required for self-realisation. p.481

In peace and silence the skin of the 'I' dissolves and the inner and the outer become one. The real spiritual practise is effortless. p.483

When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless through and through, it dissolves and only reality remains. p.484

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. p.486

When you are not in a hurry and the mind is free from anxieties, it becomes quiet and in the silence something may be heard which is ordinarily too fine and subtle for perception. The mind must be open and quiet to see. p.508

You need not worry about your worries. Just be. Do not try to be quiet; do not make 'being quiet' into a task to be performed. Don't be restless about 'being quiet', miserable about 'being happy'. Just be aware that you are and remain aware - dont say: 'yes, I am; what next?' There is no 'next' in 'I am'. it is a timeless state. p.508



THE 'I AM' APPROACH

The sense of 'I am' is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young, I am rich etc. But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage. p.65

I trusted my Guru..........He told me to concentrate on ìI Am - I did. He told me that I am beyond all perceivables and conceivables - I believed. I gave him my heart and soul, my entire attention and the whole of my spare time (I had to work to keep my family alive). As a result of faith and earnest application, I realised my self within three years. p. 52

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 my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I Am'....Keep empty, keep available, resist not what comes uninvited. In the end you reach a state of non-grasping, of joyful non-attachment, of inner ease and freedom, indescribable, yet wonderfully real. p.375

Just keep in mind the feeling ìI Am; merge in it, until your mind and feelings become one. By repeated attempts, you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling ìI Am. Whatever you think, say or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind. p. 48 .

Give up all questions except one ìWho am I? p.70

Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it. p.199

Even the sense ìI am is composed of the pure light and the sense of being. The 'I' is there even without the 'am'. So is the pure light there whether you say 'I' or not. Become aware of that pure light and you will never lose it. The beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience - that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else. p.201

First we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centres of observation, and then realise that immense ocean of pure awareness which is both mind and matter and beyond both. p.205

I did not condition my mind by thinking: 'I am God, I am wonderful, I am beyond'. I simply followed his 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. p.239

By being with yourself, the 'I am'; by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. p.278

In the very beginning I was giving some attention and time to the sense 'I am', but only in the beginning. p.398

Q.Can it happen that the mind is clear and quiet and yet no reflection [of reality] appears? NM. There is destiny to consider. The unconscious is in the grip of destiny: it is destiny, in fact. One may have to wait. But however heavy may be the hand of destiny, it can be lifted by patience and self-control. Integrity and purity remove the obstacles and the vision of reality appears in the mind. p.399

Step back from action to consciousness, leave action to the body and the mind; it is their domain. Remain as pure witness, till even witnessing dissolves in the Supreme..... It is like washing printed cloth. First the design fades, then the background and in the end the cloth is white. The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains. p.401

As long as there is consciousness, its witness is also there. The two appear and disappear together. p.423

Keep the 'I am' in focus of awareness, remember that you are, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost. It is transfigured, and becomes the real Self, the eternal friend and guide. You cannot approach it in worship. No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayer remain on the surface only; to go deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking. In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered. p.447

'I am' is a tiny seed which will grow into a mighty tree - quite naturally, without a trace of effort. p.510



NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ'S WORLD

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! It took only three years to realise my true nature. My Guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference. I remembered what he told me and persevered. p.301

If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear. p.123

The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused. Just like gold made into ornaments has no advantage over gold dust, except when the mind makes it so, so are we are in being - we differ only in appearance. We discover it by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one's life to this discovery.


Pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I was free from desire and fear. I found myself full, needing nothing. p.30

To me it is 'a body', not 'my body', 'a mind'. not 'my mind'. The mind looks after the body all right, I need not interfere. p.31

Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they all are real to the man in bondage; to me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself. p.179

To me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-like, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never out of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity. p.191

All is attended to in minutest details and yet there is a sense of unreality about it all. So is the case with me. All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens. I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a make-belief. p.191

There was discovery and it was sudden. Just as at birth you discover the world suddenly, as suddenly I discovered my real being. p.191f

I am neither conscious nor unconscious. I am beyond the mind and its various states and conditions....A person is a set pattern of desires and thoughts and resulting actions; there is no pattern in my case. There is nothing I desire or fear - how can there be a pattern. p.222

I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste, eat as you eat. I also feel thirst and hunger and expect my food on time. When starved or sick, my body and mind go weak. All this I perceive quite clearly, but somehow I am not in it. I feel myself as if floating over it, aloof and detached.....as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the horizon. I am like a cinema screen - clear and empty - the pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before. In no way is the screen affected by the pictures, nor are the pictures affected by the screen. p.267

Having realised that I am one with, and yet beyond the world, I became free from all desire and fear. I did not reason out that I should be free - I found myself free - unexpectedly, without the least effort. This freedom from desire and fear remained with me since then. Another thing I noticed was that I do not need to make an effort; the deed follows the thought, without delay and friction. I have also found that thoughts become self-fulfilling; things would fall in place smoothly and rightly. The main change was in the mind; it became motionless and silent, responding quickly, but not perpetuating the response. Spontaneity became a way of life, the real became natural and the natural became real. And above all, infinite affection, love, dark and quiet, radiating in all directions, embracing all, making all interesting and beautiful, significant and auspicious. p.269

Q.But when you look at yourself, what do you see? NM. It depends how I look. When I look through the mind, I see numberless people. When I look beyond the mind, I see the witness. Beyond the witness there is the infinite intensity of emptiness and silence. p.355

Once my Guru told me: 'You are the Supreme Reality', I ceased having visions and trances and became very quiet and simple. I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: 'I know nothing, I want nothing.' p.391

There was never any journey. I am, as I always was. p.392

I look, but I do not see in the sense of creating images clothed with judgements. I do not describe nor evaluate. I look, I see you, but neither attitude nor opinion cloud my vision. And when I turn my eyes away, my mind does not allow memory to linger; it is at once free and fresh for the next impression. p.445

All three states (waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep) are sleep to me. My waking state is beyond them. As I look at you, you all seem asleep, dreaming up words of your own. I am aware, for I imagine nothing. It is not samadhi (peaceful trance state), which is but a kind of sleep. It is just a state of mind unaffected by the mind, free from past and future....To be a person is to be asleep. p.453

In my world the seeds of suffering, desire and fear are not sown and suffering does not grow. p.485

It ('I am') enables me to become a person when required. Love creates its own necessities, even of becoming a person. p.488

They (self-realised people) may laugh and cry according to circumstances, but inwardly they are cool and clear, watching detachedly their own spontaneous reactions. Appearances are misleading and more so in the case of a self-realised people. p.529

THE SUPREME

There are no steps to self-realisation. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly and is irreversible....Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realisation you see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind. p.331

The world and the mind are states of being. The supreme is not a state. It pervades all states, but it is not a state of something else. It is entirely uncaused, independent, complete in itself, beyond time and space, mind and matter. ........There is nothing to recognise it by. It must be seen directly, by giving up all search for signs and approaches. When all names and forms have been given up, the real is with you. You need not seek it. Plurality and diversity are the play of the mind only. Reality is one. P. 38.

The real does not begin; it only reveals itself as beginningless and endless, all-pervading, all-powerful, immovable prime mover, timelessly changeless. p.142

What is seedless and rootless, what does not sprout and grow, flower and fruit, what comes into being suddenly and in full glory, mysteriously and marvelously, you may call that 'god' It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable, infinitely familiar yet most surprising, beyond all hope yet absolutely certain....You can do nothing to bring it about, but you can avoid creating obstacles. Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. p.188

Reality is not an event, it cannot be experienced....reality neither comes nor goes. There is no such thing as an expression of reality.....Only reality is, there is nothing else. p.190f

Reality is the ultimate destroyer. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one - this is the ultimate solution of every conflict......As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities, one quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality which is essentially impersonal. p.205

To locate a thing you need space, to place an event you need time; but the timeless and spaceless defies handling. It makes everything perceivable, yet itself is beyond perception. The mind cannot know what is beyond the mind, but the mind is known by what is beyond it. p.361

LOVE

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realise 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 and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. Only self - realisation can break it. Go for it resolutely. p.213

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. p.258

All the universe will be your concern; every living thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely. p.309

In love there is not the one even, how can there be two? Love is the refusal to separate, to make distinctions. Before you can think of unity, you must first create duality. When you truly love, you do not say: 'I love you; where there is mentation, there is duality. p.352

PAIN, PLEASURE and DESIRE

The obstacles to the clear perception of one's true being are desire for pleasure and fear of pain. Its the pleasure-pain motivation that stands in the way......Giving up desire after desire is a lengthy process with the end never in sight. Leave alone your desires and fears, give your entire attention to the subject, to him who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: who desires? Let each desire bring you back to yourself. p.144

.....pleasures lose their tang and pains their barb when the self is known. Both are seen as they are-conditional responses, mere reactions, plain attractions and repulsions, based on memories or preconceptions. Usually pleasure and pain are experienced when expected. p.145

Pain and pleasure go always together. Freedom from one means freedom from both. If you do not care for pleasure, you will not be afraid of pain. p.145

When you realise that you are beyond both pain and pleasure, aloof and unassailable, then the pursuit of happiness ceases and the resultant sorrow too. For pain aims at pleasure and pleasure ends in pain, relentlessly. p.147

Happiness depends on something or other and can be lost; freedom from everything depends on nothing and cannot be lost. Freedom from sorrow has no cause and, therefore, cannot be destroyed. Realise that freedom. p.147

Go to the source of both pain and pleasure, of desire and fear. Observe, investigate, try to understand. p.121

....for the sake of pleasure you are committing many sins. And the fruits of sin are suffering and death. p.82

Pain and pleasure happen, but pain is the price of pleasure, pleasure is the reward of pain...To know that pain and pleasure are one is peace. p.165

You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness. To me dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery. Pleasure and pain have causes, while my state is my own, totally uncaused, independent, unassailable. p.179

But when the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise. p.181

In one [person] you desire and fear, in the other [witness] you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go. p.189

Sex is an acquired habit. Go beyond. As long as your focus is on the body, you will remain in the clutches of food and sex, fear and death. Find yourself and be free. p.217

You are 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 timelessly present. Soon you will realise that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels, that disturbs. p.240

- desires fulfilled breed more desires. Keeping away from all desires and contentment in what comes by itself is a very fruitful state - a precondition to the state of fulness...freedom from desires is bliss. p.249

When you know that you lack nothing, that all there is, is you and yours, desire ceases. p.259

Whatever may be the situation, if it is acceptable, it is pleasant. If it is not acceptable, it is painful. p.277

As the acceptance of pain is the denial of the self, and the self stands in the way of true happiness, the wholehearted acceptance of pain releases the springs of happiness. p.278

Don't anticipate and don't regret, and there will be no pain. It is memory and imagination that cause suffering. p.279

A man's desire for a woman is innocence itself compared to the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss. p.299

You must unlearn everything. God is the end of all desire and knowledge....All desires must be given up, because by desiring you take the shape of your desires. When no desires remain, you revert to your natural state. p.336

Q. How am I to practise desirelessness?
NM. No need to practice. No need of any acts of renunciation. Just turn your mind away, that is all. Desire is merely the fixation of the mind on an idea. Get it out of its groove by denying it attention. p.338

Whatever you think about with desire or fear appears before you as real. p.344

To understand suffering, you must go beyond pain and pleasure. p.383

Cease from looking for happiness and reality in a dream and you will wake up. You need not know all the 'why' and 'how', there is no end to questions. Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover. p.453

It is desire that causes repetition. There is no recurrence where desire is not. p.454

Desire is of the past, fear is of the future. p.454

Each pleasure is wrapped in pain. p.455

The right state and use of the body and the mind are intensely pleasant. It is the search for pleasure that is wrong. Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search for happiness. It is because you are not happy that you want to be happy. Find out why you are unhappy. p.468

....pleasure is a distraction and a nuisance, for it merely increases the false conviction that one needs to have and to do things to be happy when in reality it is just the opposite. p.486f

Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting, that, truly, by losing all you gain all. p.505

When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source. p.511

Desirelessness is the highest bliss. p.49



EARNESTNESS

Whatever work you have undertaken-complete it. Do not take up new tasks, unless it is called for by a concrete situation of suffering and relief from suffering. Find yourself first, and endless blessings will follow. Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits. p.145f

Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward. p.145

When you are dead earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life to your purpose. You do not waste time and energy on other things. p.119

Whatever you do for the sake of truth, will take you to truth. Only be earnest and honest. The shape it takes hardly matters....Mere longing, undiluted by thought and action, pure, concentrated longing, will take you speedily to your goal. It is the motive that matters, not the manner....Who has not the daring will not accept the real even when offered. Unwillingness born out of fear is the only obstacle p.172

If the seeker is earnest, the light can be given. The light is for all and always there, but the seekers are few, and among those few, those who are ready are very few, and among those few, those who are ready are very rare. Ripeness of heart and mind is indispensable. p.194

Assiduously investigate everything that crosses your field of attention. With practice the field will broaden and investigation deepen, until they become spontaneous and limitless. p.379

There must be immense longing for truth, or absolute faith in the Guru. Believe me, there is no goal, nor a way to reach it (Truth is a pathless land - JK) You are the way and the goal, there is nothing else to reach except yourself. p.380

Compassion is the foundation of earnestness. Compassion for yourself and others, born of suffering, your own and others. p.433

Earnestness, not perfection, is a precondition to self-realisation. Virtues and powers come with realisation, not before. p.434

Earnestness is not a yearning for the fruits of one's endeavours. It is an expression of an inner shift of interest away from the false, the unessential, the personal. p.456

GUIDANCE

The greatest Guru is your inner self. Truly, he is the supreme teacher. He alone can take you to your goal and he alone meets you at the end of the road. Confide in him and you need no outer Guru. But again you must have the strong desire to find him and do nothing that will create obstacles and delays. p.149

Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide. As long as the urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with you. p.173

To rise in consciousness from one dimension to another, you need help. The help may not always be in the shape of a human person, it may be a subtle presence, or a spark of intuition, but help must come. The inner Self is watching and waiting for the son to return to his father. At the right time he arranges everything affectionately and effectively. Where a messenger is needed, or a guide, he sends the Guru to do the needful. p.274

Self-awareness tells you at every step what needs be done. When all is done, the mind remains quiet. p.427

I NEED DO NOTHING

Just realise the One Mover behind all that moves and leave all to Him. If you do not hesitate, or cheat, this is the shortest way to reality. Stand without desire and fear, relinquishing all control and all responsibility.... What is wrong in letting go the illusion of personal control and personal responsibility? Both are in the mind only. p.151


It is your idea that you have to do things that entangle you in 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. p.148

You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality. Abandon all conceptualisation and stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about it and all will be well with you. p.154

Nothing is done by me, everything just happens. I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal. p.191

All will happen by itself. You need not do anything, only don't prevent it. p.242

If you just try to keep quiet, all will come - the work, the strength for work, the right motive. Must you know everything beforehand? Don't be anxious about your future - be quiet now and all will fall into place. p.248

Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in. p.260

Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow. You need not seek anything, all will come to you most naturally and effortlessly. p.261

The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage. p.298

In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part. p.311

Just turn away from all that occupies the mind; do whatever work you have to complete, but avoid new obligations; keep empty, keep available, resist not what comes uninvited. p.375



THE PERSON

The memory of the past 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 next birth. Self-identification with the 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 did not say the same person is reborn. It dies for good. But its memories remain and their desires and fears. They supply the energy for a new person. The real takes no part in it, but makes it possible by giving it the light. p.381

Q. How does the error of being a person originate? NM A bundle of memories and mental habits attracts attention, awareness gets focalised and a person suddenly appears. Remove the light of awareness, go to sleep or swoon away - and the person disappears. p.255

When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realisation the person ceases. p.37


That which does not exist cannot have a cause. There is no such thing as a separate person....How does the 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. p.206

You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting. p.212

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. p.259

The person is merely the result of misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of 'I am' and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the 'I' and the 'mine'. The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of 'I am', which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. ìI am this, I am that' is dream, while pure 'I am' has the stamp of reality on it. You have tasted so many things - all came to naught. Only the sense 'I am' persisted - unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful, until you are able to go beyond. p.343

Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person. p.343

Q. After liberation what remains of the person? NM A vague memory remains, like the memory of a dream, or early childhood. After all, what is there to remember? A flow of events, mostly accidental and meaningless. A sequence of desires and fears and inane blunders. Is there anything worth remembering? The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell. p.343

Doership is a myth born from the illusion of 'me' and 'the mine'. p.376

Having seen that you are a bundle of memories held together by attachment, step out and look from the outside. You may perceive for the first time something which is not memory. You cease to be Mr-so-and-so, busy about his own affairs. You are at last at peace. You realise that nothing was ever wrong with the world - you alone were wrong and now it is all over. p.390

In reality you were never born and never shall die.....In fact, there is no body, nor a world to contain it; there is only a mental condition, a dream-like state, easy to dispel by questioning its reality. p.427

All you know is the person, the identity - which is not a person - you do not know, for you never doubted, never asked yourself the crucial question - 'Who am I'. The identity is the witness of the person and the practise consists in shifting the emphasis from the superficial and changeful person to the immutable and ever - present witness. p.442
To be a person is to be asleep. p.453

Until we can look at fear and accept it as the shadow of personal existence, as persons we are bound to be afraid. p.454

TRUE HELP

The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for further help. Repeated help is no help at all....You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your being. p.146

What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really care to help the world, you must step out of it. p.207

If you really want to help a person, keep away. If you are emotionally committed to helping, you will fail to help....A man is really helped when he is no longer in need of help. All else is just futility. p.260

Of course, if you have a chance to help somebody, by all means do it and promptly too, don't keep him waiting till you are perfect. But do not become a professional do-gooder. p.345

First be free of suffering yourself and then only hope of helping others. [free in the moment - ACIM] You do not even need to hope - your very existence will be the greatest help a man can give his fellowmen. p.280

Only the people who have gone beyond the world can change the world. p.326

EXPERIENCE

You need not gather any more (experience), rather you must go beyond experience. p.313

Experience leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden which is heavy enough. You need no more experiences....Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself your own. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from an experience. p.317

But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both. p.317f

Unless we revolt against this craving for experience and let go the manifested altogether, there can be no relief. We shall remain trapped. p.328

The only trouble is that you are addicted to experience and you cherish your memories. In reality it is the other way round; what is remembered is never real; the real is now. p.430

OTHER

As soon as the mind is ready the sun shines on it. p.54

All illness begins in the mind. Take care of the mind first, by tracing and eliminating all wrong ideas and emotions. Then live and work disregarding illness and think no more of it. With the removal of causes the effect is bound to depart. p.226

The real does not die, the unreal never lived. p.234

Heal your mind and it will cease to project distorted, ugly pictures. p.234

A prolonged ecstasy will burn out your brain, unless it is extremely pure and subtle. p.242

When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence. p.242

Consciousness can only become more subtle and refined and that is what happens after death. p.263

Man's fivefold body (physical etc) has potential powers beyond our wildest dreams.....Some of the powers can be developed by specialised training, but the man who flaunts such powers is still in bondage. p.270

There is the body and there is the Self. Between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as 'I am'.....When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within. p.274

If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you, you need not wait to be what you are. p.316

The true refuge is only in the unmanifested. p.325

Fearlessness is the door to the Supreme. p.353

Disregard names and shapes, don't be attached to them; your attachment is your bondage. p.353

The trinity: mind, self and spirit, when looked into, become unity. p.363

Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realising that there is nothing to give up. p.363f

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. p.371

Q.What is the value of spiritual books? NM. They help in dispelling ignorance. They are useful in the beginning, but become a hindrance in the end. One must know when to discard them. p.376

Karma is only a store of unspent energies, of unfulfilled desires and fears not understood. The store is being constantly replenished by new desires and fears. p.411

Most of our karma is collective. We suffer for the sins of others, as others suffer for ours. Humanity is one. p.465

How can a person limited in time and space, a mere body-mind, a gasp of pain between birth and death, be happy? The very conditions of its arising make happiness impossible. p.430

Consciousness is like a cloud in the sky and the water drops are the content. The cloud needs the sun to become visible, and consciousness needs being focussed in awareness. p.437

Reflected awareness, the sense: 'I am aware' is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is a reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross. p.438

Put your awareness to work, not your mind. The mind is not the right instrument for this task. The timeless can be reached only by the timeless. Your body and your mind are born subject to time; only awareness is timeless, even in the now. p.439f

A shadow on your neighbour's face, the immense and all pervading sorrow of existence is a constant factor in your life, but you refuse to take notice. p.442

The sun of awareness must rise first - all else will follow. p.448

Once you realise that all happens by itself, (call it destiny, or the will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed. p.451

Remain as the silent witness only. p.451

For, without memory and expectation there can be no time. p.452

And you cannot fight with your interests. You must go with them, see through them and watch them reveal themselves as mere errors of judgement and appreciation. p.456

You are never alone. There are powers and presences who serve you all the time most faithfully. You may not perceive them, nevertheless they are real and active. p.457

Q. What are the signs of progress in spiritual life? NM. Freedom from all anxiety; a sense of ease and joy; deep peace within and abundant energy without. p.462

Q. What is wrong with suicide? NM. Nothing wrong, if it solves the problem. What, if it does not? Suffering caused by extraneous factors - some painful and incurable disease, or unbearable calamity - may provide some justification, but where wisdom and compassion are lacking, suicide can not help. A foolish death means foolishness reborn. p.465

It is very often so with Americans and Europeans. After a stretch of spiritual practice they become charged with energy and frantically seek an outlet. They organise communities, become teachers of Yoga, marry, write books - anything except keeping quiet and turning their energies within, to find the source of the inexhaustible power and learn the art of keeping it under control. p.466

But disease and suffering are not natural. p.471

It is memory and anticipation that create problems of attainment or avoidance, coloured by like and dislike. p.475

There is no place for effort in reality. It is selfishness, due to a self-identification with the body, that is the main problem and the cause of all other problems. And selfishness cannot be removed by effort, only by clear insight into its causes and effects. p.476

Go beyond 'I-am-the-body' idea and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time. p.476

No such (yoga) school is valueless, nor indispensable; in each one can progress up to the point when all desire for progress must be abandoned to make further progress possible. Then all schools are given up, all effort ceases; in solitude and darkness the last step is made which ends ignorance and fear forever. p.477

Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realise your true nature. p.478

Your desire just happens to you along with its fulfilment, or non-fulfilment. You can change neither. You may believe that you exert yourself, strive and struggle. Again, it all merely happens, including the fruits of the work. Nothing is by you and for you....Freedom is freedom from worry. Having realised that you cannot influence the results, pay no attention to your desires and fears. Let them come and go. Don't give them the nourishment of interest and attention. p.481

Everything affects everything. In this universe, when one thing changes, everything changes (all minds are joined). Hence the great power of man in changing the world by changing himself. p.490

But often people come with their bodies, brain and minds so mishandled, perverted and weak, that the state of formless attention is beyond them. In such cases, some simpler token of earnestness is appropriate. The repetition of a mantra, or gazing at a picture will prepare their body and mind for a deeper and more direct search. p.482

Know yourself as you are - against fear there is no other remedy. p.485

A personal problem cannot be solved on its own level. The very desire to live is the messenger of death, as the longing to be happy is the outline of sorrow. p.485

True happiness is uncaused and this cannot disappear for lack of stimulation. It is not the opposite of sorrow, it includes all sorrow and suffering..... Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not. p.486

Accept life as it comes and you will find a blessing. p.491

Ashrams are not made, they happen. You cannot start nor prevent them...p.491

The preparation alone is gradual, the change itself is sudden and complete. Gradual change does not take you to a new level of conscious being. You need courage to let go. p.492

Action delayed is action abandoned. There may be other chances for other actions, but the present moment is lost - irretrievably lost. All preparation is for the future - you cannot prepare for the present.... Clarity is now, action is now p.493

The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it will destroy the world in which you live. But if your motive is love of truth and life, you need not be afraid. p.495

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. p.496

As long as you feel competent and confident, reality is beyond your reach. Unless you accept inner adventure as a way of life, discovery will not come to you. p.499

When ignorance, the mother of sin, dissolves, destiny, the compulsion to sin again, ceases. p.503

You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it....To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is wisdom. p.504

The world appears to you so overwhelmingly real, because you think of it all the time; cease thinking of it and it will dissolve into thin mist. p.505

Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see, because you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you will long for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and be willing to pay any price; the price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream itself. p.506

For some time the mental habits may linger in spite of the new vision, the habit of longing for the known past and fearing the unknown future. p.509

It is only when you realise fully the immense sorrow of your life and revolt against it, that a way out can be found. p.509

'Nothing is me', is the first step. 'Everything is me' is the next. p.518

You take remembering to be knowledge. True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected. p.519

Why bother at all to change? ...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. p.520f

Only when the very idea of changing is seen as false and abandoned, the changeless can come into its own..... All change affects the mind only. To be what you are, you must go beyond the mind, into your own being. It is immaterial what is the mind that you leave behind, provided you leave it behind for good. p.521

The first steps in self-acceptance are not at all pleasant, for what one sees is not a happy sight. One needs all the courage to go further. What helps is silence. Look at yourself in total silence, do not describe yourself. p.526

Mind must be free of desires and relaxed. It comes with understanding, not with determination...p.526

Q. How does maturity come about? NM. By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise. p.528


Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness. When you reach the deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind's surface-play affects you very little. p.531

from I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Published by Chetana, Bombay. 1992

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