"I do nothing."
This is the nectar of faith,
So drink and be happy!

Know you are one,
Pure awareness.

With the fire of this conviction,
Burn down the forest of ignorance.

Free yourself from sorrow,
And be happy.

Be happy!
For you are joy, unbounded joy.

You are awareness itself.

~ The Ashtavakra Gita (translation by Thomas Byrom)

stay put at the source of your creation

Some visitors ask me, "Please show us a path that will lead to Reality." How can I? All paths lead to unreality. Paths are creations within the scope of knowledge. Therefore, paths and movement cannot transport you into Reality, because their function is to enmesh you within the dimension of knowledge, while the Reality prevails prior to it.

To apprehend this, you must stay put at the source of your creation, at the beginning of the knowledge 'I am'. So long as you do not achieve this, you will be entangled in the chains forged by your mind and get enmeshed in those of others.

Therefore, I repeat, you stabilize at the source of your Being and then all the chains will snap asunder and you will be liberated. You will transcend time, with the result that you will be beyond the reach of its tentacles and you shall prevail in Eternity.

And this sublime state can be attained only by drinking ceaselessly the nectar of the guru's sacred feet -- the guru-charan-amrita. It is a state of ecstatic beatitude -- the self subsiding blissfully in the Self. This ecstasy is beyond words; it is also awareness in total quietude.

The quintessence of the talk is clear. Your most important asset is the 'knowledge' that 'you are' prior to emanation of mind. Hold onto this 'knowledge' and meditate. Nothing is superior to this, not even devotion to a guru -- guru-bhakti -- or devotion to God -- Ishwara-bhakti.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, The Nectar of the Lord's Feet

Seek the nectar of truth,
Of love and forgiveness,
Simplicity and happiness.

Earth, fire and water,
The wind and the sky -
You are none of these.

If you wish to be free,
Know you are the Self,
The witness of all these,
The heart of awareness.

Set your body aside.
Sit in your own awareness.

You will at once be happy,
Forever still,
Forever free.

~ Ashtavakra Gita (translation by Thomas Byrom)

Awareness

Awareness is detachment, purity;
Awareness is propinquity to God;
Constant awareness is freedom from fear;
It is immortality; it is
Everything and all there is.

~ Guru Vachaka Kovai

what is this `I'?

What is this `I' that rises from within?
Only a thought that, like a bubble, floats
Up to the troubled surface of Awareness.
In sleep the sea is still, no bubble rises:
Then too you are.
You're not the `I' that rises and then sets,
You are the sole Awareness in the All,
The eternal, uncreated Light of Being.

~ Sri Muruganar, from 'Suttaruttal'

Through constant contact with the Sage
Who has with Siva become one
Attention centres in the Heart,
Enquiry dawns, one stands established
In the Self as pure Awareness,
And the malady of birth elusive
Flies away.

~ Sri Muruganar, The Garland of Guru's Sayings

this Awareness itself as Guru

Those who have not searched and found
The truth by their own natural Being
Will perish by alien forms deluded.
Live as one sole Being-Awareness.
All save this is false appearance,
The realm of maya.

[The delusion consists in thinking that one is the body alone, not the whole world.]

How can any treatise thrust some wisdom
Into that human-seeming heap of clay
Which keenly watches things perceived
And not at all the Self, Awareness?

Is it not because you are yourself
Awareness that you now perceive
This universe? If you observe
Awareness steadily, this awareness
Itself as Guru will reveal
The Truth.

~ Sri Muruganar, Guru Vachaka Kovai

firm-fixed in the heart

He is the Sage, the eternal Sun
Self-luminous, in whose presence this
Phenomenal world so variegated
And wonderful wholly disappears,
Unseen as other than the Self.

The Sage, exulting in the Self
And firm-fixed in the heart, regards
The universe as neither mere
Illusion nor as something other
Than the Self.

The whole world which we are aware of
Is by the Sage seen as Awareness
And nothing but Awareness only.
And knowing that there is no being
Except Awareness, he abides,
Rich in bliss, as Self-awareness.

~ Sri Muruganar, The Garland of Guru's Sayings, translation by Prof. K. Swaminathan

In love surrender to the Love Supreme

Do not wander endlessly
Searching in vain for certitude
Through strenuous study, listening, learning.
In love surrender to the Love
Supreme, the Lord, and reach
And hold the state supreme of Real
Being.

To disentangle life's hard knots
One needs must understand the Self
As Love itself. Only when one knows
This Love supreme is moksha gained.
Of every creed this is the heart,
The real teaching.

See Love. Hear Love. Reach out and touch
Love. Eat Love, sweet Love, and smell
Love. For Love is but the Self's
Awareness of Itself.

~ Guru Vachaka Kovai

Joy, joy!

one of Amma's swans today



A song very frequently sung by Sri Bhagavan's Mother, Alagammal:

How did the Self that ever is
Awareness-bliss,
How did It till now behave
As if It had forgotten this?

Wonder of wonders, beyond understanding
Is your strange fear,
My Swan, my dear,
Your fear of me!

Mind learning, knowing and forgetting,
Body begotten, begetting and then dying,
Whence these impurities in Purity?
Bigness, smallness, class, rank, sight and seer —
Why these darkling waves in the full deep sea of bliss?

No need for speech or vow of silence;
No coming or going; no beginning, end or middle.
Nor light nor sound; no quality.
No separateness and hence no fear.
Oh wonder of wonders, the things that seem
In a dream!

In and out, high and low, and all the ten directions
Lost in light illimitably vast,
Unbroken, unsupported, full and calm,
Pure Awareness, Bliss immutable,
The once-remote, long-longed-for goal
Now here, joy, joy!

Behave as if you were pure awareness ...

Q: All you say sounds beautifully convincing, yet my feeling of being just a person in a world strange and alien, often inimical and dangerous, does not cease. Being a person, limited in space and time, how can I possibly realise myself as the opposite; a de-personalised, universalised awareness of nothing in particular?

Sri Nisargadatta: You assert yourself to be what you are not and deny yourself to be what you are. You omit the element of pure cognition, of awareness free from all personal distortions. Unless you admit the reality of chit, you will never know yourself.

Q: What am I to do? I do not see myself as you see me. Maybe you are right and I am wrong, but how can I cease to be what I feel I am?

Sri Nisargadatta: A prince who believes himself to be a beggar can be convinced conclusively in one way only: he must behave as a prince and see what happens. Behave as if what I say is true and judge by what actually happens. All I ask is the little faith needed for making the first step. With experience will come confidence and you will not need me any more. I know what you are and I am telling you. Trust me for a while.

Q: To be here and now, I need my body and its senses. To understand, I need a mind.

Sri N: The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of misapprehension. Behave as if you were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. Don't oppose it and deny it all the time. Keep an open mind at least. Yoga is bending the outer to the inner. Make your mind and body express the real which is all and beyond all. By doing you succeed, not by arguing.

Q: Kindly allow me to come back to my first question. How does the error of being a person originate?

Sri N: The absolute precedes time. Awareness comes first. 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. The person (vyakti) flickers, awareness (vyakta) contains all space and time, the absolute (avyakta) is.

~ Sri Nisargadatta, I Am That

The Self that is Awareness

Though the world and mind rise and fade together, the world shines by the light of the mind. The ground whence the world and mind arise, and wherein they set, that Perfection rises not nor sets but ever shines. That is Reality.

Under whatever name or form we worship It, It leads us on to knowledge of the nameless, formless Absolute. Yet, to see one's true Self in the Absolute, to subside into It and be one with It, this is the true Knowledge of the Truth.

`Twos' and `threes' depend upon one thing, the ego. If one asks in one's Heart, `What is this ego?' and finds it, they slip away. Only those who have found this know the Truth, and they will never be perplexed.

There is no knowledge without ignorance; and without knowledge ignorance cannot be. To ask, `Whose is this knowledge? Whose this ignorance?' and thus to know the primal Self, this alone is Knowledge.

Without knowing the Self that knows, to know all objects is not knowledge; it is only ignorance. Self, the ground of knowledge and the non-Self, being known, both knowledge and ignorance fall away.

True Knowledge is being devoid of knowledge as well as ignorance of objects. Knowledge of objects is not true knowledge. Since the Self shines self-luminous, with nothing else for It to know, with nothing else to know It, the Self is Knowledge. Nescience It is not.

The Self that is Awareness, that alone is true. The knowledge which is various is ignorance. And even ignorance, which is false, cannot exist apart from the Self. False are the many jewels, for apart from gold, which alone is true, they cannot exist.

`You' and `he' -- these appear only when `I' does. But when the nature of the `I' is sought and the ego is destroyed, `you' and `he' are at an end. What shines then as the One alone is the true Self.

Past and future are dependent on the present. The past was present in its time and the future will be present too. Ever-present is the present. To seek to know the future and the past, without knowing the truth of time today, is to try to count without the number `One'.

Without us there is no time nor space. If we are only bodies, we are caught up in time and space. But are we bodies? Now, then and always -- here, now and everywhere -- we are the same. We exist, timeless and spaceless we.

~ from Reality on Forty Verses by Sri Ramana Maharshi

home of blissful Awareness

The Self, the home of blissful Awareness,
is a vast ocean of serene peace.
He whose mind turns inward and dives deep within it,
gains the infinite treasure of its grace.

~ The Garland of Guru’s Sayings

If you persevere, there can be no failure

Questioner: "What is the course of training in self-awareness?"

Sri Nisargadatta: "There is no need of training. Awareness is always with you. The same attention that you give to the outer, you turn to the inner. No new, or special kind of awareness is needed.

What you need is to be aware of being aware. Don't be misled by the simplicity of the advice. Very few are those who have the courage to trust the innocent and the simple.

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.

You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure.

It is not a matter of easy, or difficult. Either you try or you don't. It is up to you."

more than anything else in this world

As you look at the world without interpretation, as you look at the world without attachment, what the world is will be revealed to you. The world will be revealed to you as no thing. As an image on the screen of Consciousness. You will become radiantly happy for no reason whatsoever. You will find the peace that you never dreamed existed.

You have to want this. You have to love this. You have to want this more than anything else in this world.

...Never allow yourself to believe that something's wrong in your life. Catch it before it starts. And say to yourself:"I am effortless, choiceless, Pure Awareness." Whatever comes up, say that. Know the truth about yourself. God has no problems. Neither do you. For you are That.

I know the teaching sounds absurd to most people. And yet this is the teaching that has been propagated by rishis, sages, since the beginning of time. This is it. This is your opportunity to awaken. Why not use it?

~ Robert Adams, Silence of the Heart