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 realize myself as the opposite; a de-personalized, universalized awareness of nothing in particular?

Maharaj: 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?

M: 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.

M: 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.

~ I Am That

Q: Do you mean to say that mere wanting is enough? Surely both qualifications and oppotunities are needed.

Sri Nisargadatta: These will come with earnestness. What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions: the goal and the way must not be on different levels; life and light must not quarrel; behavior must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal.

Q: Tenacity and honesty are endowments, surely! Not a trace of them I have.

Sri N: All will come as you go on. Take the first step first. All blessings come from within. Turn within. 'I am' you know. Be with it all the time you can spare, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way.

If one obtains and relishes the nectar of the Lord's feet, the charan-amrita, the mind can be conquered. This means that the mind will no longer hold sway over us; its mastery imposed on us from childhood will no longer oppress us. This is called manojaya -- victory over the mind. But this is made possible only with His Grace. Without Grace, we cannot relish the nectar.

However, only a true devotee, a bhakta, a God can obtain the charan-amrita. But who and what is this devotee? It is nothing else but Consciousness, the sense of Being, the knowledge that 'we are', which has appeared unknowingly and spontaneously in us. The Consciousness is the charan-amrita, the nectar of the Lord's feet.

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

When we concentrate our attention on the origin of thought, the thought process itself comes to an end; there is a hiatus, which is pleasant, and again the process starts. Turning from the external world and enjoying the objectless bliss, the mind feels that the world of objects is not for it. Prior to this experience the unsatiating sense-enjoyments constantly challenged the mind to satisfy them, but from the inward turn onwards its interest in them begins to fade. Once the internal bliss is enjoyed, the external happiness loses its charm.

One who has tasted the inward bliss is naturally loving and free from envy, contented and happy with others’ prosperity, friendly and innocent and free from deceit. He is full of the mystery and wonder of the bliss. One who has realized the Self can never inflict pain on other.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Self Knowledge and Self Realization

How does the contemplation of 'I am" affect me?

Q: When asked about the means for Self-realization, you invariably stress the importance of the mind dwelling on the sense 'I am'. Where is the causal factor? Why should this particular thought result in self-realization? How does the contemplation of 'I am" affect me?

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed. After all, what prevents the insight into one's true nature is the weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the subtle and focus the gross only. When you follow my advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of 'I am' only, you become fully aware of your mind and its vagaries. Awareness, being lucid harmony (sattva) 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 a deep and fundamental shift from darkness to light, from inadvertence to awareness.


~ I am That

Q: After self-realisation, does a man still have an ego?

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: He has no acquaintance whatsoever with the ego. So long as one identifies with form, the ego is there. Since a self-realised one no longer has any identification with the body form, the question simply does not arise.

~ The Nectar Of Immortality, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's Discourses on the Eternal, Edited by Robert Powell

If you really want to understand this, you must give up your identification with the body. By all means, make use of the body, but don't consider yourself to be the body while acting in this world. Identify yourself with the consciousness, which dwells in the body; with that identity, you should act in the world. Will it be possible?

So long as you identify yourself as the body, your experience of pain and sorrow will increase day by day. That is why you must give up this identification, and you should take yourself as the consciousness. If you take yourself as the body, it means you have forgotten your true Self, which is the atman. And sorrow results for the one who forgets himself. When the body falls, the principle which always remains is You. If you identify yourself with the body, you will feel that you are dying, but in reality there is no death because you are not the body. Let the body be there or not be there, your existence is always there; it is eternal.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, The Ultimate Medicine: As Prescribed by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Edited by Robert Powell

Go deep into the sense of 'I am'

Even to say that you are not the body is not quite true. In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more.

Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find.

How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it.

The sense of being, of 'I am' is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the 'I am' without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalised but can be experienced.

All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it -- body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That

Please see this as well.

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

I repeatedly tell you that there is nothing save this consciousness, the knowledge "I Am" -- if you feel like worshiping something, worship that.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Prior to Consciousness

Why not now?

My Guru told me that I am timeless, spaceless, without attributes. Then I decided that if that is the case why should I have any more fear? Who is to have fear? Suppose you meet a tiger: the tiger is going to eat you in any case, therefore there is some chance that if you attack the tiger it may run away, so why not take that chance?

Why not try and disidentify yourself from the body? Whatever unhappiness you have, whatever fear you have, is based entirely on identification with the body. Make an effort gradually to disidentify yourself from the body.

It is a simple thing. Death is inevitable, so why don't you accept what the Guru has told you, that death is something which cannot affect That which you are. This identification with the body is time-bound; why not disassociate yourself now?

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Prior to Consciousness

What is your worth?

What is your worth? You are the consciousness through which the world is expressed. Abide in that worthiness. Don't step down into mind and the body. Again, you must have the firm conviction that you are unaffected by birth and death. You are like space, not only like space, you are prior to space.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Prior to Consciousness

attachment to the Guru?

What do you mean, attachment to the Guru? You and Guru are one, not two.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Prior to Consciousness

demolish those concepts

Through the concepts of others you have built up so many things around you that you are lost. "You" is decorated and embellished by the concepts of others. Prior to receiving any hearsays from outside, has anyone any information about himself?

The purpose of Sat-Guru is to tell you what you are like prior to the building up of all those concepts of others. Your present spiritual storehouse is filled up with the words of others -- demolish those concepts. Sat-Guru means the eternal state which will never be changed: what you are. You are that immutable, eternal, unchangeable Absolute. Sat-Guru tells you to get rid of all these walls built around you by the hearsays and concepts of others.

You have no form, no design. The names and forms you see are your consciousness only -- the Self is colourless but it is able to judge colours, etc.

The one who is directed by a Sat-Guru has no more birth. Your sadhana is over, you have reached this place.

To you who search for the Self, I explain this type of knowledge, I lead you to a state where there is no hunger, no desire.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Prior to Consciousness, edited by Jean Dunn

the expression of Guru

Q: What does Maharaj mean by Linga-deha?

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: It is the seed, the chemical, the product of the five elemental essences which give rise to and sustain the consciousness "I Am." Just like the seed of a tree, that seed latently contains all future manifestations and expressions of the tree that will sprout out of that seed ...

At the Linga-deha level, when you worship your Guru, you are the expression of Guru, in so many ways. You will be experiencing so many things at such a level, but all that has emanated out of you only, out of your love and devotion for Guru, and finally, as you evolve, all those expressions merge into you. This is very important, this is the consummation of devotion or Saguna Bhakti.

~ from Prior to Concsciousness, edited by Jean Dunn

Once the decision is taken, there is no moving away from it

Q: Has any one of those persons coming here become a jnani?

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: A number of those who have come here have acquired the knowledge, but only superficially. No one has really studied what the knowledge is; no one has really grasped the full meaning. What are they doing now? They are entangled in wanting, desiring, and this has made them forget the knowledge. Very few will get this knowledge correctly and absorb it deeply into their hearts. Once you have understood the origin of this movement, this activity, and the reason, the nature of this desire, then only can you return to what you are. Unless you are firm about it, you will not understand.

~ from a talk on April 15, 1980

and from a talk four days later:

Sri Nisargadatta: You must come to a firm decision. You must forget the thought that you are a body and be only the knowledge "I Am," which has no form, no name. Just be. When you stabliize in that beingness it will give all the knowledge and all the secrets to you, and when the secrets are given to you, you transcend the beingness, and you, the Absolute, will know that you are also not the consciousness. Having gained all this knowledge, having understood what is what, a kind of quietude prevails, a tranquility. Beingness is transcended, but beingness is available.

Q: What is that state?

Sri N: It is something like a deer taking rest in the shadow of a tree. The color of the shadow is neither light nor very dark, this is the borderland. Neither jet black nor very bright, halfway between them, that is that shadow. Deep blue, like clouds, that is that state. That is also the grace of the Sat-Guru. Everything is flowing out of that state, but this principle does not claim anything, is not involved in anything that is coming out of it, but this beingness is available. That deep, dark blue state, the grace of the Sat-Guru. This is the state of the jnani, this is a very, very rare, natural samadhi state, the most natural state, the highest state.

You must have a firm conviction about this. Once the decision is taken, there is no moving away from it. The fruition of your spirituality is to fully understand your own true nature, to stabilize in your true identity. One must have patience, the capacity to wait and see.

The darkness that you see when you close your eyes, that is the shadow of the Guru's grace; don't forget it, always keep it in mind. Take rest in the shadow of the Guru's grace. Whenever you remember the words of the Guru, you are in the shade of the Guru's grace.

Ultimately, everything merges into the Self. You may come across great difficulties, but your courage and stability in the Self should be firm.

~ from Prior to Consciousness. (Sri Nisargadatta left his body a year and a half after these talks.)