Nisargadatta

Ask yourself to whom does everything occur. Use everything as an opportunity to go within. Light up your way, burning through all obstacles in the intensity of Awareness. When you desire or fear, it is not the desire or fear itself that is wrong and must go, but the projected person. There is no point in fighting desires and fears which are perfectly natural and justified; It is the imagined person, who is swayed by them, that is the cause of suffering, and the creation of a past and future. The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end. After all, it subsides each time you go to sleep at night. In deep sleep you are not a separate person anymore, yet you are still alive. When you are alive and conscious, but no longer conscious of being a body, you are not that projected person anymore. During the waking hours you are, as if, on the world stage, playing only a role, but what are you when the play is over? You always are what you are; what you were before the play began you will remain when it is over. Look at yourself as performing on the stage of life. The performance may be splendid or clumsy, but you are not it, you merely watch it playing out through this body, with interest and sympathy of course, but keeping the knowledge in mind all the time that you are only watching this play of life going on. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

amen. 

Love reading Nisargadatta Maharaj first thing in the morning. 

Realize 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. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

My apparent dependence is on this consciousness which says "I Am." It is this sentience which enables me to perceive you. This concept I did not have but even then I existed. I was there before this consciousness appeared. -Nisargadatta Maharaj

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. Only, you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is no such thing as the experience of the real. The real is beyond experience. All experience is in the mind. You know the real by being the real. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

We do not need to search in order to find our True Being, we already are it. And the mind which searches for it, is the very reason why we cannot find it. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are. For as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing as self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as total negation. All you can say is: 'I am not this, I am not that'. You cannot meaningfully say 'this is what I am'. It just makes no sense. What you can point out as 'this' or 'that' cannot be yourself. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

By looking tirelessly, I became quite empty and with that emptiness all came back to me except the mind. I find I have lost the mind irretrievably. I am neither conscious nor unconscious, I am beyond the mind and its various states and conditions. Distinctions are created by the mind and apply to the mind only. I am pure Consciousness itself, unbroken awareness of all that is. I am in a more real state than yours. I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person. As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other, but my mental process has come to an end. My thinking, like my digestion, is unconscious and purposeful. I am not a person in your sense of the word, though I may appear a person to you. I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being. There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all. No thing is me, so I am nothing. Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least. Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

No particular thought can be mind's natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. 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. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite. What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless through and through, it dissolves and only reality remains. This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter, that compared to it even diamond is soft like butter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dreamlike, misty, irrelevant. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Cease to be the object and become the subject of all that happens; once having turned within, you will find yourself beyond the subject. When you have found yourself, you will find that you are also beyond the object, that both the subject and the object exist in you, but you are neither. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

You cannot fight pain and pleasure on the level of consciousness. To go beyond them you must go beyond consciousness, which is possible only when you look at consciousness as something that happens to you and not in you, as something external, alien, superimposed. Then, suddenly you are free of consciousness, really alone, with nothing to intrude. And that is your true state. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Leave greatness to others. Become so small that no one can see you. This conviction results from growing devotion to the supreme reality. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

All experience is illusory, limited and temporal. Expect nothing from experience. Realization by itself is not an experience, though it may lead to a new dimension of experiences. Yet the new experiences, however interesting, are not more real than the old. Definitely realization is not a new experience. It is the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience. It is awareness, which makes experience possible. Just like in all the colours light is the colourless factor, so in every experience awareness is present, yet it is not an experience. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj