Top 300 Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Nothing can trouble you but your own imagination.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

52. “How can an unsteady mind make itself steady? Of course it cannot. It is the nature of the mind to roam about. All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

53. “The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

54. “Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

55. “When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of nonduality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being. In the state of nonduality, all separation ceases.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

56. “All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance – these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

57. “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

58. “Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn on you.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

59. “When effort is needed, effort will appear. When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself. You need not push life about. Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment...”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

60. “Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren’t any.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

61. “There is only one meditation – the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

62. “You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

63. “Whatever you come across- go beyond.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

64. “Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

65. “You will get to your maturity quickly if you stay in the nothingness.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

66. “The only thing required of you is to allow all your raging desires to relax into preferences. Then everything will be done through you and for you, not by you.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

67. “Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

68. “Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

69. “Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

70. “Don’t ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind. Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

71. “It is your restlessness that causes chaos.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

72. “In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

73. “Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it. It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condition.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

74. “We grow through investigation, and to investigate we need experience. We tend to repeat what we have not understood. If we are sensitive and intelligent, we need not suffer. Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

75. “Do what you believe in and believe in what you do. The rest is a waste of time and energy.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

76. “A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

77. “You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

78. “I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning-it is not as hard as you think.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

79. “It is just like your tape-recorder. It records, it reproduces – all by itself. You only listen. Similarly, I watch all that happens, including my talking to you. It is not me who talks, the words appear in my mind and then I hear them said.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

80. “The innermost light, shining peacefully and timelessly in the heart, is the real Guru. All others merely show the way.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

81. “Seeking out causes is a pastime of the mind. There is no duality of cause and effect. Everything is its own cause.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

82. “All you need is to stop searching outside for what can be found only within. Set your vision right before you operate. You are suffering from acute misapprehension. Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life – this is the quickest way to a change in your world.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

83. “Whatever comes and goes, is not reality. See the event as event only. Then you are vulnerable to reality, no longer armoured against it, as you were when you gave reality to events and experiences.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

84. “Don’t pretend to be what you are not. Don’t refuse to be what you are.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

85. “When you desire the common good, the whole world desires with you. Make humanity’s desire your own and work for it. There you cannot fail.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

87. “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.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

88. “Earnestness is the most important thing.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

89. “All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

90. “Imagine a dense forest full of tigers and you in a strong steel cage. Knowing that you are well protected by the cage, you watch the tigers fearlessly. Next, you find the tigers in the cage and yourself roaming about in the jungle. Last, the cage disappears and you ride the tigers!”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

91. “The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. To be free in the world, you must die to the world. Then the universe is your own, it becomes your body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

92. “The problem is not yours – it is your mind’s only. Begin by disassociating yourself from your mind. Resolutely remind yourself that you are not the mind and that its problems are not yours.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

93. “I am told I was born. I do not remember...”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

94. “Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen, and you need not search for truth; truth will find you...”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

95. “You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one. But as long as you do not even doubt yourself to be Mr. So-and-so, there is little hope. When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you be shown?”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

96. “As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

97. “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.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

98. “Leave your mind alone, that is all. Do not go along with it. After all, there is no such thing as mind apart from thoughts which come and go obeying their own laws, not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in them.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

99. “Between the banks of pleasure and pain flows the river of life. If you spend much time on either bank you will miss out on life.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

100. “Whatever state I am in, I see it as a state of mind to be accepted as it is.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj