Top 300 Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of ‘I’”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

202. “The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

203. “Consciousness is spotless, formless and prior to intellect.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

204. “To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself, you need nothing. Be what you are – conscious being – and don’t stray away from yourself.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

205. “If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds. Such change cannot be imposed; it must come from within.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

206. “The way back to yourself is through refusal and rejection.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

207. “The mind is what it thinks. To make it true, think true.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

208. “Self-realization definitely comes first. The mind cannot go beyond itself by itself. It must explode.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

209. “When all names and forms have been given up, the real is with you. You need not seek it.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

210. “The old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new ones. You must realize yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

211. “There is no question of going anywhere, arriving anywhere, or doing anything; you are there already.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

212. “Nothing troubles me. I offer no resistance to trouble – therefore it does not stay with me. On your side there is so much trouble. On mine there is no trouble at all. Come to my side.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

213. “Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

214. “Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not; one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all – being as well as not-being.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

215. “For me the moment of death will be a moment of jubilation, not of fear. I cried when I was born and I shall die laughing.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

216. “Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the NOW.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

217. “The mind exists in two states: as water and as honey. The water vibrates at the least disturbance, while the honey, however disturbed, returns quickly to immobility.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

218. “Punishment is but legalized crime. In a society built on prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions will be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

219. “All I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

220. “The world is full of contradictions; hence your search for harmony and peace. These you cannot find in the world, for the world is the child of chaos. To find order you must search within.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

221. “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.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

222. “Having realized 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...”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

223. “Consciousness is power. Be aware of what needs be done and it will be done. Only keep alert – and quiet. Once you reach your destination and know your real nature, your existence becomes a blessing to all. You may not know, nor will the world know; yet the help radiates.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

224. “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.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

225. “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.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

226. “All depends on you. It is by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in its reality and it will dissolve like a dream. Time can bring down mountains; much more you, who are the timeless source of time. For without memory and expectation there can be no time.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

227. “You are so used to the support of concepts that when your concepts leave you, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling to them again.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

228. “There is no such thing as unconsciousness for it is not experienceable. We infer unconsciousness when there is a lapse in memory or communication.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

229. “Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go of everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

230. “And spirituality or what you call “religion” is mainly to understand this: that you don’t require anything, you are a part of the totality, or reality.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

231. “I ask you what is the taste of your mouth all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter, nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

233. “Forget your past experiences and achievements and stand naked, exposed to the winds and rains of life, and you will have a chance.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

234. “Happiness is never your own; it is where the ‘I’ is not. It is beyond your reach; you have only to reach out beyond yourself and you will find it.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

235. “All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing – glue your self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

236. “Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

237. “If you imagine yourself as separate from the 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.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

238. “In the great mirror of consciousness, images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material – destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence – vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion, “I am so-and-so,” obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

239. “Increase and widen your desires until nothing but reality can fulfill them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means, be devoted to the real, the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

240. “Learn to live without self-concern. For this you must know your own true being as indomitable, fearless, ever victorious. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

241. “By focusing the mind on “I am,” on the sense of being, “I am so-and-so” dissolves; “I am a witness only” remains and that too submerges in “I am all.” Then the all becomes the One and the One – yourself.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

242. “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 recognize it.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

243. “Leave alone your desires and fears and give your entire attention to the subject, to he who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: who desires? Let each desire bring you back to yourself.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

244. “To find reality you must be real in the smallest daily action; there can be no deceit in the search for truth.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

245. “There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself. And that vastness is also love.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

246. “You’re free. You’ve taken this burden of being a human being on yourself. You’re free.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

247. “Our only hope is to stop, to look, to understand, and to get out of the traps of memory. For memory feeds imagination and imagination generates desire and fear.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

248. “My stand is clear; produce to distribute, feed before you eat, give before you take, think of others before you think of yourself. Only a selfless society based on sharing can be stable and happy. This is the only practical solution. If you do not want it, then – fight.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

249. “Study the prison you have inadvertently built around yourself.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

250. “Don’t try to understand! It’s enough if you do not misunderstand.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj