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Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

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Famous Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

“In your world everything must have a beginning and an end. If it does not, you call it eternal. In my view, there is no such thing as beginning and end - these are all related to time. Timeless being is entirely in the now. Being and not-being alternate and their reality is momentary. The immutable Reality lies beyond space and time.”

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Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“Refuse to think in terms of this or that. All pain needs investigation. The mind is nothing else but the self. Assumption obscures reality without destroying it. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false..Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time.The mind creates time and space and takes its own creations for reality.”

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Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“Increase and widen your desires till 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.”

WantHeartMayMeanRealRealityDesireExpressionEternalIncreaseInfiniteLongingDevotionBuddhistDevotedSmallness
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“Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.”

PeopleNeedsMindWellsWisdomBodyRealityActionSpiritualLife IsDiesNamesLeftWishMemoriesMistakeTeachDyingUniversityCommittedWorthyDenialUndoneSensoryDenial Of Reality
Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“Surely the memory of an event cannot pass for the event itself. Nor can the anticipation. There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. There is livingness about it, an actuality; it stands out as if illumined. There is the "stamp of reality" on the actual, which the past and future do not have.”

IfsInspirationalRealityPastMemoriesEventsUniqueAnticipationStanding OutStampsExceptionalActuality
Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such or so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.”

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Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it.”

KnowsWorldSelfUseShowsRealityFacesJoySimpleSeeingMirrorsSelflessTransientCleansingPeace And Joy
Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“To understand suffering, you must go beyond pain and pleasure. Your own desires and fears prevent you from understanding and thereby helping others. In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else. If you are serious about the suffering of mankind, you must perfect the only means of help you have, yourself.”

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“Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to happen to, a conscious separate center. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose yourself in it.”

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Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“With self-awareness you grow more intelligent. In awareness you learn, in self-awareness you learn about yourself. Of course, you can only learn what you are not. To know what you are, you must go beyond the mind. Awareness is the point at which the mind reaches out beyond itself into reality. In awareness you seek not what pleases, but what is true.”

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Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realize that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelled, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear.”

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Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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