A D V A I T O

Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness. That is all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, the source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are not the mind. If you know you are not the mind, then what difference does it make if it’s busy or quiet ? You are not the mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Give all your attention to the question : “What is it that makes me conscious ?”, until your mind becomes the question itself and cannot think of anything else. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You need not get at it, you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that, and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The mind is discontinuous. Again and again it blanks out, like in sleep or swoon or distraction. There must be something continuous to register discontinuity. Memory is always partial, unreliable and evanescent. It does not explain the strong sense of identity pervading consciousness, the sense “I am”. Find out what is at the root of it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

By its very nature, the mind is outward turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves; to be told to look for the source within, is, in a way, the beginning of a new life. Awareness takes the place of consciousness; in consciousness there is the “I”, who is conscious, while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself. The “I am” is a thought, while awareness is not a thought; there is no “I am aware” in awareness. 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

Just as there appear to be things “outside” the body/mind such as trees that are objects in awareness, there are also objects “inside” the body/mind such as thoughts, emotions, and sensations. All of these are objects appearing in the pure seeing itself. This allows us to see that the boundary between the body and its surroundings is essentially just conceptual. The conceptual labels “inside” and “outside” are appearances of awareness. – Scott Kiloby

Love is a tremendous caring that arises in the wake of transcending the personal self. In the wake of this transcendence, something amazing arises. A deep love and caring arises from within emptiness, from nowhere. This love and caring seeks only the Truth in every moment and in all circumstances. True love is something far greater than anything that could be called personal. True love is a non-personal miracle. It is the nature of reality itself. It is the natural and spontaneous expression of the undivided Self. True love is not something that can be created. A love greater than oneself, by its very nature, is something that we can’t manufacture. The me cannot manufacture it, even if it wants to. This Love arises from the Self – from realization of the Self. Listen and feel into the intuition of oneness within. The feeling of oneness is love; the experience of oneness is realization of your true nature. Love only seems other than you or bigger than you when you are trapped in the perspective of a personal me. This non-personal love actually is you because you, as you truly are, have never been that which is personal. In one sense, it’s simply a matter of how deep enlightenment has gone, how thorough it is. We can’t really love the whole until we have a deep realization that we are the whole. Otherwise, the vastness of that love is always going to be experienced as a threat to the me. Love cares not for the me, it cares only for that which is true, undivided, and whole. When the me dissolves, when it surrenders itself to a unity far greater than anything the mind can comprehend, that is Love. – Adyashanti

Having never left the house you are asking for the way home. Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all. Collecting right ideas also will take you nowhere. Just cease imagining. Don’t try to understand ! Enough if you do not misunderstand. Don’t rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The idea of ‘self’ wants to survive beyond this moment and yet this moment is all there is and the idea of self has NO being and there is actually no ‘me’ in this immediacy of seeing-knowing. – Gilbert

Conflict is a blessing. It is showing us where we are emphasizing some viewpoint that separates us from others. When it hurts because someone attacked your self-image, let the raw emotion hang there in space, without trying to repair the ego. You’ll have plenty of time to respond in whatever way is necessary (later). In the meantime, say “Thank you for the opportunity to face this suffering that I call ‘me’.” – Scott Kiloby

I am unloved, I am loved. I am misunderstood, I am understood. I am unappreciated, I am appreciated. I’m successful, I am a failure. Either way, and in all cases, it’s always deeply, fundamentally, earth-shatteringly okay. What I am is prior to all stories, including this one. – Jeff Foster

There is no such state as seeing the real. Who is to see what ? You can only be the real, which you are, anyhow. The problem is not mental. Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren’t any. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The wave in the ocean, experiencing itself as broken and incomplete, seeks wholeness. Experiencing homesickness, it seeks home. And all the while, the wave is a perfect expression of the very wholeness it is seeking. There is no wave separate from the ocean. Already being home, we seek home. And the play goes on. – Jeff Foster

Everybody wants to be active, but where do his actions originate ? There is no central point : each action begets another, meaninglessly and painfully, in endless succession. The alternation of work and pause is not there. First find the immutable centre where all movement takes birth. Just like a wheel turns round an axle, so must you be always in the centre and not whirling at the periphery. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You can do nothing. What time has brought about, time will take away. This is the end of yoga, to realize independence. All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the “I am”. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You cannot be anything that you point to. – Mooji

Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light beyond it in which it appears, which gives it being. Don’t be all the time immersed in your experience. Remember that you are beyond the experiencer, ever unborn and deathless. In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There can be no universe without the witness, there can be no witness without the universe. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Common sense too will tell you that to fulfill a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention. Don’t look for quick results, there may be none within your noticing. Unknown to you, your psyche will undergo a change, there will be more clarity in your thinking and feeling, purity in your behaviour. You need not aim at these – you will witness the change all the same. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realisation is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost. On the other hand, consciousness is changeful, flowing, undergoing transformation from moment to moment. Do not hold on to consciousness and its contents. Consciousness held, ceases. To try to perpetuate a flash of insight, or a burst of happiness is destructive of what it wants to preserve. What comes must go. The permanent is beyond all comings and goings. Go to the root of all experience, to the sense of being. Beyond being and not-being lies the immensity of the real. Try and try again. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

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 verbalized, but which can be experienced. All you need to do is to try and try again. After all the sense of ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it – body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions and so on. All these self-identifications are misleading, because of these you take yourself to be what you are not. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Refuse all thoughts except one : the thought ‘I am’. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally, without any interference on your part. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Any thought that you have reached or are going to reach that state is false. Whatever happens in consciousness is purely imaginary, an hallucination; therefore, keep in mind the knowledge that it is consciousness in which everything is happening. With that knowledge, be still, do not pursue any other thoughts which arise in consciousness. What is necessary is to understand with sure conviction is that all is temporary, and does not reflect your true state. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Leave your mind alone, that is all. Don’t 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

Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

If you must begin, then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time. – Trungpa Rinpoche

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

Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination ! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

I don’t think you really understand the purpose of my dialogues here. I don’t say things simply to convince people that they are true. I am not speaking about these matters so that people can build up a philosophy that can be rationally defended, and which is free of all contradictions. When I speak my words, I am not speaking to your mind at all. I am directing my words directly at consciousness. I am planting my words in your consciousness. If you disturb the planting process by arguing about the meaning of the words, they won’t take root there. Once my words have been planted in consciousness, they will sprout, they will grow, and at the appropriate moment they will bear fruit. It’s nothing to do with you. All this will happen by itself. However, if you think about the words too much or dispute their meaning, you will postpone the moment of their fruition. Enough talking. Be quiet and let the words do their work ! – Nisargadatta Maharaj

When Maharaj told you endlessly ‘You are consciousness’, if you received that information in utter inner silence, it activated an awareness of consciousness to such an extent that you felt, ‘He isn’t just telling me something; he is actually describing what I am, right now in this moment’. I think that this is what he was referring to when he talked about ‘getting the knowledge’. It wasn’t an intellectual knowledge he was talking about, and it wasn’t Self-realisation either. It was a state in which concepts temporarily dissolved leaving a simple awareness of the being that underlay them. While they lasted the states were very useful; they gave you the conviction and the direct experience that there was something real and enduring that exists whether the mind is there or not. – David Goodman

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 final step. But the real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own. It is like deep sleep – you do not give up your bed when you fall asleep – you just forget it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace – immersed in the deep silence of reality. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

This is no joke, but you can become ‘Parabrahman’ right now. Only it is not a commodity that you can acquire. Focus your attention only on that consciousness ‘I am’. Don’t be led astray by all the so-called spiritual disciplines and rigmaroles. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are consciousness. Where is the question of your merging with the consciousness ? Your consciousness means “you are”. “You-are-ness” and consciousness are not separate. The “you are” state itself is the consciousness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

People identify me with their concepts and they do what their concepts tell them. It is consciousness which is manifest, nothing else. Who is talking, who is walking, who is sitting ? These are the expressions of that chemical “I Am”. Are you that chemical ? You talk about heaven and hell, this Mahatma or that one, but how about you ? Who are you ? In meditation, one sees a lot of visions. They are in the chemical, the realm of your consciousness, are they not ? All these things are connected only to that birth-chemical. You are not this chemical “I Am”. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don’t take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh. How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long ? Above all, know that the ego isn’t personal. It isn’t who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more ego. – Eckhart Tolle

One can have a subtle belief that nothing exists or that there is only awareness. But listen to a bird singing. The thought “Bird,” the sound, and the colors and shape of the bird are all appearing immediately to awareness. Look for the line that divides awareness from what appears. In not finding it, the belief in nothingness/awareness as the only real “thing” is seen to be another viewpoint you don’t need. – Scott Kiloby

The minute the mouth opens there is a danger of attaching to what is said. If someone reads this and assumes silence is the only way, there is a danger of attaching to what is assumed. When a pointer becomes a podium, it is no longer a pointer. When the danger, the pointer, the podium, the silence and the poetry are seen as a dream, the practitioner has completed the lesson (if this is believed without being discovered, it becomes a podium.) – Benjamin Smythe

You need to train yourself so that at any time and any moment you choose, you can free yourself inwardly from your world, from others, from the past, from the future, from the previous thought and the next thought. This is to find freedom. Yet if you then think you are free and have some wisdom, this is not so. You should not be attached to solitude or to experiences of relative freedom. When you are neither attached to independence nor to company then wisdom will manifest. – Sheng-Yen

A Great Silence overcomes me, and I wonder why I ever thought to use language. – Rumi

Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object. The object changes all the time. In consciousness there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Learn to watch both your experience and your reactions to your experience. This process of observant attention and witnessing will enable you to see that your fundamental and essential sense of identity exists as an unchanging point of Awareness within the heart of all changing conditions and circumstance. This Awareness is grounded in the present moment and never exists outside of Now. It is always accessible and never exists somewhere other than Here. It is the immediate and undeniable Center of who you imagine yourself to be. Reside in this Center, and realize that the essence of this Awareness is not separate from That which manifests before, around and within you. – Metta Zetty

We can thank these hard-working, seldom-resting, always on alert, over-taxed minds, we can thank them for their hard work on our behalf and kiss their little heads and say, “Nice try sweetheart, trying to stand in for the All, nice try, boy did you really do an amazing job considering. Now let me take the remote away from you sweetheart. – Jeannie Zandi

Speaking of Self-realization is a delusion. It is only because people have been under the delusion that the non-Self is the Self and the unreal the Real that they have to be weaned out of it by the other delusion called Self-realization; because actually the Self always is the Self and there is no such thing as realizing it. — Ramana Maharshi

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words ? He is the one I would like to talk to. – Chuang Tzu

Habitually conditioned to avoid fear and insecurity, most people compulsively cling to what is familiar, even if it is very painful and confusing. I have witnessed countless people turn away from the experience and revelation of freedom because in that freedom there is nowhere to hide and nothing to hold onto. As they begin to awaken to a freedom that is profound, many turn back to a familiar condition of struggle and confusion in an unconscious effort to avoid stepping completely into the ungraspable and indefinable mystery of liberation. Why ? Because in that mystery there is absolutely nothing for the personal ego to attain or define itself by. This is not the liberation that most people envision when they start out. Consciously or unconsciously most people envision a freedom that they can attain and possess. So many who glimpse the enlightened condition tell me that it is so much bigger than they ever could have imagined. To realize that freedom is not something that you possess, but something that possesses you, is often experienced as shocking, frightening, and unbelievably liberating. It is a revelation that swallows up the dream of a separate you and reveals Self to be a limitless expanse. What I am describing is the experience of Self void of any sense of selfhood, a timeless and uncaused condition which is constantly birthing manifest existence into form. To have a glimpse of this profound freedom requires very little, but to live it requires the destruction of every concept of self you have ever held or will ever hold. This freedom is a flame that burns the need to struggle to ash and reveals one’s Self to be all there is. – Adyashanti

The key is to experience what is. The tendency is to stop with the conclusion of what is. – Gangaji

As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter. – Eckhart Tolle

Life can be really and truly simple if we don’t fight it. – Ramesh Balsekar

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky. – The Buddha

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this : learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it. – Eckhart Tolle

The content is not the issue. The content is stunningly simple : there is no you. In real life. No shit. Look. That’s it. And I added the “in real life, no shit, look” bit just to pad it out. There’s no you. That’s it. So… Really it’s a case of making sure the lie can’t just spiral out into complexity. Complexity is the body of the lie. A lie which gets bloated doesn’t do so primarily in terms of scale or shrillness – but in terms of complexity. All the lie wants is to make this complex. So it will throw idea after idea at you to make it so. Complex. That’s the lie. That’s the body of the lie – complexity. – Ciaran

Stare deeply into the place that your mind doesn’t want you to see. There is a space there. An empty space where your mind says there is a YOU. This is THE TRUTH. It’s emotionless. It’s without belief or attachment. It’s looking to see if that one assumption that you’ve had for your whole life is true or not.- Karistos

Imagine what it’s like to be a baby opening its eyes for the very first time. A blank slate. No you to sense; just senses. No you to think; just thought. No you to name or label things; just the naming and labelling. – Bobby

Don’t think. Look. – Karistos

You think there’s a ‘you’ which experiences reality. But theres nothing experiencing reality, because nothing can be contained outside it. There is only a body that was born. The mind, as a response to looking at life itself through a matrix of cause and effect, assumed a cause and an effect for life, as such. But theres no cause, no effect. Nothing happens outside the present moment, so there cant be anything outside it experiencing it. So you get this label – “self” – for something that wasn’t there – it was never there. But that was just the brain doing what it does. Labelling and associating. Throwing up patterns. Showing you the world in terms of cause and effect. It’s not real. YOU live through this. Your mind creates what is essentially a lens for you to look through where there should be no lens. YOU, YOUR life, YOUR feelings, everything YOU own. It is a lie. It is all a lie. All that shits there – life, feelings, everything – but its not yours; theres no you to own any of it. This is what I see, and I implore you dont know, believe, or accept it. We’re just saying : look at it. We’re saying it harshly because there are 1,000 different ways to fudge this, to get lost, to build a little world of freedom-themed bullshit, to tell yourself you’re looking when you’re just spinning bullshit and stressing out over some crap that you’ve fucking invented. And plus ? The self is so embedded in everything that means anything to you that you dont want it to be true. Your instinct is to “protect the self”, to ignore this, to go back to sleep, to keep accumulating things and live your days comfortably, safe in the knowledge that YOU exist. – Karistos

Basically, that just means stare at the one assumption that you’ve carried through your entire life and ask yourself if its true. Do you actually exist ? You wanna know if something is true or not ? You just look at it with total honesty and truth becomes self-evident. Discard beliefs and understandings; just look at that one isolated object and see. Sit down, shut up, and work it out. I dont exist. Is it true ? – Karistos

The only way you can get to see the truth for yourself is through honest inquiry. Inquire with laser like intensity and honesty clean as a mountain spring : are ‘you’ real ? The mind will give tons of reasons why ‘you’ are true. Bullshit. Dont believe anything. Do you need reasons to believe there is a sun ? You know because you know. No reason needed. Don’t look for any reason/symptom for ‘your’ existence. Just look if there really is a ‘you’. ‘You’ are a fiction created by the mind to give itself some context; nothing more than that. – Maverick

Don’t get lost. Focus on the core – the absence of you. The absence of self. Of cause, of a cause for your life. The absence of an experiencer behind the experience. – Ciaran

The personal self or “me” imagines itself to be limited and confined to a particular body. Self-enquiry seeks the source of this spurious “me” by focusing on it the spotlight of attention or awareness, whereupon the “me” vanishes because it does not have any independent existence. It is revealed as being merely an illusion. What remains is that same universal Consciousness that was always already there as the true nature or very BEING of the artificial “me.” – Ramesh Balsekar

Truth or Reality cannot be stored, cannot be amassed – it does not accumulate. The value of any insight, understanding, or realisation can only be in the ever-fresh presence of the moment. Yesterday’s realisation is not a bit of good. Now it is dead. Now it has lost it’s vitality. It is useless to try and cling to or hold onto an insight, an understanding, or a realisation, for only in it’s movement can there be the enabling of ever-fresh and new insights of Truth or Reality to appear. The idea of enlightenment or self-realisation as a onetime event or a lasting and permanent state or experience is an erroneous concept. Understand-ING or know-ING is alive in the immediacy which can never be negated. The emphasis is on the activity of know-ING which is going on as the immediacy now – not the dead concept “I understand” or “I know.” – Sailor Bob Adamson

The realm of truth is infinite and continuous. No forms. No separation. Only life expressing itself in the now. One infinite truth that does not contain YOU. As long as YOU are there, that which is real in life will be sidelined from this moment. Life and its awareness are corrupted by your existence. And all you will experience will be void. Sure you might have some good moments of external validation in all its different forms, make lots of money and enjoy the things that money can buy, but you will always return to that place where nothing is enough, where you need to do one more thing to be happy. The circumstances of your life might get better, but the life in you will still be corrupted by the illusion that you are. There has been no real change. No real joy. For your life has no truth in it. You are not real so you could never be fulfilled. YOU ARE NOT REAL SO YOU COULD NEVER BE FULFILLED. You will see the present moment as a way to make yourself better in the future. A future that is not real, it will only be real when it becomes the now. And you will fail to recognize the truth in the moment, the life on it, for to you, life in the now is just means to satisfy the illusion that you are. You can only exist in the illusion of time. You can only exist in the past. You can only be perpetuated in the future. You are the one thing that does not fit in this moment. The one thing that needs the past or the future to justify its existence. There is no you. Can you recognize this ? Of course not. There is only the recognition of truth, no you behind this recognition. It is true. Look. Look. Look. Truth is right here. Right now. And there is no you in it. – Emil Loewy

Nothing ever happened in the past. The past only existed as the now. Nothing will ever happen in the future. The future only exists when it becomes the now. Life exists only in the ever-present moment. See how time is an illusion ? Life is only true now. No cause behind it. How can you be true ? Where are you in this very moment ? I am sitting down writing these words in Florence. Tired. The body and the mind are here, check. Feelings, check. Thoughts, check. Not my body, not my mind, not my feelings, and not my thoughts. There is no I behind these things. When we talk about I, we refer to the fake “experiencer” that controls the body, the mind, the I that feels emotions and has thoughts. Is there really an I choosing what to feel and what to think ? Do you control the thoughts in the mind ? Do you control the emotions in the body ? Is it not the illusion of you that makes these thoughts and emotions into an infinite loop of unbearable suffering ? In the present moment where are you ? All you can do when talking about the illusory I is point to the past or the future. Point to memories of this I or to projections of this I. Yet both the past and future are not part of reality. Reality only happens in the now. In this present moment there is a body, a mind, emotions and thoughts. These are all true. The one thing that is not true is you : the I you assume controls the body and the mind, the I you remember and the I you project into the future. Only when you realize that there is no you can there be pure awareness of the now, of reality, of life. Of course there is just the realization, not you realizing this… Find yourself in the present moment. I have the feeling you cannot. Actually I am sure. Where are you right now ? There is no you. It is true. – Emil Loewy

The false assumption : there is an I living life. This is the source of separateness, the source of selfishness, the source of suffering. THERE IS NO YOU ! It is true. In real life. There never was, never has been, and never will be. Whether you believe this or not, it is true. You are the only thing that does not fit in reality. There is no place in life for you. Realize this and you are free forever. No more selfishness. No more unnecessary suffering. Pure freedom. So let’s get to the core of it. By you, I mean you in the way that we use it our daily life. Nothing magical. If I tell you to look for this you, you might come back with something along these lines. I have a body and a mind. It is not your body and it is not your mind. I can remember things. There are memories but they are not yours. I can feel. There are feelings, not your feelings. I am aware. There is awareness but it is not yours. I live life. There is life but it is not yours. Can you see a common element ? “I” is a mental concept that points to nothing at all ! When I ask you to look for a you, all you can do is point to things that this “you” does. And here we enter what you might call a paradox. But in reality there are no paradoxes. Reality is as it is. No divisions. And now we get to the core. You assume because things happen that there is a cause behind it. But of course it is not you assuming this, it is just the assumption that exists. You assume an experiencer to the experience. See the mind divides reality into discrete objects and into cause and effect. The truth is that reality is continuous, not discrete. And even if the mind assumes a cause, life has no cause. Life just is. Cause and effect is a great tool of the mind to interact with its environment, but it is very shitty if you do not realize that cause and effect are just this. So what does this mean without all the complex technicalities ? The mind made you up. You are the result of the assumption of cause and effect. You are the fake experiencer that the mind attributes experience to. There is no you behind the experience, just the experience. And while life is lived it is not real life. All there is this unified moment in which life expresses itself. The past does not exist. It only existed in the now. The future does not exist. It will only be true when it is the now. The now is all there is. And there is no you in the now. There is only life. I am not selling you an idea or a belief. And if you are thinking, “Emil how can I trust you ?, why should I believe you ?, and you sound like a charlatan !”, let’s be clear about this: I do not want you to trust me. This is not something that if you belief enough will make you free. I want your honesty and courage (of course it is not your honesty or your courage). What is honesty but staring at reality with no prejudices, no assumptions ? Actually checking if something is true. Truth cannot be believed. Truth cannot be understood. Truth can be recognized but not by you. Truth is the recognition that there is no you. Truth is life, the life “you” are missing and the life that is missing “you”. This is the key to the kingdom. Paradise is waiting. Work the lock. Turn the key. Open the doors. – Emil Loewy

It is simple. Four words : You Do Not Exist. The world is real, you are not. There is a body, but it does not belong to you. There are thoughts, but they are not your thoughts. There are feelings, but they are not your feelings. There is no you. Your brain made you up. There is life, but it is not your life. – Selfless

This is not magic. It is not even spiritual, really. It is a simple fact. You do not exist. It is true whether you believe it or not. Whether you choose to look at it doesn’t really matter because it is still true. But if you choose to do so, you will not regret it. – Selfless

There is a way to die and keep on living. It is the illusion of the separate self that must perish. What you really are does not die. There is no you. There is a body, yes. It is real. So is the world. The only thing that is a fiction is the you that thinks it owns the body. It is not yours. It was never given to you. What you are is before birth and after death. It is all that there is. It is the eternal from which everything springs forth and manifests. It is the eternal beingness. Without beginning or end. – Selfless

The world is real, YOU are the illusion. You do not exist. You are simply a thought in a brain. Anyone can do this. Enlightenment is shrouded in mystery but it is actually a simple truth that can be realized by anyone. Take a moment of your time to look at this. It can’t hurt you. If it is false, you can just walk away. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. You do not exist. It it true ? Find out for yourself. – Selfless

Instead of looking at that feeling “I am” as the only thing that is true, instead see that LIFE is. There is LIFE, it is just not YOUR life. There is no ownership. There is no you that owns the life that IS. All the thoughts, feelings and actions that you attribute to a self in fact just ARE. There is no self that owns them. There is no self necessary for these thoughts, feelings and actions to exist. No thinker, just thoughts. No feeler, just feelings. No actor, just actions. – Selfless

There is an effective way to communicate this and it is up to date and simple and put in terms that can be understood by anyone: You do not exist. The world is real, you are not. Simply put, the brain made you up. There is no you. Only life and life is not owned by any individual. It simply is. The realization of no self is the recognition of the pattern of the mind to take ownership of everything in life. Once the pattern is seen, it cannot be unseen. This is the basis for the deeper and abiding seeing to begin. Once the mind knows that the individual is an illusion, all thoughts and beliefs can be questioned and dismissed in the same way that the self was seen for what it was. Total concept and lie. The seeing that you do not exist gives power to the mind to be able to recognize the false going forward. The truth that there is no separation now permeates all that is conceived. One is now able to see the concepts and lies that the mind layers over the indescribable and indivisible reality. – Selfless

There is an easy way to realize truth. Look at the following statement and see if it is true : You do not exist. The you that you think you are is not real. There is no owner of life, there is just life. There is a body and a mind, but it does not belong to you. This is TRUE. Dont believe it, test it. See for yourself. Seeing for yourself is the only way. Do not believe anyone, do not trust anyone to give you the answers. Seeing the truth of this is liberation. – Selfless

Subhuti asked : Is perfect wisdom beyond thinking ? Is it unimaginable and totally unique but nevertheless reaching the unreachable and attaining the unattainable ? The Buddha replied : Yes, Subhuti, it is exactly so. And why is perfect wisdom beyond thinking ? It is because all its points of reference cannot be thought about but can be apprehended. One is the disappearance of the self-conscious person into pure presence. Another is the simple awakening to reality. Another is the knowing of the essenceless essence of all things of the world. And another is luminous knowledge that knows without a knower. None of these points can sustain ordinary thought because they are not objects or subjects. They can’t be imagined or touched or approached in any way by any ordinary mode of consciousness, therefore they are beyond thinking. – Prajnaparamita

Consciousness is not aware of the universe, consciousness is aware as the universe. – Steven Norquist

Enlightenment is the feeling/knowing of that which has never not been. Each and every person does not and has never existed and each and every person has always known that they have never not known this. – Steven Norquist

Right now you are 100% seeing all the truth that could ever be. You think you are not seeing it but it is impossible to avoid. You are fully enlightened and you could never be otherwise. The simple ordinary awareness that you have of anything that arises either in the world, or in your mind is the truth. There is nothing more to enlightenment than realizing directly that what is appearing in awareness, “before” you take claim of it, is the truth. The Ultimate Reality is that there is not, nor has there ever been a you to take claim of any object of awareness. There is no self. Enlightenment is simply pure selfless awareness of everything that arises moment to moment. It is a ghostly feeling of non-being combined with hammering clarity. It is a shimmering beauty beyond earthly description that is felt by emptiness. You are that emptiness and have always been that. There has only ever been enlightenment. There has only ever been existence/awareness. Feel the emptiness, your non-being as the universe expands to infinity. Walk into a crowded room and never find yourself. If you can do these then you will know you are already enlightened and in that knowing you will realize you have always known this and yet have never existed to know it. Whether you rest in your ignorance or your knowledge, you have arrived. – Steven Norquist

The truth is the story had never been real all along, just like a bad dream, it’s an illusion. It has never been real, except as a thought form. It doesn’t exist anywhere except as a concept in the mind. If the story isn’t real, then what about the protagonist ? How can ‘I’ survive without the stories that define ‘me’ ? Is the ‘self’ that is participating in the stories real ? Or is it just another thought, like the stories themselves ? Perfect liberation is only brought by a simple recognition. It is so subtle, simple yet incredibly profound. There is no ‘self’. There is no ‘you’. Life is real, experience is real, but ‘you’ are not. The ‘self’ is not real. The story is not ‘real’ no matter how marvelous it seems to be. The ‘self’ that I so dearly fought for does not exist in reality. All along there had only been the thought of ‘me’, an illusion, a thought that reduced the vastness of life to concepts. ‘I’ was just a concept made up by thought. The ‘self’ is not a life form, but it’s a thought that claims to be the owner of experience and life. This thought is pervasive and entangled behind every other thought and experience : ‘I’ see. ‘I’ think. ‘I’ act. ‘I’ sleep. ‘I’ breathe. ‘I’ make decisions. There is no ‘you’. There is no ‘self’. There is only seeing, thinking, acting, sleeping, breathing and making decisions. ‘You’ or the ‘self’ is just a thought. This realization is perfect liberation. All you have to do is look deeply at the truth. Look and see if it’s true. The beauty of it, is that you don’t have to believe that it’s true. You don’t have to accept it or agree with it. Don’t get hung up on the concepts. All you have to do is delve deep and see if it’s true. There is no ‘you’. The story of ‘you’ is not real, because ‘you’ doesn’t exist. There’s no need for self-help, because there is no ‘self’ to help. There’s no need for self-love, because there is no ‘self’ to love. There’s no need for self-actualization, because there is no ‘self’ to actualize. There’s no need for self-improvement, because there is no ‘self’ to improve. There’s no need for self-seeking, because there is no ‘self’ to seek. There’s no need for healing the ‘self’, because there is no ‘self’ to heal. There are no problems with the ‘self’, because there is no ‘self’ to have problems. Look and see, there is no ‘you’. Everything in existence just is. There is life and there is experience. – Diego

The only way out is to recognize what the ‘self’ is fabricating. Recognize that ‘you’, the concept of ‘self’ is just a concept, another thought form. The thought of ‘you’ is just like the thought of a ‘pink elephant’. Thinking of a pink elephant doesn’t mean you are that. Let go of the ‘self’ and let go of this ‘insanity’. Look and see that there is no ‘you’. Life and experience just is, in it’s vastness and fullness. There is no point in arguing. Seriously, there isn’t. Just look deeply and honestly. Check to see if it’s true. – Diego

There is no point in arguing or debating about liberation. None. It’s either liberation or talking about liberation. Make the choice. All that is required is deep honesty and courage. Look inside and explore. Delve deep into the concept of the ‘self’. The identity of ‘you’ or ‘self’ is made up, it’s just a thought. Is it true ? The more you try to intellectualize or debate about this, the longer liberation will take. All it takes is dedicated focus. There is no step by step plan. Just look inside and see if it’s true. The ‘self’ is just a concept or thought. Is it true ? Focus and keep looking. Add a little splash of courage and honesty and that’s it. Get to it. – Diego

Somehow, there are some who think that liberation needs certain steps or prerequisites for it to happen. It goes something like this : having prerequisites leads to having expectations. Having expectations means waiting for something to happen. In this case, waiting for some gratification or pleasure of what this will do for ‘me’. If there are no benefits for ‘me’, then why will ‘I’ do it ? ‘I’ have to build certain expectations of what it is that ‘I’ want. If liberation doesn’t fit this model, well then screw it. It’s of no use. That’s why it needs to be tailored to what ‘I’ want. Certainly all of the spiritual masters spent years, if not decades trying to figure it out. So how in the world can this be done now ? It can’t be that easy or simple. It must certainly require tremendous self-discipline and hard work. Liberation has to meet the prerequisites and expectations. One thing is definitely certain. It’s much easier to talk than to look. It’s easier to be a spectator than to engage directly. In the meanwhile, ‘I’ will just talk and argue. ‘I’ will do this until ‘I’ can finally understand and agree with what liberation is. Ironically, this is the line that needs to be crossed for true liberation. But then again, it can’t be as simple as taking the plunge. It can’t be as simple as crossing the line. Can it ? No way ! This requires tons of work and seeking until the answer finally hits ‘me’. For that to happen, first ‘I’ need to understand it all and believe it, to then finally have the courage to look. And so the seeking continues… This is the path of the spiritual seeker. Stuck in the seeking while adding more and more practices, self-discipline, reading and thinking. It’s the true case of a dog chasing it’s tail. Look and listen. Dare to explore and experience. Do it right now. It’s very simple. There are no prerequisites and expectations. The identity of ‘self’ is just a concept. The identity of ‘you’ is just a concept. Is it true ? – Diego

The ‘self’ is the epitome of arrogance. Lets see if ‘you’ can do any of the following : Stop thinking. Stop experiencing sadness forever. Make your heart stop beating (by sending a command). Control your digestion. Pick which cells are going to be broken down by enzymes. Regulate the electrical signals sent to the brain. Control the pace at which your hair grows. Close the valves in your veins as blood flows through. Now control all the skepticism and doubting that might arise from reading this post. Go ahead and control every single thought and emotion in this moment. What else can ‘you’ do ? In fact, what can the ‘self’ actually do ? Nothing. Look at how the ‘you’ isn’t really in charge. There’s just a thought that claims it is running the show. Really, just look and see. ‘You’ don’t control or create any of these processes. ‘You’ are not the cause of these processes. ‘You’ don’t do anything at all. There is no ‘you’. The ‘self’ is just a concept attached to what is. It is the tag that claims to create and control what is already there. The ‘self’ is an illusion. It is an incredibly arrogant illusion. Look and see. – Diego

There is no experiencer. There is no observer. There is no “ego” to be destroyed, there simply is no “you” to destroy the ego. Look deeply and honestly. There is no “you”. – Diego

The biggest illusion is the projection of ‘you’ onto everything in reality. The brain creates this ‘self’ or thought form entity, ‘you’ and projects it onto everything that is perceived by the senses and the body. – Diego

There is nothing to do. It’s really simple. The ‘self’ cannot do anything to be liberated. If the ‘self’ cannot do anything at all to be liberated, then what can be done ? Just look. Look at the truth. The ‘self’ is just a concept. There is no ‘self’. It doesn’t exist. Look. It’s that simple. – Diego

You ARE an absolute and total lie. You, your life, everything in it, the people you love, absolutely fucking everything, a total lie. And there is one single root from which this lie spreads. SELF. There are a lot of ways of saying this. But the absolute brutal and honest truth of it is that you dont exist. YOU are an invention of your mind and ARE a response to an inherent need to be able to know what things are. This is what makes you a human. This is what makes humans great. BUT your mind created a monster that’s taking everything in your life and making it BELONG to YOU. Instead actually experiencing it you call it YOUR experience. – Kakistos

I don’t exist. Is it true ? Don’t believe it. Don’t develop ideas around it. Don’t build emotions about it. Absolutely scientific minded. Don’t create scenarios where its true or not. Just see if it is. Look at the experience you’re having in this very moment. And see if there is anything of YOU in it. Or is it just the experience of this moment ? Six simple words for freedom. – Kakistos

You need honesty for this. You need to look honestly, and see one glaring truth. It’s so obvious, you only need to see it once. There is no you. That’s it. That’s all it is. There is no you. You think you’re reading these words ? You aren’t. There is no you. There’s just reading. You think you’re understanding what I’m saying ? You’re not. There is no you. There’s just the understanding. Don’t flinch at this, you’ve never heard it before, but it does make sense. It is real. It is. What evidence do you have that you exist ? You have your life, your thoughts, your feelings, your memories, opinions – whatever. But what the hell makes you think they’re yours ? What ? Nothing. Nothing at all. There’s no chain linking them to this ‘you’ you assume exists. No chain at all. There’s just the assumption. You assume you are. You are not. There is no you. All the lies that hurt, that trap and bind, that ruin and destroy, they rest upon this. This one assumption. Look with honesty at it. There is no you. So there’s the thing, and what this means is that we’re a little stuck. I don’t have a dogma for you, and ‘there is no you’ is not a mantra. It’s just the truth. There really isn’t. So trusting me won’t help. Believing what I say is worthless. Only your honesty can let you take what I’m offering. Your honesty is your only compass. Guard it as you would guard your life. But of course, it’s not your life, and it’s not your honesty. There is no you. There’s just life, and honesty. – Ciaran

The witness attitude is also faith; it is faith in oneself. You believe that you are not what you experience, and you look at everything as from a distance. There is no effort in witnessing. You understand that you are the witness only, and the understanding acts. You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only. If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself ‘Who am I ?’, the answer comes at once, though it is wordless and silent. 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

There is the body and there is the Self. Between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as “I am”. Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body, not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within. The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety. As you realize yourself in manifestation, you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have imagined. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your preciousness lies in your essence; it cannot be lost by anything that happens. – Chuang Tzu

Several months ago, my wife and I attended a prayer service at a synagogue that is well known for its spiritual, and spirited, approach. As we entered, the rabbi was leading a meditation. “Close your eyes and breathe in the peace of Shabbat [the Sabbath].” she said. “And on the out-breathe imagine that you are sending healing love to all beings.” We passed a man who appeared to be deep in meditation. His eyes were closed, and through a slightly opened smile he slowly breathed in and out. As we moved to our seats, I accidentally stepped on his toe. He quickly turned toward me; his smile vanished and he angrily hissed, “Hey, watch it, buddy!” In the irony of a person being angry at a stranger for accidentally interrupting his meditation about universal, unconditional love, this man demonstrated the disturbing, alluring and all-too common phenomenon of “spiritual narcissism.” – Rabbi Alan Lurie

Spiritual narcissism creates the pretense of holiness as an ego strategy to mask insecurity, receive approval, or avoid struggle and growth. Spiritual narcissism can be very appealing. I know because I also feel the tug, and too often succumb. But once we see how we are tempted to use the guise of spirituality to shield us from criticism, impress others and make us feel wise, its appeal begins to loosen, and we even find the humor in this upside-down dynamic. Then, we slowly see this as an all-too-human inclination, and as we forgive it in ourselves we can forgive it in others, knowing that we are fellow suffering, struggling, holy beings. – Rabbi Alan Lurie

Without concepts, leave your awareness, just as it is, in the steady vision of appearances. If you can do so, that is the best of meditations. In terms of recognizing the nature of awareness, the spiritual mentors of the past stated that it could be ascertained in the interval following the cessation of one thought and prior to the arising of the next thought. In that interval there is an emptiness. How long is this interval ? It’s a mistake to think it is short in duration. Rather, it is the very nature of both samsara and nirvana. In the very steady vision of appearances, right in the instant, in the instantaneous vision of the instantaneous moment of appearances, you can recognize the essential nature of the mind.” – Gyatrul Rinpoche

Recently, someone pointed out that the words silent and listen are an anagram – two words that contain the same letters. There is something about this observation that resonates with wisdom. – Jeff Belyea

Contemplation that uses thoughts is still external. Internal contemplation has to be a focused watching that’s motionless and still. It’s a contemplation composed of focused watching, not something thought out. – Upasika Kee Nanayon

It’s a Paradox. The word “enlightenment” points to who you are. Who you are is not a state that can be gained or lost. It is not a spiritual experience. All states and experiences come and go. Who you are is the permanence existing right now, regardless of states and experiences. In one sense, the enlightened life is one of total insecurity; you live and act from the Unknown. We’re used to acting from the distorted sense of security that our mind provides, but Freedom doesn’t operate that way. It’s a paradox. Precisely because you don’t know, and you know you don’t know, the door is wide open to know in each moment. That’s when you know – in each moment. By resting in not knowing, knowing becomes available. – Adyashanti

Once you know your mind and its miraculous powers, and remove what poisoned it – the idea of a separate and isolated person – you just leave it alone to do its work among things for which it is well suited. To keep the mind in its own place and on its own work is the liberation of the mind. – Nisardadatta Maharaj

The mirror can do nothing to attract the sun. It can only keep bright. As soon as the mind is ready, the sun shines in. [The light] is uncaused and unvarying by itself, and coloured by the mind as soon as it moves and changes. It is very much like a cinema. The light is not in the film, but the film colours the light and makes it appear to move by intercepting it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Then one day one discovers the anomaly, that which never changes, which is the subject of all the myriads of the objects. Once that is clearly seen, all objects lose importance, and the seeker’s “job” is to stay in, or abide in that observer, that subject, that witness, from whom all the objects of the world arise. This is a resting state. Trying to stay in that center is not really an effort. What happens is the restless mind which we identify with, needs to be active, and because of that identification with the mind, “we” get active. However, the real I is always resting, and by continuously bringing the mind’s attention to the looker or witness, it loses interest in going elsewhere due to the deep peace felt in the resting state. Once the witness is discovered, one has a broad road to follow to self-realization. The false I’s fall away or are dissipated. Then one’s full time job is to stay in that I, abide there, and infinite peace and happiness will fall, which will draw you effortlessly into itself all the way. – Ed Muzika

Ask yourself, “Who experiences such-and-such ?” Whatever you’re doing, “Who’s doing this ?” Turn your attention around and look for the “I”, the subject. The phrase “Who am I ?” automatically turns your attention inward, towards an apparent source somewhere inside of an inner nothingness. You must become very familiar with that feeling of “I”, or “I am”, as well as the act of turning the attention around from outside of the skin to inside the skin, into the imaginary space where all thoughts and subjective images reside. That imaginary space inside has to become as clear and translucent as the external space that contains all of the world, until they are one. – Ed Muzika

The practice is to turn inwards towards the source, the looker, and look for it. Ultimately you will understand (see, experience, apprehend, discover, know) that there is no looking inside or outside. There is just one consciousness. The intentional effort of looking within was to counterbalance a lifelong habit of looking outwards and to develop introspective discrimination to eliminate internal and external objects and phenomena as the true you. I want to emphasize that the phrase “look inward” is a lie. There is no inward or outward. This distinction only lasts while you think you are a body. The phrase “look inwards” almost sounds like a command to look into the inner emptiness of imagination, as inside the body. It is a bad instruction. It reinforces the idea of the reality of inner and outer, inside the skin and outside. The world, your inner state, your searching, your imagination about what self-realization is like, will all disappear and you will understand that everything you have experienced until that moment is imagination. You will be free of all concept and imagination. In this you must abide for a long while, but self-abidance itself does not become continuous for a long time. It is a matter of persistence alone, and that only arises after a sustaining passion for truth becomes the most important issue to you. Then, at some point, “everything” will disappear as unreal and you will be left in silent mind existence. – Ed Muzika

Creation – reflection – rejection : Brahma – Vishnu – Shiva. This is the eternal process. All things are governed by it. After the stage of creation, comes the stage of examination and reflection, and finally the stage of abandonment and forgetting. The consciousness remains, but in a latent, quiet state. Understand that the One includes the Three and that you are the One, and you shall be free of the world process. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you; that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive and you will not be afraid. Unafraid, you will not be unhappy, nor will you seek happiness. In the mirror of you mind, all kind of pictures appear and disappear. Knowing that they are entirely your own creations, watch them silently come and go, be alert, but not perturbed. You see the picture but you are not the picture. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is only your mind that prevents self-knowledge. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The problem arises only when the memory of past pains and pleasures, which are essential to all organic life, remains as a reflex, dominating behaviour. This reflex takes the shape of “I” and uses the body and the mind for its purposes, which are invariably in search for pleasure or flight from pain. When you recognize the “I” as it is, a bundle of desires and fears, and the sense of “mine” as embracing all things and people needed for the purpose of avoiding pain and securing pleasure, you will see that the “I” and the “mine” are false ideas, having no foundation in reality. Created by the mind, they rule their creator as long as it takes them to be true; when questioned, they dissolve. The “I” and “mine”, having no existence in themselves, need a support which they find in the body. The body becomes their point of reference. When you talk of “my” husband and “my children”, you mean the body’s husband and the body’s children. Give up the idea of being the body and face the question: Who am I ? At once a process will be set in motion which will bring back reality, or rather, will take mind to reality. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just remember what you are. Use every incident of the day to remind you that without you as the witness there would be neither animal nor God. Understand that you are both, the essence and the surface of all there is, and remain firm in your understanding. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Consciousness is always of movement, of change. There can be no such thing a changeless consciousness. Changelessness wipes out consciousness immediately. A man deprived of outer or inner sensations blanks out, or goes into the birthless and deathless state. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The mind and the world are not separate. Do understand that what you think to be the world is your own mind. All space and time are in the mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Grace is always present. You imagine it as something high in the sky, far away, something that has to descend. It is really inside you, in your heart. When the mind rests in its source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you. – Ramana Maharshi

If some Power has turned you into a seeker, don’t you think it is the responsibility of that Power to take you where you are supposed to be taken ? – Ramesh Balsekar

The known is but a shape and knowledge is but a name. The knower is but a state of mind. The real is beyond. All knowledge is in memory; it is only recognition, while reality is beyond the duality of the knower and the known. How misleading is your language ! You assume, unconsciously, that reality also is approachable through knowledge. And then you bring in a knower of reality beyond reality ! Do understand that to be, reality need not be known. Ignorance and knowledge are in the mind, not in the real. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your mind is steeped in the habits of evaluation and acquisition, and will not admit that the incomparable and unobtainable are waiting timelessly within your own heart for recognition. All you have to do is to abandon all memories and expectations. Just keep yourself ready in utter nakedness and nothingness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are not what you think yourself to be, I assure you. The image you have of yourself is made up from memories and is purely accidental. You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

No attempt should be made to destroy the mind. To think or wish is in itself a thought. If the thinker is sought, the thoughts will disappear. – Ramana Maharshi

What is the difference between meditation and Self-enquiry ? Meditation is possible only if the ego is retained; there is the ego and the object meditated upon. This method is indirect. However, if we seek the ego-source, the ego disappears and what remains is the Self. This method is the direct one. – Ramana Maharshi

How can the mind be controlled ? There are two methods. One is to see what the mind is, then it will subside. The second is to focus on something else – the predominant idea will eliminate all others. The object is up to the individual. – Ramana Maharshi

The Self is near and the way to it is easy. All you need doing is doing nothing. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

I’ve been a ‘successful’ spiritual seeker, a desperate, failed spiritual seeker, an enlightened being, a transcendent ‘no-one’, a pure awareness, an arrogant nonduality teacher stuck in the (non-existent) ‘impersonal’ void… and now I’ve gone right back to being what I always was – a human being, engaged with life. What a fascinating trip it’s been. And what a relief to wind up back here, the Home I never left ! – Jeff Foster

What is this mind ? Who is hearing these sounds ? Do not mistake any state for Self-realization. Continue to ask yourself : what is it that hears ? – Bassui

Many ‘spiritual seekers’ seem to be waiting for ‘the end of separation’. They believe that one day a ‘special event’ will happen to them, and separation will fall away. They call this special event ‘enlightenment’, or ‘spiritual awakening’, or they say things like ‘well, it’s not enlightenment or awakening, but it’s an energetic shift from contraction into boundlessness…’. Or they call it a ‘non-happening’ or a ‘non-event’ for ‘nobody’. Or they call it ‘grace’. But essentially these are all different ways of saying the same thing : they see freedom as an event, in time. They see freedom as something that ‘happens’. All events, all shifts, are in time. Because without time and space there is no world in which to have any sort of shift or event. So, people are waiting for separation to fall away… but essentially they are waiting for time itself to fall away, aren’t they ? Because separation IS time. When, exactly, will time disappear ? Will this disappearance happen in time ? How can time disappear, in time ? How can ‘the end of time’ be a happening ? Or an event ? For somebody OR for nobody ? Surely the end of time is HERE, NOW. Surely the end of time is LIFE AS IT IS ? Because in life as it is, isn’t time just a concept ? How long will it take for the concept of time to disappear ? The enlightenment myth crumbles to the ground when it is seen that time is just a concept. And so you don’t need a special ‘event’ or ‘shift’ or ‘transformation’ to be free, no matter what your favourite teacher or guru believes. Maybe freedom is right here, right now, beyond time, beyond belief or lack of it. Maybe in waiting for enlightenment, or spiritual awakening, or an energetic shift or transformation of consciousness, we end up missing what’s here now, and continue to solidify our identities as seekers. Maybe waiting is seeking. In waiting for grace, we miss grace. The grace of each ordinary, timeless moment, as it is. What silly, adorable games we play, in our pursuit of freedom. – Jeff Foster

Sounds appear. But who hears them ? Thoughts appear. But who thinks them ? We say : “I hear the sounds. I think the thoughts.” But what is this I who hears and thinks ? Are there really TWO things – ‘you’ and ‘life’ ? Or is there simply the unitary movement of Life, which has no opposite ? Is there just the ONE thing, which is no-thing at all ? Does Life have a centre – or was it all a dream ? – Jeff Foster

Once you accept time and space as real, you will consider yourself minute and short-lived. But are they real ? Do they depend on you, or you on them ? – Nisargadatta Maharaj

I am beyond time. However long a life may be, it is but a moment and a dream. In the same way, I am beyond all attributes. They appear and disappear in my light, but cannot describe me. The universe is all names and forms, based on qualities and their differences, while I am beyond. The world is there because I am, but I am not the world. I know there is a world, which includes this body and this mind, but I do not consider them to be more “mine” than other minds and bodies. They are there, in time and space, but I am timeless and spaceless. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

How can I command whatever happens to me ? By being one with whatever happens. What does that mean ? You really do not possess a separate self which is apart from anything; you are one with all of life. However, in your misunderstanding you think there is a you AND an event, which causes division and conflict. This is the secret of the ages. Come back to it every day. – Vernon Howard

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

Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your self-realization. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened – at the moment you were born, when you realized yourself as being-knowing-feeling. There is only one mistake you are making. You take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be internal. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right. You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Complete surrender to God means giving up all thoughts and concentrating the mind on Him. If we can concentrate on Him, other thoughts disappear. If the actions of the mind, speech and body are merged with God, all the burdens of our life will be on him. – Ramana Maharshi

Nondual Jihadism : a confusion in which a person takes her own insights that unravel the sense of self to rebuild that self and re-arm it with non-dual positions. – Scott Kiloby

The Supreme Subject is unattainable, unimaginable, undeniable, ever present, and – manifest as the thought ‘I Am.’ Seek the Source of ‘I Am’. – John Greven

There is nothing like ignorance, only inattention. After all, worry is a mental pain and pain is invariably a call for attention. The moment you give attention, the call for it ceases and the question of ignorance dissolves. Attention brings you back to the present, the now, and the presence in the now is a state ever at hand, but rarely notice. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways. – Rumi

We’re not bringing struggle to an end. We’re not trying to not struggle anymore. We’re just noticing that there is a whole other dimension to consciousness that, in this very moment, isn’t struggling, isn’t resentful, isn’t trying to get somewhere. You can literally feel it in your body. You can’t think your way to not struggling. There isn’t a three-point plan of how not to struggle. It’s really a one-point plan : notice that the peace, this end of struggling, is actually already present. The process is therefore one of recognition. We recognize that there is peace now, even if your mind is confused. You may see that even when you touch upon peace now, the mind is so conditioned to move away from it that it will try to argue with the basic fact of peace’s existence within you : “I can’t be at peace yet because I have to do this, or that, or this question hasn’t been answered, or that question hasn’t been answered, or so-and-so hasn’t apologized to me.” There are all sorts of ways that the egoic mind can insist that something needs to happen, something needs to change, in order for you to be at peace. But this is part of the dream of the mind. We’re all taught that something needs to change for us to experience true peace and freedom. Just imagine for a moment that this isn’t true. Even though you may believe that it’s true, just imagine for a moment : what would it be like if you didn’t need to struggle, if you didn’t need to make an effort to find peace and happiness ? What would that feel like now ? And just take a moment to be quiet and see if peace or stillness is with you in this moment. – Adyashanti

When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something : “I am this, I am that”, continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Discover all you are not. Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time, space, being and not-being, this or that – nothing concrete or abstract you can point out to is you. A mere verbal statement will not do – you may repeat a formula endlessly without any result whatsoever. You must watch yourself continuously – particularly your mind – moment by moment, missing nothing. This witnessing is essential for the separation of the self from the not-self. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The next time you feel extreme anger, anxiety, jealousy, or sadness, just notice each thought that is feeding that state. Let each thought fall away quickly, one after the other, like flashes of light. Then just rest with the full sensory and emotional experience in the body, without placing any agenda on it, without trying to think yourself out of it. In that moment, you stop mentally running from suffering. – Scott Kiloby

Our personal viewpoints (self, other, world, duality) and impersonal viewpoints (no self, no other, no world, nonduality), are equal in that they arise and fall, leaving no trace. They only leave a trace if we follow one, thinking it is closer to truth or closer to our present experience. But nothing can bring us closer to our present experience. It’s already here, appearing as the present viewpoint. – Scott Kiloby

I entered into unknowing and there I remained unknowing, transcending all knowledge. That perfect knowledge was of peace and holiness, held at no remove. In profound solitude, it was something so secret that I was left stammering, transcending all knowledge. – St. John of the Cross

To trust yourself is to trust Silence. To trust your own heart is to trust the wisdom that is radiating and shining. All the thoughts, feelings, desires, and fears are just a superimposition that is called ‘myself.’ When all that disappears, for at least a moment, your Self shines forth. Radiantly, clear, and empty. Needing nothing, nourished, and overflowing. – Eli Jaxon Bear

The pure mind sees things as they are – bubbles in consciousness. These bubbles are appearing, disappearing and reappearing – without having real being. Each bubble is a body and all these bodies are mine. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

All is well. Continue, with patience, patience, patience to place attention outside all of it. Every story is mind, let mind do its thing. Know that mind will continue to appear to do its thing but let there be no ownership. It is not possible that thoughts are belonging to “you”. Never claim ownership for this creates the idea that “you” exists. You are no more than an idea. Do not claim any thought as ‘yours’. – Jac O’Keeffe

From where does the I thought arise ? Who is having this original thought ? All arises from nothing/absolute. Let it be seen that it is simply a happening in consciousness, that there is nobody having any thought. Know that it is not ‘you’ having this thought. That’s the belief that creates the suffering ability. – Jac O’Keeffe

The ego is the “I”-thought, the image. “I am thinking”, “I am seeking”, “I am suffering”. What is thinking, seeking or suffering ? These are only stories attached to a concept about an “I” as a separately-existing “thing”. What sees the progress ? Something remains, something IS while progress comes and goes, while thinking comes and goes, while suffering comes and goes. And then the “I”-thought comes in to claim the doing, the thinking, the seeking, the suffering, the progress. Simply SEE that this is what is happening. That is all. See the mechanism at work – SEE that the entirety of the ego or “I” is nothing but thought/story/image. Then nothing more is necessary. The image can go on, the stories can go on yet they aren’t bought into, there is no belief that they reference some separately-existing “person”, some entity within a bag of skin. – Randall Friend

Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content. Awareness is itself and does not change with the event. The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same. Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realize that awareness is your true nature, and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own. When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense “I am aware” is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is a reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your conviction that you are conscious of a world is the world. The world you perceive is made of consciousness; what you call matter is consciousness itself. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Self alone is real. All others are unreal. The mind and intellect do not remain apart from you. The Bible says, ‘Be still and know that I am God’. Stillness is the sole requisite for the realization of the Self as God. – Sri Ramana Maharshi

Catch your thoughts and release them. You don’t need to bang them on the head and try to kill them before throwing them back. You can just acknowledge each thought and then let it go. – Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Who are you ? Don’t go by formulas. The answer is not in words. The nearest you can say in words is : I am what makes perception possible, the life beyond the experiencer and his experience. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet it is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It just happens when we are absent-minded. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atma. To the Self, the world is but a colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. Without desire or fear, he enjoys it, as it happens. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

All changes in consciousness are due to the “I-am-the-body” idea. Divested of this idea, the mind becomes steady. There is pure being, free of experiencing anything in particular. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The notions of bondage and liberation are correlative and co-existent. On enquiry “Who is bound ?” the notion of bondage vanishes and so does that of Liberation. The One eternally Free alone remains Self-revealed. – Ramana Maharshi

Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss consciously. Because you take your mind off yourself and make it dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. – Seng-Tsan

I cannot answer you philosophical questions about death, karma, why the universe appears, and all of that. I can try, but it would always remain projected images. What I CAN try to support you in, is to effectively drop the very need to have these questions answered. This will grant you peace, freedom, happiness and well-being in all circumstances for this life-time. – Bentinho Massaro

Nothing is in existential conflict with anything else. All problems, without exception, are mind-made. Think there is something wrong with the way things are, and that is your experience. Drop all interest in that thought, and you are free. All you ever need to know is freedom. The rest takes care of itself. – Bentinho Massaro

How much longer are you going to postpone accepting the fact that everything about you is naturally perfect ? When will you let go of improving yourself and start letting everything come and go without trying to manage it or being controlled by it? You are naturally perfect. – Bentinho Massaro

Here is the choice : we can focus attention on the world, or we can focus it on our own presence. After a while of being wholly committed to the latter, we can be aware of both world and awareness simultaneously as being one and the same, to the point where we don’t even feel we stand apart from what’s perceived anymore. – Bentinho Massaro

The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything. – Ramana Maharashi

To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite – the not-self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge – liberation. And what is liberation after all ? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Self-forgetting is inherent in self-knowing. Consciousness and unconsciousness are two aspects of one life. They co-exist. To know the world you forget the self – to know the self you forget the world. What is world after all? A collection of memories. Cling to one thing that matters, hold on to ‘I am’ and let go all else. This is sadhana. In realization there is nothing to hold on to and nothing to forget. Everything is known, nothing is remembered. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You don’t see the inner Guru because you look somewhere else. Stop looking and It will reveal itself without your effort. Just stop the mind from chasing all its loves and enjoyments. – Papaji

There is only seeing; both the seer and the seen are contained in it. Don’t create differences where there are none. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The “here” is everywhere, and the now always. Go beyond the “I-am-the-body” idea and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time. Once you have understood this, the main obstacle to realization is removed. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Freedom from all desire is eternity. All attachment implies fear, for all things are transient. And fear makes one a slave. This freedom from attachment does not come with practice; it is natural, when one knows one’s true being. Self-knowledge is detachment. All craving is due to a sense of insufficiency. When you know that you lack nothing, that all there is, is you and yours, desire ceases. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Having perfected the mirror so that it reflects correctly, truly, you can turn the mirror round and see in it a reflection of yourself – true as far as the mirror can reflect. But the reflection is not yourself – you are the seer of the reflection. Do understand it clearly – whatever you may perceive, you are not what you perceive. You can see both the image and the mirror. You are neither. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Using the theory of Advaita where it has not been seen to be truth (e.g. “I know I am not this ego so how it manifests doesn’t matter”) is bullshit. There are many who hang out here and it has its phase. – Jac O’Keeffe

Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute nothingness of the self-image. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is nothing to do. Just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say : “be yourself”, since you do not know yourself. Just be. Having seen that you are neither the “outer” world of perceivables, not the “inner” world of thinkables, that you are neither body nor mind, just be. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Too much analysis leads you nowhere. There is in you the core of being which is beyond analysis, beyond the mind. You can know it in action only. The legitimate function of the mind is to tell you what is not. But if you want possitive knowledge, you must go beyond the mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

First we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centres of observation, and then realize that immense ocean of pure awareness, which is both mind and matter and beyond both. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

In the Supreme the witness appears. The witness creates the person and thinks itself as separate from it. The witness sees that the person appears in consciousness, which again appears in the witness. This realization of the basic unity is the working of the Supreme. It is the power behind the witness, the source from which all flows. It cannot be contacted, unless there is unity and love and mutual help between the person and the witness, unless doing is in harmony with the being and the knowing. The Supreme is both the source and the fruit of such harmony. As I talk to you, I am in the state of detached but affectionate awareness (turiya). When this awareness turns upon itself, you may call it the Supreme State (turiyatita). But the fundamental reality is beyond awareness, beyond the three states of becoming, being and not-being. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality. To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know. – Hsin Hsin Ming

You can only see what you believe — nothing else is possible. – Byron Katie

Peace is scary, there’s no self-induced adrenaline in it. Who would you be without your story ? – Byron Katie

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. ‘I am that I am’ sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean ? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that ‘I am so and so’. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that ? – Ramana Maharshi

There is no second, or higher self to search for. You are the highest self, only give up the false ideas you have about your self. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The personality (vyakti) is but a product of imagination. The self (vyakta) is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is the self that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is nothing to practise. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your nature emerge. Don’t distub your mind with seeking. You have only to look and see. Look at your self, at your own being. You know that you are and you like it. Abandon all imagining, that is all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Really there is nothing to understand. Being what you really are is happening; that can not be stopped or started. What you are is beyond all of this. Nothing to work out any more perhaps; let the fragrance of what you are arise and dissolve any tendency to imagine you are other than the essence of all that IS. – Jac O’Keeffe

There is nothing to know, and you have known this all along. – Unmani

I am conscious and unconscious, both conscious and unconscious, neither conscious nor unconscious – to all this I am witness, but really there is no witness, because there is nothing to be a witness to. I am perfectly empty of all mental formations, void of mind, yet fully aware. This I try to express by saying that I am beyond the mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Look in the immediacy of right now and SEE that there is no actual path. It is an idea of a path which leads off into the ‘future’ and belief in that imagined path is, IS the ignoring of what is clearly obvious RIGHT NOW. What is the delay ? Belief in another ‘time’ – a time of deliverance for an imagined entity that has NO substance whatsoever, except as imagination. – Gilbert Schultz

It is the person you imagine yourself to be that suffers, not you. Dissolve it in awareness. It is merely a bundle of memories and habits. From the awareness of the unreal to the awareness of your real nature there is a chasm which you will easily cross, once you have mastered the art of pure awareness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The funny thing is, that it is with you every single moment of your life equally. That mean that it is with you right now ! It is not an ‘it’ that we can perceive in the conventional sense of ‘things’ and ‘objects’, instead, it is the very simple fact that you, without effort, know every ‘thing’ ‘object’ and ‘it’. Acknowledge consistently, the very fact that you exist. This is enough. – Bentinho Massaro

It is enough if you do not imagine yourself to be the body. It is the “I am the body” idea that is so calamitous. It blinds you completely to your real nature. 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

You are always the Supreme, which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person. Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say “I am”, you are free of all your “persons” and their demands. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is the instinct of exploration, the love of the unknown, that brings me into existence. It is in the nature of being to seek adventure in becoming, as it is in the nature of becoming to seek peace in being. This alternation of being and becoming is inevitable; but my home is beyond. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

I have no shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and shape that breeds fear. I am not attached. I am nothing, and nothing is afraid of no thing. On the contrary, everything is afraid of Nothing, for when a thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

[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. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is our experience that the brain appears in Awareness. The brain is an idea or an image and, occasionally, a sensation or perception. It is our experience that all ideas, images, sensations and perceptions arise within and are made out of Awareness. Likewise, Awareness is ever-present whilst the brain is intermittent. How could something that is ever-present come from something that is intermittent ? – Rupert Spira

The mind is not a container that houses all thoughts, sensations and perceptions. It is simply the current thought, sensation or perception and all these take place in Consciousness. – Rupert Spira

In seeing with the whole-mind, intuitively, the apparent seer disappears and the seeing becomes the seen. – Ramesh Balsekar

There is no path, there is no ‘ending of delusion’, for the delusion never began, which is to say that the miracle never ended. For the Miracle is this. – Jeff Foster

There is no way of knowing this, not on the level of the mind. And even the question “Who am I ?”, ultimately points to this not knowing. So, even self-enquiry ultimately points to this. Self-enquiry appears to work because it fails ! There’s no self to find ! – Jeff Foster

‘Nonduality’ simply means “not two”. It is a word which points to the non-existence of separation. In reality, there are no separate ‘objects’ or ‘individuals’. No ‘inside’ separate from ‘outside’. No ‘me’ separate from ‘you’. No ‘seeker’ separate from what is sought. There is only Life, appearing as everything. Only Oneness, playing the game of being a world. Only nothing, dancing as everything. There is no ‘person’ in control of life. Nobody there pulling the strings. No ‘individual’ separate from the whole. No wave separate from the ocean. There is nothing to find, because nothing has ever been lost. Right here and right now, THIS is already the wholeness you seek. And beyond thought, beyond time, you have always known this. Nothing matters. In other words, nothing takes form as matter. Nothing, no-thing, appears as everything. Emptiness dances as form. And beyond both these concepts, life is, beyond emptiness and form. – Jeff Foster

Nothing matters… yet everything matters, absolutely, because everything is all there is. This is why each breath, each sensation, each thought is so very intimate, and infinitely precious. – Jeff Foster

Always remember deep in your heart that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. There are no mistakes anywhere, at any time. What appears to be wrong is simply your own false imagination. That’s all. You are the Self, that perfect immutable Self. Nothing else exists. Nothing else ever existed. Nothing else will ever exist. There is only one Self and you are That. Rejoice ! – Robert Adams

I’m in love with the mystery, and I don’t know what it is. – Papaji

The separate self can never become enlightened, no matter how many books you read or retreats you attend. Everything is just the way it is. That’s enlightenment. – Stephan Bodian

The bad news is that you’re falling through the air with nothing to hold on to and no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground. – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

The mind is constantly trying to figure out what page it’s on in the story of itself. Close the book. Burn the bookmark. End of story. Now the dancing begins. – Stephan Bodian

All that you need to do is find the origin of mind and abide there. Your efforts can extend only thus far. Then the Beyond will take care of itself. You are helpless there. No effort can reach it. – Ramana Maharshi

Don’t make any effort. Stay quiet and the noisy surface dialogues will cease. Then the substratum will rise up to the top. It is simple. Follow this. – Papaji

Turn your mind inside out. Overlook the movable and you will find yourself to be the ever-present, changeless reality, inexpressible, but solid like a rock. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The real exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness. Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realize the state of pure witnesssing. The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned. We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, the conditioned. To go beyond, we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence. All things depend on consciousness. And consciousness depends on the witness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

When attention/awareness become self-focused, that is called Self-Inquiry. When attention lights up attention, awareness lights up awareness, consciousness lights up consciousness, Self is Realized as Sat-Chit-Ananda, the ultimate subject, the very core of being. Sri Ramana called it simply the Heart, whose nature is that of silence which is beyond all understanding. – Dr. Raju

It was a happy realization for me, when I realized that I could “escape anything” by simply being in the immediacy of now. While that may sound “escapist”, it is actually the opposite, as what is immediate in this moment is the only truth. What I realized was that by attending strictly to the “sensations” in the moment there was no way that “thought could get to me”. Regarding “sensations” above, recently it has occurred to me that I should emphasized more that when I speak of the “immediacy of the moment” I mean strictly the “sensations” as experienced in the moment, Nothing More! Each moment a new set of sensations, which are always changing. Nothing adds up, nothing combines, each moment of new sensations is independent, stands on its own. If one attends to each moment of new sensations, regarding anything that went before as “invalidated” by what is new, then thought is experienced as just a series of changing sensations. Same with emotion or anything else. So if anything “upsetting” or unsettling would arise I would stop and just pay attention to the panorama of sensation in continual flow of change. What had been upsetting would become seen as just an area where the sensations were particularly dense and agitated. But by simply experiencing “as sensation” the dense and agitated would soften and expand until melted away. And even when dense and agitated it still wasn’t a suffering (though you may use that term differently), as it was just patterns of energy I was experiencing. By shifting to experiencing as simply sensation I had effectively “stripped away all content.” – Bill Rishel

To Sit In the Source of Being Is Self-inquiry. Mind is not a thing. It is a process of minding, thinking. Its basic nature is to fragment the consciousness. Mind is a like a crowd of politicians giving many self contradictory speeches at the same time. This crowd in the mind is not a fixed crowd but a changing crowd. Thought is an acquired process. It is not our innate nature. That is why there are no thoughts in deep sleep state. Thoughts of belonging to a family, race, nationality, religion, profession, caste, creed, cult etc are just utilitarian in nature. Mind is a byproduct of upbringing, conditioning, education, culture. Basically mind is an acquisition of habits and identifying with them and then think we are that stuff. If mind is in a state of thinking, consciousness in it becomes opaque, non-transparent, just like on a cloudy day, you cannot see the blue sky. When the clouds are not, you can see the sky. If we carefully observe we will come to know that when one thought passes and before another thought is yet to come there is an interval. That is the sky of consciousness. In that interval, in that gap you can feel the natural state of our witnessing consciousness. But for many thoughts are so speedy that they cannot feel the gap between one thought and the another. In Self-inquiry thought process is slowed down and we begin to feel the gaps. So in Self-inquiry there is a fight for our innate nature of witnessing consciousness against our mental habits. Self-inquiry helps us to put aside the mental habits. It helps us that which is natural to us, real ‘I’. Thinking belongs to the mind and witnessing is our innate nature. So we cannot do both simultaneously. Thinking must cease for the witnessing consciousness to be. Only through witnessing we reach the reality. Self-inquiry cannot have a fixed path for investigation.It is just like driving a car in a busy city during rush hour and we have to find the gaps to drive the car. Similarly in Self-inquiry we have to be alert to find the gaps between thoughts and in the interval between when mind changes from one mode to another during transitional state. Only then ‘being’ can happen through witnessing. We cannot both sit and run with our legs at same time. Similarly we cannot think and witness at same time simultaneously. That is the art of Self-inquiry. We don’t run after our thoughts but we sit safely in the source of being which is our Self. – Dr. Raju

You cannot be conscious of what does not change. All consciousness is consciousness of change. But the very perception of change – does it not necessitate a changeless background ? – Nisargadatta Maharaj

I was undeceived, that is all. I used to create a world and populate it. Now I don’t do it any more. [Now I live] in the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness. This void is also fullness; do not pity me. The mind ceased producing events. The ancient and ceaseless search stopped – I wanted nothing, expected nothing, accepted nothing as my own. There was no “me” left to strive for. Even the bare “I am” faded away. The other thing that I noticed was that I lost all my habitual certainties. Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel that I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all knowledge is ignorance, that “I do not know” is the only true statement the mind can make. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You do not know what you are and therefore you imagine yourself to be what you are not. Hence desires and fear and overwhelming activity in order to escape. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind, and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind. After all, your only problem is the eager self-identification with whatever you perceive. Give up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your power of alert aloofness. See yourself in all that lives and your behaviour will express your vision. Once you realize that there is nothing in this world which you can call your own, you look at it from the outside, as you look at a play on the stage, or a picture on the screen, admiring and enjoying, but really unmoved. As long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, actually existing in time and space, shortlived and vulnerable, naturally you will be anxious to survive and increase. But when you know yourself as beyond space and time, in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all- containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable, you will be afraid no longer. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is not that you are going to acquire something externally, the knowledge that you are is already there, only understand that. This is all the play of concepts. Even to think that I am going to get the knowledge, or I have got the knowledge, is still a concept. Prior to getting the knowledge, whatever Is, That is the truth. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Here is what I suggest as a self enquiry and abidance practice : find whatever experiential evidence there seems to be, either at the level of thoughts, or of feelings, or of sense perceptions, that confirms that your ordinary consciousness, meaning that which is perceiving these words right now, is limited in any fashion or form, either in space or time. If you carefully examine such evidence, you will soon convince yourself beyond the shadow of a doubt that it doesn’t support at all the limited or confined consciousness theory. That will leave you in a state of not knowing who you are. Abide in this state until you notice that you have again begun to think, feel, perceive, or act from the perspective of being a limited consciousness. At this point, resume the same investigation, which should be much shorter this time, and lead to the same state of not knowing. Abide in this state for as long as it lasts. And so on, and so on. At some point, as you stabilize in this state of not knowing, the light of your own presence, the “I-I” of which Ramana Maharshi speaks in his talks, will reveal itself in his limitlessness and immortality, beyond all doubts. The guidance of a teacher is however in most cases necessary to initiate and facilitate the process, failing which you may find yourself giving up after a few first attempts, or shifting to a different type of practice. – Francis Lucille

The “I am” is at the root of all appearance and the permanent link in the succession of events that we call life; but I am beyond the “I am”. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You can’t turn either towards Consciousness or away from Consciousness. In fact, “you” can’t even “turn” at all because your life is really only a melodramatic story that Consciousness has been telling Itself. And your only choice is whether or not you want to believe in the validity of your story. As usual, the ego wants to proudly say, “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” Actually, since you and your story arise simultaneously, your story is also sticking to you ! Without the historical framework of your time-based story, though, “you” are really “no-thing.” Actually, being “no-thing” might not be such a bad idea. – Chuck Hillig

There must be love in the relation between the person who says “I am” and the observer of that “I am”. As long as the observer, the inner self, the higher self, considers himself apart from the observed, the lower self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or manifestation of himself and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of “I” and “this” goes, and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself. This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer; he is not merely interested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus. When the vyakti realizes its non-existence in separation from the vyakta, and the vyakta sees the vyakti as his own expression, then the peace and silence of the avyakta state come into being. In reality the three are one : the vyakta and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakti is the sensing-feeling-thinking process. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

No object of desire is real, no object of desire is worth your Peace. If your house is desires, burn it down. It is only the absence of desire that makes you happy, so allow no desire to rise. Just allow yourself to be dissolved by Love. When there is no desire there is Love and Beauty. If you do desire, then only desire Peace, because what you think you will become : Water poured in the Ocean becomes the Ocean. – Papaji

Love has nothing to do with another person. Love is your individual and collective soul. Love is God. Love is truth. Love is beauty. Love is Self. To know yourself, to surrender to the truth of yourself, is to surrender to love. – Gangaji

One who has become enamored with the song within, one who is united with the inner universal pulse, such a one has become immune to the buffeting of the storms of circumstance without. – Ramesh Balsekar

All that we experience is subjective, there is no sensation without interpretation. We create the world and ourselves; only when we stop do we see the truth. – Deng Ming-Dao

Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention. Don’t look for quick results, there may be none within your noticing. Unknown to you, your psyche will undergo a change, there will be more clarity in your thinking and feeling, purity in your behaviour. You need not aim at these – you will witness the change all the same. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Search and you shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more. Anyhow, begin by realizing that the world is in you, not you in the world. Your personal body is a part in which the whole is wonderfully reflected. But you have also a universal body. You cannot even say that you do not know it, because you see and experience it all the time. Only you call it “the world” and are afraid of it. Both anatomy and astronomy describe you. You know the world exactly as you know your body – through your senses. It is your mind that has separated the world outside your skin from the world inside and put them in opposition. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The folly of the spiritual search is Life is looking for Life and there isn’t anywhere It isn’t. No wonder it is so painful. – Benjamin Smythe

The contraction is felt by the same no one that feels the expansion. – Benjamin Smythe

All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness os spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are. – Adyashanti

Insofar as you keep watching the mind and discover yourself as its witness, nothing else can project itself on the screen of consciousness. This is so because two things cannot occupy the attention at the same moment. Therefore, delve within, and find out where thoughts arise. Seek the source of all thought, and acquire the Self-knowledge which is the awakening of Truth. – Ramesh Balsekar

When you realize that the distinction between inner and outer is in the mind only, you are no longer afraid. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

We never have to use words like Self-realization, non-duality, or enlightenment, if we don’t want to. We can simply look into our experience and see where we are suffering, seeking, or in conflict with others. It’s virtually always a result of emphasizing some viewpoint as “the way it really is.” And there is usually an emotion driving that emphasis. Just noticing this is freeing ! – Scott Kiloby

Above all, we want to remain conscious. We shall bear every suffering and humiliation, but we shall rather remain conscious. Unless we revolt against this craving for experience and let go the manifested altogether, there can be no relief. We shall remain trapped. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

What is added to memory cannot be erased easily. But it can surely be done, and in fact I am doing it all the time. Like a bird on its wings, I leave no footprints. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your true home is in nothingness, in emptiness of all content. You face it most cheerfully when you go to sleep! Find out for yourself the state of wakeful sleep and you will find it quite in harmony with your real nature. Words can only give you the idea, and the idea is not the experience. All I can say is that true happiness has no cause, and what has no cause is immovable. Which does not mean it is perceivable, as pleasure. What is perceivable is pain and pleasure; the state of freedom from sorrow can be described only negatively. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You cannot see the true unless you are at peace. A quiet mind is essential for right perception, which again is required for self-realization. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not even your body. Your needs are unreal and your efforts are meaningless. You imagine that your possessions protect you. In reality they make you vulnerable. Realize yourself as away from all that can be pointed at as “this” or “that”. You are unreachable by any sensory experience or verbal construction. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is no effort in witnessing. You understand that you are the witness only, and the understanding acts. You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Since appearances are the natural display of the mind, it is unnecessary to abandon them. Tilopa indicated this when he said, ‘It is not by appearances that you are fettered, but by fixation on them. So abandon that fixation.’ It is not what you experience that causes confusion, it is your fixation on the experience as being inherently what it appears to be. Therefore only this fixation need be relinquished, not experience itself. – Gampopa

Our practice is to meet life exactly as it is and to notice whatever fear, anger, or doubt gets in the way of direct intimate contact with this moment, bringing attention to that as well. Rather than changing something or seeking to get somewhere we imagine we should be, practice is about seeing clearly exactly how things really are and how we relate to them. Practice thus becomes an increasing intimacy with life just as it is, and there is nothing—including the ideas that we should be getting something or somewhere—that is unworthy of the clear, non-judgmental attention we call mindfulness. – Douglas Phillips

Remaining free from clinging to everything that arises in the mind, represents the highest path, leaving nothing higher to aspire to. When the mind does not cling to every emerging appearance, the stream of this mind becomes free from any stain of deluded discrimination. – Gampopa

What relationship can there be between what is and what merely appears to be ? Is there any relationship between the ocean and its waves ? The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it to disappear. The succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is itself the background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being, independent of all divisions and separations. But don’t look for it in consciousness, you will not find it there. Don’t look for it anywhere, for nothing contains it. On the contrary, it contains everything and manifests everything. It is like the daylight that makes everything visible while itself remaining invisible. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search for happiness. It is because you are not happy that you want to be happy. Find out why you are unhappy. Because you are not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain and therefore you call it worldly; you then long for some other pleasure, without pain, which you call divine. In reality, pleasure is but a respite from pain. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The dream self is created from identification with objects that arise. For example, you might think, “I am angry,” or “It’s a dreadful day.” But look more closely. If you can see a thought, is that thought you? If you can see an emotion, is it you? You are the seer, not the objects seen. That which is seen is an object that arises and falls — a temporary form. You are that which is looking at those objects as they arise and fall. Even the notion that there is a seer as a separate identity is an object (an idea) in awareness. In looking inward, there is no separate entity there. There is only awareness recognizing awareness. Awareness is not an object. Your true identity is pure seeing itself. This can be fearful if there is a desire to hold onto some identity. But it is absolutely liberating if you see that even that fear is an object in awareness. Suffering happens when you believe that you are your thoughts and emotions. In reality, you are not angry. Anger is arising. It’s not actually a dreadful day. The thought, “It’s a dreadful day” is arising in awareness. This is not about denying or suppressing thought and emotion. It is about seeing them for what they really are. – Scott Kiloby

The word awareness is sometimes mistakenly associated with a state found in time. This is the “I got it/I lost it” syndrome. The “I got it” sense happens when there is pure awareness without much conceptualization (i.e., “I am present”). The “I lost it” sense occurs when there is the experience of being lost in thought or emotion (i.e., “I am not present”). This can create a cycle in which you are chasing the state of awareness and trying to quiet thought and emotion. This is still control and tends to keep the search going as you continuously fuel the idea that there is some state that you must find, maintain, or recreate. Instead of treating awareness as a state that can be found or lost in time, notice the timeless opening in which all states happen. Temporary states of thinking and not thinking, feeling and not feeling, and seeing and not seeing arise and fall within that opening. The opening does not come and go. In noticing that your true nature is that opening, the movement of chasing states and the notions of “I got it/I lost it” tend to relax naturally. In this opening, anything can happen. There is no “you” there resisting or controlling or trying to maintain or recreate anything that comes through the opening. There is only the opening and whatever is coming through it. – Scott Kiloby

Your dwelling on the fact “I am” will soon create another chance [of self-realization]. For attitude attracts opportunity. All you know is second-hand. Only “I am” is first-hand and needs no proofs. Stay with it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Go beyond. Neither consciousness nor the “I am” at the centre of it are you. Your true being is entirely unselfconscious, completely free from all self-identification with whatever it may be – gross, subtle or transcendental. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

I’m not talking about an escape from frustration, anger and depression. I’m not talking about getting rid of them. That’s war. If you expect them to disappear there will always be frustration. Nonduality is not about getting rid of what you don’t want. – Jeff Foster

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

Remember to remember that the perceived cannot be the perceiver. Whatever you see, hear or think of, remember – you are not what happens, you are he to whom it happens. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Allow yourself to be paused by the following : what is it, right now, that is not a thought, an emotion, or a body sensation ? What is it, right now, that is subtle, beginningless, and most definitely present ? Ponder this, keep it in your heart, and you will see for yourself that you have always been the answer. – Rodney Stevens

The word awareness is sometimes mistakenly associated with a state found in time. This is the “I got it/I lost it” syndrome. The “I got it” sense happens when there is pure awareness without much conceptualization (i.e., “I am present”). The “I lost it” sense occurs when there is the experience of being lost in thought or emotion (i.e., “I am not present”). This can create a cycle in which you are chasing the state of awareness and trying to quiet thought and emotion. This is still control and tends to keep the search going as you continuously fuel the idea that there is some state that you must find, maintain, or recreate. Instead of treating awareness as a state that can be found or lost in time, notice the timeless opening in which all states happen. Temporary states of thinking and not thinking, feeling and not feeling, and seeing and not seeing arise and fall within that opening. The opening does not come and go. In noticing that your true nature is that opening, the movement of chasing states and the notions of “I got it/I lost it” tend to relax naturally. In this opening, anything can happen. There is no “you” there resisting or controlling or trying to maintain or recreate anything that comes through the opening. There is only the opening and whatever is coming through it. – Scott Kiloby

Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you, and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being – that is the absolute truth. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

God is not about making you happy. He is about making you whole. That He would do whatever it takes for this to happen is the cosmic joke and the final truth. Wholeness ultimately is the happiest place to be, but we struggle with this for years and years. – Vicki Woodyard

When you come to the point that you really see that there is nothing to be taught, nothing to become, to attain, then you are free from all expectation, all dynamism to produce. It is a normal, spontaneous stillness. You are open to what you are and the presence that you call a teacher is knowingly established. Poetically speaking, it is a transmission of the flame but there is nothing transmitted. Transmission is only a way of speaking. You are stimulated. You live mainly in a landscape furnished with many objects. You are attracted by all the objects, but in this attraction you completely lose the sense of space. When we speak of light it means that there is an absence of all representation. When you do not project an absence of consciousness onto the absence of objects, you will suddenly feel yourself in a completely new dimension of space. Enlightenment is only the moment when there’s the absolute understanding that what you call the “me”, the “I” is nothing other than a fabrication of the mind. This understanding is the freeing of the mind, the freeing of the self, and you feel yourself in openness, in this not-knowing. – Jean Klein

When I met my Guru, he told me: “You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am’, find your real Self.” I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon ! My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am — unbound. I simply followed (my teacher’s) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being ‘I am’, and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared — myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Mind is a wonderful force inherent in the Self. That which arises in this body as ‘I’ is the mind. When the subtle mind emerges through the brain and the senses, the gross names and forms are cognized. When it remains in the Heart, names and forms disappear. If the mind remains in the Heart, the ‘I’ or the ego which is the source of all thoughts will go, and the Self, the Real, Eternal ‘I’ alone will shine. Where there is not the slightest trace of the ego, there is the Self. – Ramana Maharshi

The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it consciousness. This is your waking state – your consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes awareness, the direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the totality of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it “my thought”. All you are conscious of is your mind; awareness is the cognizance of consciousness as a whole. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. – Byron Katie

Even to talk of re-uniting the person with the self is not right, because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and there is nothing to unite. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The secret to bliss is to stop the search, stop thinking, stop not-thinking, and keep quiet. The best practice is to know “Who am I.” You are Brahman, know this. If you want to do anything, just always adore Self. – Papaji

The Great Paradox : There’s nothing that’s you and, at the very same time there’s nothing that’s not you. Here’s the height of spiritual irony: The Teacher points directly to the Truth, but then the student begins worshipping the Teacher. Or, even worse, the student begins to worship the pointer that the Teacher was using ! But, as Consciousness, Itself, you are really the ultimate source of all of the great teachers. You are really the ultimate Source of all of their spiritual teachings. You only created them in your personal drama to remind you, again and again, about what you’re pretending to forget. The teachers and their teachings both appear and disappear within the heart of who you are. – Chuck Hillig

When you encounter sorrow and suffering, remain with it and don’t try to escape from it. Don’t throw yourself into blind activity. Neither learning nor acting can really help. Be with the presence of sorrow and uncover their roots – help with insight is real help. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

This pure mind… shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection. But most people are not aware of it, and think that mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels, and knows. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they don’t perceive the radiance of the source. If they could eliminate all conceptual thinking, this source would appear, like the sun rising. – Huang-po

Don’t imagine you will discover the truth by accumulating more knowledge. Knowledge creates doubt and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge. You can’t get full eating this way. If you can let go of the Tao with the mind and surround it with your heart, it will live inside you forever. – Hua Hu Ching

Most human beings are lost in abstraction. They believe that what they think should happen is more important than what is actually happening. – Adyashanti

Instead of creating expectations of what should or should not be happening, cooperate with the form that this moment takes. Bring a ‘yes’ to the isness, because it’s pointless to argue if it already is. A greater intelligence is available to you when you no longer reject, deny, or ‘don’t want’ what is. – Eckhart Tolle

When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to the surface. Do nothing about them, don’t react to them; as they have come so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is mindfulness, total awareness of oneself, or rather of one’s mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

If you trust me, believe when I tell you that you are the pure awareness that illumines consciousness and its infinite content. Realize this and live accordingly. If you do not believe me, then go within, enquiring “What am I?”, or focus your mind on “I am”, which is pure and simple being. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Self-Inquiry is for stopping all thoughts as they arise, or even before. The mind actually rises out of the Self, like a wave rises out of a calm sea, and takes one’s attention away from the Self, causing you to identify with subjective ideas or outer objects, and thoughts pertaining to the past and future. All this, when identified with, gives rise to the false belief that you are the body-mind, living in time-space, and not the Self. This is the erroneous or false notion you are always trying to transcend in order to abide in the Self, which you are. Since this is the sole end to be attained, why not achieve this one end Now, from the very beginning? Self-Inquiry achieves this, for it takes you immediately or directly to the Source, or truth of your Being. – A. Ramana

When you turn your head from horizon to horizon your eyes see a vast space in which all the things of the earth and of the sky appear. But this space is always limited where the earth meets the sky. The space in the mind is so small. In this little space all our activities seem to take place : the daily living and the hidden struggles with contradictory desires and motives. In this little space the mind seeks freedom, and so it is always a prisoner of itself. Meditation is the ending of this little space. To us, action is bringing about order in this little space of the mind. But there is another action which is not putting order in this little space. Meditation is action which comes when the mind has lost its little space. This vast space which the mind, the I, cannot reach, is silence. The mind can never be silent within itself; it is silent only within the vast space which thought cannot touch. Out of this silence there is action which is not of thought. Meditation is this silence. – J. Krishnamurti

The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it consciousness. This is your waking state – your consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes awareness, the direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the totality of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it “my thought”. All you are conscious of is your mind; awareness is the cognizance of consciousness as a whole. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of “I” and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the “I” and the “mine”. The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of “I am”, which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. “I am this, I am that” is dream, while pure “I am” has the stamp of reality on it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You need not stop thinking. Just cease being interested. It is disinterestedness that liberates. Don’t hold on, that is all. – Ramana Maharshi

All spiritual teachings are only meant to make us retrace our steps to our Original Source We need not acquire anything new, only give up false ideas and useless accretions. Instead of doing this, we try to grasp something strange and mysterious because we believe happiness lies elsewhere. This is a mistake. – Ramana Maharshi

Don’t be afraid of a world you yourself have created. Cease from looking for happiness and reality in a dream and you will wake up. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Apparently one of the most difficult things to “get” is that the non-dual and dual are the same thing. So we really don’t have to hide out in emptiness and not being a person and saying everything is a dream, an illusion. That is a half-baked state. This, as you/it are right now, is IT. – Tom Thompson

You can only be lost if you are trying to get somewhere. – Ram Tzu

Your mind is steeped in the habits of evaluation and acquisition, and will not admit that the incomparable and unobtainable are waiting timelessly within your own heart for recognition. All you have to do is to abandon all memories and expectations. Just keep yourself ready in utter nakedness and nothingness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you; that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive and you will not be afraid. Unafraid, you will not be unhappy, nor will you seek happiness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is a joy and a love for all of creation that is there when you fall out of your head into the stillness of your pure heart. It permeates everything with the nectar of Self. When everything is welcome here, your life begins to flow and flower with well being, ease and an intimacy with all of life. – Solane

Awareness is aware. It has no preference. It has no memory. It never moves. I am That. You are That. ‘I’ and ‘You’ disappear in That. – Benjamin Smythe

Fear is a state of mind. When mind is full of thoughts of fear, and I am unconsciously identifying with the mind and saying “I am afraid”… That is not the time to “get rid of the state of mind”. That is the time to “understand that the state of mind cannot touch me”. Japam, Pranayamam etc. are excellent methods but misplaced here. If I repeat god’s name, the state of mind changes. The mind becomes calm and the thoughts of fear are replaced with other thoughts. So there is feeling of comfort. But that is not what I want. I want to face it. When it is said “I cannot be touched by thoughts”, that means, I should see this. I should see how the thoughts of fear cannot touch me, who am Consciousness. “I am afraid” is a misperception. “I fear” is a misperception. Because, I am Consciousness in whose presence these thoughts are floating. If thoughts are not “touching” me, why do I need to do japam to remove the thoughts ? If thoughts are “touching” me, its misperception, and I need to remind myself that I am Consciousness and remain as Consciousness. I would rather stand in the darkness… Allow the thoughts to pass… And remain as Consciousness. Not trying to avoid the situtation. Not trying to run away. Not trying any sort of ESCAPE. Japam is a method to remind myself that I am Consciousness… not a method to escape or change the states of mind. Mind becomes calm, I say I am calm. Mind becomes agitated, I say I am agitated ! This is wrong understanding. Mistaken vision. As long as I keep repeating this, I will keep trying to change mind. Somewhere I have to cut this knot ! I am not the mind ! Therefore I do not resist what is happening in mind ! It’s not my business ! Mind suggests fear, mind suggests running away, mind suggests lots of things. The whole body will react to mind… but I remain as consciousness… motionless… Mind jumps for some time and finally gives way. It’s hard, but it is vanquishing the mind. Disagree with it. It has no power of its own. No thought of mind is a command. All thoughts are mere suggestions. We need not listen. This is Self Inquiry. – Srkudai

At present we are conscious of ourselves as a set of adjuncts with object knowing consciousness in which our attention seemingly move away from the self towards the object with separation between knowing subject and known object. In self-enquiry we withdraw our attention from thoughts and objects so that attention rests in self without any oscillation. To posit our attention in this state is the aim of self-enquiry. – Ramana Maharshi

We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all. – Kalu Rinpoche

This “I am realization,” this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind. So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence – your deeper self – behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as “your self.” That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you. What I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even contradictory, but there is no other way that I can express it. – Eckhart Tolle

We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all. – Kalu Rinpoche

Instead of waging war against thought, we gently invite you to recognize present awareness as your real identity. Awareness is the bare naked awake presence that is looking right now. It is prior to all words, names, bodies, stories, histories, roles, titles, thoughts, emotions, and all other forms that appear within awareness. It is not a thing, not an object we can see. It is presence itself. It is that simple. Anything we think, hear, see, touch, taste, smell, or experience is an appearance of or movement within awareness. Awareness is the unchanging, unmoving space of the present moment. It is inseparable from what you are. It is the only aspect of your existence that has never come and gone. When you were twelve years old, twenty years old, and thirty years old, different thoughts, emotions, states, sensations, and experiences moved through this awareness. But this basic, spacious, featureless awareness remained constant and untouched by these movements. – Scott Kiloby

Is it possible for you to embrace uncertainty, and not demand that you should know what is going to happen to you in your life situation ? – Eckhart Tolle

The whole cosmos is an implicit unity expressed in duality. The original interrelated opposites are beingness and non-beingness. Being can only come out of non-being, precisely as sound only emanates from silence and light from darkness. The imagined void of non-being, however, is not emptiness but the very fullness of potential out of which arises all that exists. – Ramesh Balsekar

Understand one thing well, and you have arrived. What prevents you from knowing is not the lack of opportunity, but the lack of ability to focus in your mind what you want to understand. If you could but keep in mind what you do not know, it would reveal to you its secrets. But if you are shallow and impatient, not earnest enough to look and wait, you are like a child crying for the moon. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The scriptures declare that seeing the Self is seeing God. Being Single, how can one see one’s own Self ? If Oneself cannot be seen, how can God be ? To be absorbed by God is to see Him. – Ramana Maharshi

The truth is that you already are what you are seeking. You are looking for God with his eyes. This truth is so simple, shocking and radical that it is easy to miss among one’s flurry of seeking. He is here to shake his students awake and not to ask them to dream better. We must wake up to the fact that we are all already living Buddhas. We are the emptiness, the infinite nothing. Let go of all ideas and images in our minds: they come and go and are not even generated by us. – Adyashanti

The Tao gives rise to all forms, yet it has no form of its own. If you attempt to fix a picture of it in your mind, you will lose it. This is like pinning a butterfly: the husk is captured, but the flying is lost. Why not be content with simply experiencing it ? – Lao Tzu

If we disinterestedly observe the arising and disappearing of all the states we experience, we soon come to realize that each state, each perception, each thought, is reabsorbed into an unspoken knowing, knowing as being. This, the continuum, the only reality, is there before activity commences. Let yourself sink deep within this stillness each time it makes itself felt. – Jean Klein

Seeking is based on a fundamental assumption of incompleteness. Beyond all seeking lies the discovery of Infinite Completeness… an undeniable recognition that nothing is missing. – Metta Zetty

Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are. – Eckhart Tolle

If we allow our thoughts to arise and dissolve by themselves, they will pass through our mind as a bird flies through the sky, without leaving a trace. This method applies not only to attachment and anger but also to the experiences of meditation, such as bliss, clarity and the absence of thought. These experiences result from perseverance in practice and the expression of the inherent creativity of the mind. They are like the appearance of a rainbow as the rays of the sun strike a curtain of rain. For us to become attached to them is as vain as running after a rainbow in hopes of wearing it as a coat. We should simply allow thoughts and experiences to come and go, without grasping at them. – Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Thoughts are impediments to seeing your own face. Don’t give rise to any thought, and discover who you are. – Papaji

To me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-like, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never out of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

Break the bonds of memory and self-identification and the shell [of the person] will break by itself. There is a centre that imparts reality to whatever it perceives. All you need is to understand that you are the source of reality, that you give reality instead of getting it, that you need no support and no confirmation. Things are as they are because you accept them as they are. Stop accepting them and they will dissolve. Whatever you think about with desire or fear appears before you as real. Look at it without desire or fear and it does lose substance. Pleasure and pain are momentary. It is simpler and easier to disregard them than to act on them. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

Personality is a useful tool but it cannot define who you are. Who you are lies far beyond who you think you are. – Jac O’Keeffe

You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to have good health, you don’t have to do it before your body dies, it’s got nothing to do with anything : it’s right now, place your attention behind any stories, any concepts. From there, freedom arises, beauty arises, love arises. – Jac O’Keeffe

As long as the ‘I’ is looking for peace, there will be no peace. – Jac O’Keeffe

Something underneath is taking care of all, is taking care of what you really are. – Jac O’Keeffe

Thoughts appear and disappear all by themselves. There is no ownership to be claimed, because there is no owner. – Jac O’Keeffe

The freedom you look for is where you look from. – Jac O’Keeffe

Right here, right now, you can settle into your most natural state, that which enjoys uninterrupted peace of mind and liberation in your heart. – Jac O’Keeffe

Happiness is a direct experience arising from your innate nature. – Jac O’Keeffe

Your true nature is causeless and living causeless happiness is your natural state of being. – Jac O’Keeffe

All external circumstances, activities, possessions and events are designed to keep the mind entertained. But happiness is outside the realm of the mind, it is outside the functionings and capacity of the mind. It is in the realm of placing your attention on your innate nature. – Jac O’Keeffe

Be prepared to let the consequences take care of themselves. – Jac O’Keeffe

Rest at the source of the next thought. That’s all. – Jac O’Keeffe

There is nothing to fix, nothing to do, nothing needs to be better, nicer, or in a certain way, all that stuff is just thoughts, there’s no need to take any interest in it. How things are is just fine. Rest. Rest on the inside. – Jac O’Keeffe

Suffering is an idea that there is an ‘I’ that doesn’t like what is happening. – Jac O’Keeffe

Let your attention be on what is taking place, not on how you fear it may impact you. – Jac O’Keeffe

The problem is not with the mind, it is the personal identification with thoughts that creates suffering. – Jac O’Keeffe

There is nothing to fear, ever. If you continue to place attention on fear-creating ideas, knowing that your thoughts create emotions, you will feel fear. In a moment, you can decide that enough is enough and end your pattern of feeling fear. – Jac O’Keeffe

Sit still, be quiet, and don’t engage with any thoughts that come, just let them pass without your interest. Do not search for the Self for this would be like your eye trying to see your retina. You are Self. – Jac O’Keeffe

Nothing is actually happening to you unless you want to believe it is. – Jac O’Keeffe

To abide in your natural state requires no movement or doing on your part. – Jac O’Keeffe

Stopping unnecessary mental doing allows the natural state to arise. Deep stillness always rests under an agitated mind. – Jac O’Keeffe

Let your mind be focussed inward. Let your attention rest calmly in its natural state. – Jac O’Keeffe

Relax. Resting mind activity disarms gross identification. There is no ‘how’ to stop thinking. Simply stop getting involved in the stories of your thoughts. – Jac O’Keeffe

In any moment, you are either observing effortlessly or you are believing your thoughts. – Jac O’Keeffe

You may see that every single thought you can entertain only serves to perpetuate the personal ‘I’. – Jac O’Keeffe

To feel and experience real happiness, causeless happiness, requires a conscious or unconscious surrendering of your interest in your thoughts. – Jac O’Keeffe

Let your mind be in total chaos. Your levels of thought activity are of no significance. Do not lose your attention in the story of any thought, and thoughts will subside. You are That which watches all. – Jac O’Keeffe

Stop engaging with thoughts and do not make this disengagement with thoughts something to do ! – Jac O’Keeffe

This is not about feeling emptiness, it is being emptiness. You cannot try to be it, you are it. – Jac O’Keeffe

Be that which sees what is seeing. Do not be the watcher. You are That which sees that which is watching. – Jac O’Keeffe

In the effortless neutrality of your natural state, all doubts, fears and anxieties vanish : they only come back to serve you. – Jac O’Keeffe

All comes from the Absolute, stays as Absolute, and merges back into Absolute. – Jac O’Keeffe

Through your thoughts, you made what is unreal real to you. – Jac O’Keeffe

The world cannot exist independently of your mind, so how can the world be other than mind ? – Jac O’Keeffe

All presenting in manifestation was created by you, and it will be destroyed by you, on transcending mind. Both mind and world rise and fall within Reality that never moves. – Jac O’Keeffe

Be still, quiet and patient. There is only you. How can there be a distance between you and you ? – Jac O’Keeffe

There is nothing external to That. Effortlessly drop the thought of things being external. – Jac O’Keeffe

Simply abide in the Self. Sink into the Self 24-7 until time reveals that time also is a concept and until who is doing the abiding, merges with the Self. – Jac O’Keeffe

There is no journey for you to travel, no shift for you to make from ego to Self, as this requires two and, therefore, is just another thought. – Jac O’Keeffe

Refuse attention [to things], let things come and go. Desires and thoughts are also things. Disregard them. Since immemorial time, the dust of events was covering the clear mirror of your mind, so that only memories you could see. Brush off the dust before it has time to settle; this will lay bare the old layers until the true nature of your mind is discovered. It is all very simple and comparatively easy; be earnest and patient, that is all. Dispassion, detachment, freedom from desire and fear, from all self-concern, mere awareness, free from memory and expectation, this is the state of mind to which discovery can happen. After all, liberation is but the freedom to discover. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are. That’s all ! And then you realize, “I’m here.” Here is where thoughts aren’t believed. Every time you come here, you are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake. Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything. – Adyashanti

One must be willing to stand alone – in the unknown, with no reference to authority or the past or any of one’s conditioning. One must stand where no one has stood before in complete nakedness, innocence, and humility. – Adyashanti

It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts. When you happen to walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet, you just find your way between. When you fight, you invite a fight. But when you do not resist, you meet no resistance. When you refuse to play the game, you are out of it. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

Before you can know anything directly, non-verbally, you must know the knower. So far, you took the mind for the knower, but it is not so. The mind clogs you up with images and ideas, which leave scars in memory. You take remembering to be knowledge. True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected. It wells up from within. When you know what you are, you also are what you know. Between knowing and being there is no gap. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

You are always the Supreme. But your attention is fixed on things, physical or mental. When your attention is off a thing and not yet fixed on another, in the interval you are pure being. When through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state. By focusing the mind on “I am”, on the sense of being, “I am so-and-so” dissolves; “am a witness only” remains and that too submerges in “I am all”. Then the all becomes the One, and the One yourself. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

The problem arises only when the memory of past pains and pleasures, which are essential to all organic life, remains as a reflex, dominating behaviour. This reflex takes the shape of “I” and uses the body and the mind for its purposes, which are invariably in search for pleasure or flight from pain. When you recognize the “I” as it is, a bundle of desires and fears, and the sense of “mine” as embracing all things and people needed for the purpose of avoiding pain and securing pleasure, you will see that the “I” and the “mine” are false ideas, having no foundation in reality. Created by the mind, they rule their creator as long as it takes them to be true; when questioned, they dissolve. The “I” and “mine”, having no existence in themselves, need a support which they find in the body. The body becomes their point of reference. When you talk of “my” husband and “my children”, you mean the body’s husband and the body’s children. Give up the idea of being the body and face the question : Who am I ? At once a process will be set in motion which will bring back reality, or rather, will take mind to reality. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

[On realization] That which cannot change, remains. The great peace, the deep silence, the hidden beauty of reality remain. While it cannot be conveyed through words, it is waiting for you to experience for yourself. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

Vous savez que vous êtes. Ceci est en soi la prise de conscience. Si vous pensez que vous devez être conscient, vous entrez dans l’état d’expérience. Vous voulez faire l’expérience de quelque chose. Ne considérez pas votre corps-esprit comme étant vous. L’identification au corps-esprit, ça va pour la vie de tous les jours, mais quand vous devez vous comprendre, il ne faut pas comprendre qu’on est le corps-esprit. Vous avez la connaissance du “Je suis”. Cela en soi signifie que vous êtes. La prise de conscience, c’est cet état où la conscience s’enfonce en elle-même. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are. That’s all ! And then you realize, “I’m here”. Here is where thoughts aren’t believed. Every time you come here, you are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake. Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything. – Adyashanti

All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are. – Adyashanti

Awakening opens the door to a life beyond the ego—a life lived directly from spirit rather than from the mind. In this new world, the conditioned ego no longer feels to be the appropriate center from which to relate and function. Something far deeper is called for: a total transformation in the way we live and relate. The truth realized seeks to become the truth lived. – Adyashanti

Hold on to the sense “I am” to the exclusion of everything else. When thus the mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new light and vibrates with a new knowledge. It all comes spontaneously, you need only hold on to the “I am”. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being. – Hafiz

Right now, in this moment, just look at yourself briefly with your mind’s eye. See if it is not possible, even as you are reading this, to catch just a glimpse out of the corner of your eye of the feeling of you, the you-ness of you, the profound and primal ordinariness of you. See how certain, how literally unquestionable it is that you are here, and how that presence of you here is certain in a way nothing else can ever be. If you do this once knowingly, you will without fail do it again… and again… and again… And the day will certainly come, without regard to anything else you are doing or not doing, without regard to anything else that is being done or not being done to you, when you will notice that the underlying fear of life is dead — an old and false notion about your nature snuffed out by contact with the reality of your nature. – John Sherman

In Satsang you don’t accumulate, learn or acquire more knowledge. Instead, you are suggested to forget all previous concepts whether spiritual or scholastic, that is to say whatever you know, and investigate the reality of the knower, to find out who you really are. What is revealed and becomes known in Satsang is the unknown; your own Self. – Cesar Teruel

If you listen to what is being said at Satsang, without thinking, analyzing or intellectualizing, without even trying to understand, the Truth will go inside of you like a virus and that virus will work by itself within you. It will devour your preconceived ideas, which are the very obstacles that are preventing you from experiencing the Truth which is delivered at Satsang. – Cesar Teruel

Every seeker wants liberation and is looking for a teacher to show him (her) “the way” to attain it. When the seeker wants freedom and only freedom the teacher appears in human form with “the good news” that the seeker “is already free”. The only obstacle to realizing this truth is what the seeker thinks about himself, (I am so and so, this and that) and he believes he is what he thinks. The so called spiritual practices are an attempt to remove the false ideas the seeker has about him (her) self. However, that idea will disappear by simply shifting the attention from physical forms (sense objects including the body) and mental forms (thoughts, concepts, ideas) to the one that is aware of them. In doing so, the mind of the seeker stops and all ideas and concepts collapse and the seeker realizes who he really is – pure consciousness or awareness – not limited to a particular name and form. – Cesar Teruel

There is no separation, only a sense of separation. There is no individual, only a sense of individuality. There is no ego, only a wrong identification of the Self (awareness) with the non self (the manifestation). – Cesar Teruel

What is known as mind is nothing but the “I am the body” idea. A thought, a concept that arises when the nameless and formless Awareness (what you really are) associates, identifies and limits itself to a particular individual form. – Cesar Teruel

People say that the manifestation is an illusion, which really means the idea that the manifestation is separate from its source, the un-manifested Awareness. That “idea” itself is the illusion. Awareness and what appears on it are inseparable. They are one and the same. So who is aware of what ? – Cesar Teruel

There is the idea that peace can either be given or taken away from you by a sense object. That movement to run after or away from sense objects, which is the mind itself, is precisely what is taking away your peace. Peace can’t be the object of your desire. Peace is what you are. – Cesar Teruel

Peace is lost when you desire anything, including peace. – Cesar Teruel

Sensing without thinking, analyzing, interpreting, is BEING. – Cesar Teruel

Nothing you believe is true. To know this is freedom. – Byron Katie

I’m a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. – Byron Katie

Take a moment just to be still, to be here, regardless of what is passing through you. Recognize that you are the hereness that all is passing through. All the changes, sights, sounds, smells, emotions, thoughts, information, events, births, and deaths are all passing through the ever-present stillness that is here now in the core of your being. – Gangaji

There are no steps to self-realization. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly and is irrevocably. You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere abstractions. Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realization you see everything as it is. The world of illusion is left behind. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain volume; your personality is due to your self-identification with the body. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

There are no conditions to fulfil. There is nothing to be done, nothing to be given up. Just look and remember, whatever you perceive is not you, nor yours. It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are not the field and its contents, not even the knower of the field. It is your idea that you have to do things that entangle you in the results of your efforts – the motive, the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense of frustration – all this holds you back. Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

Be quiet in your mind, quiet in your senses, and also quiet in your body. Then, when all these are quiet, don’t do anything. In that state truth will reveal itself to you. – Kabir

The only thing you know as a matter of certainty is the fact I AM. But you do not know who this “I” is. One must first find out precisely who or what it is that is seeking truth and happiness before there is any possibility of knowing the transcendental Reality. – Ramesh Balsekar

Make it a habit to ask yourself : “What’s going on inside me at this moment ?”. That question will point you in the right direction. But don’t analyze, just watch. Focus your attention within. Feel the energy of the emotion. If there is no emotion present, take your attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway into Being. – Eckhart Tolle

There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body. Discover that current and stay with it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some super human accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. – Eckhart Tolle

Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that the difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist. – Ramesh Balsekar

When I say : ‘remember “I am” all the time’, I mean : ‘come back to it repeatedly’. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is nothing specifically you can do to move your true identity or sense of self into the expanded dimensions of your true nature. Identity is not something you do; it is what you are. However, the sense of identity follows your awareness, and since you are ultimately everything, it can and will identify with whatever is in your awareness. This is the danger of a teaching that doesn’t point to or convey the existence of true nature. If something is not even talked about or considered, it is much less likely that awareness will notice it, and also much less likely that identity will ultimately shift into it. This is why it is important to teach and explore the nature of all of the qualities of presence such as joy, peace, and love, so that awareness begins to touch them and eventually identity shifts to the underlying truth of Being. A subtle distinction needs to be made between your true identity and the sense of self you have in any moment. Your true identity has and always will be the infinite spaciousness of Being, including all forms, both physical and subtle, and all of the formless emptiness of pure space. But your sense of self is a flexible means for this limitless Being to experience itself from many different perspectives. By having this quality of identity that can move in and out of all kinds of experiences and temporarily appear to become them by identifying with them, Being gets to try on all of these different experiences or illusions from the most contracted and limited to the most expanded and blissful. Without this capacity, Being would be a static existence of infinite potential that is never expressed. By moving its identity into and identifying with the myriad perspectives of limited experience, this potential becomes experienced in form and movement. So while mis-identification is the root of all of your “problems,” it is not and never has been a mistake. Being has very purposefully shifted its identity in and out of infinite apparent selves to try them all on for size. Being stuck in identification is itself an illusion, since all identification is temporary. So while it is helpful, from the perspective of a limited self that is suffering, to explore and discover the other capacities of your identity to move out of the ego and into true nature, ultimately all of the spiritual teaching pointing to other possibilities is actually just a description of what has always been going on, not a prescription for the right way to be. Every expression of life is an expression of the right way to be, if the right way to be is simply to express our limitless capacity to experience identification and dis-identification, form and formlessness. The deepest fullest experience of anything is to become it, and that is what Being has been up to all along. The ultimate freedom or liberation is the discovery that it is fine to identify and dis-identify. True freedom demands no limits, not even limits against limitation. Since Being itself is completely free and unharmable, it has been endlessly exploring every possibility of that freedom. This can allow you to hold everything, even the spiritual journey, lightly. The goal is and has always been the journey itself. You can be curious about this whole process of identification with ego, with no-self, and with true nature simply for its own sake. It is a rich and mysterious world of perception and reality that we as consciousness inhabit. Why not taste it all? Life is and has always been this endless movement in and out of identification, in and out of forms and formlessness. – Nirmala

The source of all problems is the mind. Thoughts arise, you identify with your thoughts and this, then, defines your experience. So many thoughts arise and you are lost in them obsessed with them without you even knowing it. So many worries and troubles constantly arising and repeating, and though you may not be aware of all of them, you are none-the-less identified with them. You are identified with the stress of it, the conflict of it and so that is your experience. Say you have to get your toilet fixed. You know you have to get your toilet fixed. But the thought repeats itself as a conflict until you resolve it. It sits on your shoulders like a hundred pound weight telling you life is not the way it is supposed to be until the toilet is fixed and then the stress will go away. And then the plumber says “I can’t come until next Wednesday” and that hurts because you know you will have to carry around that thought, that conflict of “I have to get the toilet fixed” for another week. And there are thousands of them arising so fast! Toilet fixed, doctor appointment, not enough money , your lover dumped you, you hate your job. You wake up in the morning from a state of deep peace and freedom from all identity and boom! The mind looks for something to identify with and there’s the broken toilet, the doctor appointment, the empty space next to you that your lover used to fill, you hate your job, and you do not want to go to work. Thousands of others arise within seconds. And that’s who you think you are, that is how you perceive life. Sure you get the good thoughts too but then that creates conflict and stress. You want one thought over the other; one experience over the other. And so the remedy is not to try and have one thought over the other, but to stop the identification with thinking all together, after all, it’s all phenomena. Whether through witnessing thoughts or placing your attention on what is here beyond thinking, it is to break that addiction of identifying with thoughts and rest as your natural state of being. To stop allowing thoughts to dictate your experience and instead discover what is truly here beyond the thinking. It is to realize your natural state. Because your natural state is love, your natural state is peace, your natural state is free of all of this, all of this. Do you realize that your natural state, your birthright, is not some superficial emotional experience but one that every cell is vibrating with in a changeless state of love and peace – a state beyond what mind could possibly comprehend? And if you can taste that once, for one tiny instant, then you can do it twice. Then you can rest in your natural state for longer periods of time before being pulled back into thinking. And eventually, the duality between thoughts and peace ceases to exist. You begin to experience thoughts as energy. It’s like you stop being involved with the lyrics to the song and simply enjoy the music, the simple beautiful joy of the music. The toilet still needs to be fixed but you’re no longer wearing the toilet as if it were a hat. It no longer defines you. You exist completely free of all of it as unconditioned and unconditional changeless beautiful peace. – Pelkyong

Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that. – Charlotte Joko Beck

Because of our craving, the Buddha is saying, we want things to be understandable. We reduce, concretize, or substantialize experiences or feelings, which are, in their very nature, fleeting or evanescent. In so doing, we define ourselves by our moods and by our thoughts. We do not just let ourselves be happy or sad, for instance; we must become a happy person or a sad one. This is the chronic tendency of the ignorant or deluded mind, to make ‘things’ out of that which is no thing. Seeing craving shatters this predisposition; it becomes preposterous to try to see substance where there is none. The materials out of which we construct our identities become useless and broken when the ridgepole of ignorance is shattered. – Mark Epstein

Turn your attention away from the dream right now. Just for right now, you don’t need it. Let the thoughts and worries of the dream character continue as they will, but just step back for a moment and watch it happen, watch the dream character involved in its dream. And while the dream character is going about its business, turn your attention to the one thing right now that is shining and clear, peaceful and unassuming, steady and solid: the consciousness with which the dream character is being observed. Just rest here, in the unchanging consciousness which reflects but is not changed by what it reflects. This is reality. Nothing else is. Rest your attention here. Get to know it. Let the reality of consciousness be known to you, as you. Nothing needs to be done here. No thought affects it, and so thought is not needed. No action affects it, and so action is not needed. It’s not possible to do anything with this consciousness because this consciousness is everything already. Pay attention to it for a moment right now and it is easily noticed that consciousness is complete. And since consciousness is complete, you are complete. The only thing that ever makes you feel like you are not complete, not whole, and that you need to “return” somewhere to find wholeness, is that you have put your attention into the dream life, and forgotten that wholeness is all that you really are. So observe the dream character as it desires enlightenment, and as it desires love, reassurance, respect. Watch the dream character as its life plays out. It is not who you are. You are this consciousness, which has no mortality, no vulnerability, and no limits. Beyond all imagination, the nothingness within which resides the seed of all existence, the shining creation of infinite universes – this is you. Put your attention here, and allow your sense of this to grow. If you are looking for Wholeness, here it is. If you are looking for True Love, here it is, in the One Unlimited Self that is Reality. No other love is possible. And this Love is already here, as You. – Annette Nibley

So if in deep meditation you have come to rest as the seer of all thoughts and forms that are arising, you can see the difference between who sees and what is seen. And no, you can’t see the who that sees, but if you know that as your Self, then you can understand how this whole world – with your own body in it (the body you call your own) is an object. It is the seen. So stay with the ground of being. Stay with who sees. The more you see what is fleeting, temporary, and illusory, the deeper your understanding will be that it (the seen) is utterly unreal to the extent that it has never occurred. – Cee

No matter how powerful the illusion of suffering or emptiness is when we are identified with it, identification is still simply a movement of thought followed by a movement of our sense of self into that thought. Since thought is always a temporary phenomenon, no identification is ever permanent. In fact, every identification only lasts as long as the thought triggering it. We become “stuck” in identification by repeating a lot of similar thoughts. The sense of an egoic self or no-self are both created by a pattern of repeated thoughts that identity moves into. Because this movement of thought is always temporary, there is always in every moment the possibility of touching the deeper reality of our true nature as presence and Being. Even more amazing is when, with repeated experiences of true nature, our identity or sense of self moves into the realm of essential reality. Eventually it becomes obvious that the expanded spaciousness of our inner presence is actually who we are. When our identity moves into true nature, there is no suffering and no dryness or emptiness. We simply are all of the peace, joy, and love in the universe. – Nirmala

The ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle : totally fascinated by the realm of the senses, it swings from one desire to the next, one conflict to the next, one self-centered idea to the next. If you threaten it, it actually fears for its life. Let this monkey go. Let the senses go. Let desires go. Let conflicts go. Let ideas go. Let the fiction of life and death go. Just remain in the center, watching. And then forget that you are there. – Lao Tzu

Questioner : In Europe there is no tradition of a mantra, except in some contemplative orders. Of what use is it to a modern young Westerner ? Maharaj : None, unless he is very much attracted. For him the right procedure is to adhere to the thought that he is the ground of all knowledge, the immutable and perennial awareness of all that happens to the senses and the mind. If he keeps it in mind all the time, aware and alert, he is bound to break the bounds of non-awareness and emerge into pure life, light and love. The idea – ‘I am the witness only’ will purify the body and the mind and open the eye of wisdom. Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is free of all desires. Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence. – Nisargadatta Majaraj

You are the Perceptual Center of all your experience. Realize This, and you will discover that the universe is contained within the light of your own innate Natural Awareness, and you are not limited by who or what you imagine yourself to be. Remember: you are That which is Seeing, Observing and Perceiving. – Metta Zetty

In non-objective meditation, our attention is drawn towards the non-objective, the ultimate subject, consciousness. This is accomplished as a result of understanding. At the first stage, the truth-seeker is asked to notice that the happiness he is really looking for is non-objective, which means “not contained in any object, gross or subtle”. When this is understood, he is then asked to realize that the mind, which can only grasp mentations (thoughts and sense-perceptions), cannot have access to the non-objective realm. It follows that any attempt to secure the happiness he is looking for through the mind is bound to failure. When this is understood, the mind soon finds itself in a NATURAL state of stillness. In this natural form of meditation, sensations or thoughts are neither sought nor avoided; they are simply welcomed and seen off. It could be described as a total openness, in which we are totally open to our sense perceptions, our bodily sensations, our emotions, our feelings and our thoughts. We could compare these mentations with the various characters of a play. As long as we find the play interesting, our attention is completely drawn by the actors on the foreground, but, if there is a weak moment, our attention progressively relaxes until we become suddenly aware of the background, of the stage. In the same way, as our attention becomes global, unfocused, open, disinterested, (and this detachment follows from our understanding that these mentations have really nothing to offer in terms of real happiness), our attention relaxes, until we become suddenly aware of the background, consciousness, which reveals itself as the ultimate immortality, splendor and happiness we were looking for. It is not necessary for the actors to leave the stage in order for us to be aware of the background of the stage; similarly, the absence of mentations is not a prerequisite for awareness of the Self. However, in the same way as, when the actors leave and our attention relaxes, we have an opportunity to become aware of the background, there is an opportunity to “visualize” our real nature when a mentation merges into consciousness. – Francis Lucille

Leave God alone. Speak for yourself. You do not know God. He is only what you think of Him. Is He apart from you? He is that Pure Consciousness in which all ideas are formed. You are that Consciousness. – Ramana Maharshi

Nothing stands in the way of your liberation and it can happen here and now but for your being more interested in other things. And you cannot fight with your interests. You must go with them, see through them and watch them reveal themselves as mere errors of judgement and appreciation. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience. Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore, the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state. It is at once recognized as the original, basic experience, which is life itself, and also love and joy. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

To be enlightened means to know oneself as Awareness and to know that this Awareness is ever-present and without limit or location. To be Self-realized means to think, feel and act in line with that experiential understanding. Enlightenment is instantaneous although it may not be immediate. Self-realization takes apparent time and involves the gradual dissolution of all the olds habits of thinking, feeling, acting and relating on behalf of a separate entity and, as a result, the realignment of the mind, body and world with the experiential understanding of our self, Awareness, as the sole witness and substance of all seeming things. – Rupert Spira

Nothing can be done without love. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one thing thoroughly. That is all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body. Discover that current and stay with it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some super human accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. – Eckhart Tolle

Only if one knows the truth of love, which is the real nature of Self, will the strong entangled knot of life be untied. Only if one attains the height of love will liberation be attained. Such is the heart of all religions. The experience of Self is only love, which is seeing only love, hearing only love, feeling only love, tasting only love and smelling only love, which is bliss. – Ramana Maharshi

If there is peace in your mind you will find peace with everybody. If your mind is agitated you will find agitation everywhere. So first find peace within and you will see this inner peace reflected everywhere else. You are this peace! You are happiness, find out. Where else will you find peace if not within you ? – Papaji

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, “what is” is what we want. – Byron Katie

Refuse attention [to things], let things come and go. Desires and thoughts are also things. Disregard them. Since immemorial time, the dust of events was covering the clear mirror of your mind, so that only memories you could see. Brush off the dust before it has time to settle; this will lay bare the old layers until the true nature of your mind is discovered. It is all very simple and comparatively easy; be earnest and patient, that is all. Dispassion, detachment, freedom from desire and fear, from all self-concern, mere awareness, free from memory and expectation, this is the state of mind to which discovery can happen. After all, liberation is but the freedom to discover. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The mind always wants to do something. It is not interested in hearing that nothing needs to be done. And that´s not the same as saying “don´t do anything”. Things will be done. In fact, everything that needs to be done is already being done. Right now, thoughts are coming in and out. Are you doing that ? If you were doing that, you would be able to stop those thoughts right now! You see ? Everything just happens, and this is the last thing the mind wants to hear! The whole thing is all spontaneous ! – Mooji

You need not get at it, you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that, and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Only a fool would try to attain liberation through a method. Any technique would have to be perpetuated and sustained by the mind and therefore anything achieved by it would be mind based and by its very nature would be bound. There is no freedom; no liberation, for there is only what IS which is neither bound nor free. By doing only what is appropriate in each moment one comes to see that there is no one who is restricted in any way at all. The realisation that there is no one in the body IS liberation and utter freedom, which was always the case all along. – Bodhi Avasa

Enlightement is the simple and direct realization of not being your body-mind but the empty Awareness whose action is living through and as all form. This recognition happens for no specific reason, so no preparation or purification is necessary beforehand on the behalf of the apparent individual. No action in time and space can in fact bring one to the seeing of being the Eternal itself. This realization happens by grace. Grace is always already present under any of the circumstances of life. So each moment is always the perfect opportunity to see that everything that appears is just a mirror of what is happening in Consciousness. If there is the ability to bring the reflection back to where the scene is observed, then those circumstances will serve their real purpose, to show that their witness is also their creator and that there is not in fact any separation between the dream and the Dreamer. In fact neither of these two actually exist, there is only dreaming. – Shakti Caterina Maggi

It must be constantly borne in mind while trying to understand the mechanics of the apparent process of manifestation that nothing has actually been created. All that appears is mind-stuff, that of which all dreams are made, and apart from Consciousness itself, nothing exists, neither the mind nor the senses nor their objects. – Ramesh Balsekar

In recognising presence awareness, there is no ‘thing’ to see, just natural non-conceptual seeing, actually as it is without subject or object. See this and the realisation is immediate that what is labeled as awareness or consciousness or mind can never be formulated as either a subject or an object. Being empty of a subject or object, it is emptiness seeing (cognising emptiness). Emptiness can never be emptied of emptiness, nor can it be filled by emptiness. With that concept canceled out, only the wordless thoughtless indescribable emptiness remains. Not a vacuum or a void, but a vivid self-shining, self-knowing, self-aware emptiness, like a clear sky full of light. See for yourself. No one or other can do it for you. Immediate simplicity. Continue to see that the seeing is continuous. Any doubt, question, or argument, and the conceptual seeker has appeared again. See that and non-conceptual emptiness remains undisturbed. – Sailor Bob Adamson

Spirituality is not about coming up with the means to manage a situation. It’s about relinquishing one’s attempt to control what’s happening. – Adyashanti

The truth is you can’t try to let go. Trying is the opposite of letting go. To let go is to relinquish trying. To let go is much more like to let be. – Adyashanti

All separation is literally imagination. – Adyashanti

Delusion hides itself in our most prized forms of conditioning – spirituality and religion. – Adyashanti

A great insight is only as good as the surrender it engenders. – Adyashanti

We are but imperfect manifestations of an absolute perfection. In an absolute sense, no manifestation can manifest the entirety of the perfection. Yet each being has an infinite capacity to embody what they realize in their humanity. If our awakening is genuine, we realize that what we are is what everything is. It is whole and absolutely complete, and in that sense, it is perfect. And that wholeness, that completion, that perfection, has an infinite capacity to manifest itself more clearly and more abundantly through our humanity. When the ultimate is realized in the genuine spiritual awakening, that’s the ultimate, that’s the end point. But your humanity has no spiritual finish line. It has an infinite capacity to reflect absolute perfection. Always being, always becoming — at the same time with no contradiction. – Adyashanti

The true silence isn’t when your mind goes quiet, but it is that which is still and silent even when the world isn’t. – Adyashanti

Our bodies and psyches are designed to purge themselves of suffering. – Adyashanti

The desire to get rid of desires maintains the entire game. Your awakening depends on seeing through it. – Adyashanti

What you run from owns you. – Adyashanti

Whatever we need is what is given.Whatever moment we are in is the moment we need. – Adyashanti

Let go of body and mind, until you reach a state of great rest, like letting go over a cliff ten miles high, being like open space. And don’t produce representations of discriminations of random thoughts arising and passing away; the moment a view sticks in your mind, use the sword of wisdom to cut it right off, not letting it continue. – Huai-T’ang

Just keep in mind the feeling “I am”, merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts, you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection, and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling “I am”. Whatever you think, say or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Abandon every attempt, just be; don’t strive, don’t struggle, let go every support, hold on to the blind sense of being, brushing off all else. This is enough. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless. It is just like the reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind. The wind of desire stirs the mind and the ‘me’, which is but a reflection of the Self in the mind, appears changeful. But these ideas of movement, of restlessness, of pleasure and pain are all in the mind. The Self stands beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Go back to that state of pure being where the “I am” is still in its purity before it got contaminated with “this I am” or “that I am”. Your burden is of false-identifications – abandon them all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

All are mere words, of what use are they to you? You are entangled in the web of verbal definitions and formulations. Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence of desire and thought the truth is found. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience. Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore, the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state. It is at once recognized as the original, basic experience, which is life itself, and also love and joy. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

By its very nature, the mind is outward turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves; to be told to look for the source within, is, in a way, the beginning of a new life. Awareness takes the place of consciousness; in consciousness there is the “I”, who is conscious, while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself. The “I am” is a thought, while awareness is not a thought; there is no “I am aware” in awareness. 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

Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow. You need not seek anything, all will come to you most naturally and effortlessly. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You can do nothing. What time has brought about, time will take away. This is the end of yoga, to realize independence. All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the “I am”. Once you realize that all happens by itself (call it destiny, or the will of God, or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed. You are responsible only for what you can change. All you can change is only your attitude. There lies your responsibility. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Self-identification with the body creates ever fresh desires, and there is no end to them, unless this mechanism of bondage is clearly seen. It is clarity that is liberating, for you cannot abandon desire unless its causes and effects are clearly seen. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

What prevents you from knowing yourself as all and beyond all, is the mind based on memory. It has power over you as long as you trust it. Don’t struggle with it; just disregard it. Deprived of attention, it will slow down and reveal the mechanism of its working. Once you know its nature and purpose, you will not allow it to create imaginary problems. What problems can there be which the mind did not create? Life and death do not create problems; pains and pleasures come and go, experienced and forgotten. It is memory and anticipation that create problems of attainment or avoidance, coloured by like and dislike. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

When desire and fear end, bondage also ends. It is the emotional involvement, the pattern of likes and dislikes which we call character and temperament, that create the bondage. Don’t be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting, that truly by losing all you gain all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer, and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: “I’m this, I’m that”, continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts. When you happen to walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet, you just find your way between. When you fight, you invite a fight. But when you do not resist, you meet no resistance. When you refuse to play the game, you are out of it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

All our thoughts are nothing but butterflies trying to cross the sea : they will disappear somewhere. Have you watched your thoughts ? If you have lived forty or fifty years, how many million thoughts have crossed the sea and disappeared ? Every day, you go on creating new thoughts and they go on disappearing into the dust. Only one thing remains with you, and that is your am-ness. Only you remain. As a Zen poet has said, “Clouds come and go and the sky remains.” It never goes anywhere, it never comes from anywhere. You are the sky. Anything that happens in this sky is just a traffic — no need to be concerned about it, no need to be identified with it. – Osho

Everything you think of, every emotion you have, every sensation, and all other experiences are simply points of view appearing in clarity. The more you think about it, the less you’ll instinctively realize it. There’s not a single thing to think about. Keep it totally simple. – Great Freedom

Another crucial factor in the recognition of clarity is that clarity is equally present in all thinking — pleasant thinking and disturbing thoughts. Trying to get into a pleasant state is not what clarity is. – Great Freedom

No state of mind can be more real than the mind itself. Is the mind real ? It is but a collection of states, each of them transitory. How can a succession of transitory states be considered real ? The illusion of being the body-mind is there only because it is not investigated. Non-investigation is the thread on which all the states of mind are strung. It is like darkness in a closed room. It is there – apparently. But when the room is opened, where does it go? It goes nowhere, because it was not there. All states of mind, all names and forms of existence are rooted in non-enquiry, non-investigation, in imagining and credulity. It is right to say “I am”, but to say “I am this”, “I am that” is a sign of not enquiring, not examining, of mental weakness or lethargy. Sadhana (practice) consists in reminding oneself forcibly of one’s pure beingness, of not being anything in particular, nor a sum of particulars, not even the totality of all particulars, which make up a universe. All exists in the mind, even the body is an integration in the mind of a vast number of sensory perceptions, each perception also a mental state. Think of yourself. Only don’t bring the idea of a body into the picture. There is only a stream of sensations, perceptions, memories and ideations. The body is an abstraction, created by our tendency to seek unity in diversity. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is only one mistake you are making : you take the inner for the outer, and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you, and what is outside you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you feel miserable ? Try the other way : indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which “I am” is timelessly present. Soon you will realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels that disturbs. Avoid the disturbance, that is all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It [the dream] appears to be beginningless, but in fact it is only now. From moment to moment you are renewing it. Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see because you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you will long for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and be willing to pay the price; the price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream itself. Wanting it to continue is not inevitable. See clearly your condition, your very clarity will release you. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

To be, you must be nobody. To think yourself to be something, or somebody, is death and hell. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

When all names and forms have been given up, the real is with you. You need not seek it. Plurality and diversity are the play of the mind only. Reality is one. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is no individual, there is only what’s happening. The idea that the individual have to make effort or purify himself or become worthy to find Oneness is completely misconceived. It is impossible for the individual to conceive the idea that there is no individuality and that all there is, is what’s happening. It can’t happen because the nature of individuality is to be separate and seek. But what the individual did not realise is there never was anything lost. The dilemma of the individual is not that he can’t get what he wants, the dilemma is the individual. So what to do ? There is nothing that can be done, it isn’t then saying that you can’t do anything, it would be implying there is you there who can’t do anything. There is nothing that need to be done because everything already is all. – Tony Parsons

What if this moment was IT ? All that you were looking for. Imagine for a moment that you had no memory of the past and no imagination of the future. Imagine what it’d be like if you literally lost the capacity to even believe a single thought. Without any memory of the past or any hope for salvation in the future, what is this moment like, purely, and without the dream for more ? I’m not talking about the content of this moment, but rather this moment itself. The spacious presence that envelops all happenings. What is life like when we simply notice whatever is arising in this moment, without neurotically trying to sculpt our world so that we can be happy and fulfilled ? Without the energy of seeking, without the thought that what we want is contained in past or future, what is it like to simply just be here, as you are ? This question is not meant to be answered. It’s pointing towards a stopping. It’s suggesting that we explore what it’s like to just experience this moment. Full Stop. What is life like, without seeking ? – Ariel Bravy

There is the identity of what you are, and there is the person superimposed on it. All you know is the person. The identity, which is not a person, you do not know, for you never doubted, never asked yourself the crucial question: “Who am I”. The identity is the witness of the person, and sadhana consists in shifting the emphasis from the superficial and changeful person to the immutable and ever-present witness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

First realize your own being. This is easy because the sense “I am” is always with you. Then meet yourself as the knower, apart from the known. Once you know yourself as pure being, the ecstasy of freedom is your own. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

How do you know that you do not know your self ? Your direct insight tells you that yourself you know first, for nothing exists without your being there to experience its existence. You imagine you do not know your self, because you cannot describe your self. You can only say : “I know that I am” and you will refuse as untrue the statement “I am not”. But whatever can be described cannot be your self, and what you are cannot be described. You can only know your being by being yourself without any attempt at self-definition and self-description. Once you have understood that you are nothing perceivable or conceivable, that whatever appears in the field of consciousness cannot be your self, you will apply yourself to the eradication of all self-identification, as the only way that can take you to a deeper realization of your self. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Awareness is unattached and unshaken. It is lucid, silent, peaceful, alert and unafraid, without desire and fear. Meditate on it as your true being and try to be it in your daily life, and you shall realize it in its fullness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

As long as you are engrossed in the world, you are unable to know yourself: to know yourself, turn away your attention from the world and turn it within. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The witness attitude is also faith; it is faith in oneself. You believe that you are not what you experience, and you look at everything as from a distance. There is no effort in witnessing. You understand that you are the witness only, and the understanding acts. You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only. If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself ‘Who am I?’, the answer comes at once, though it is wordless and silent. 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

The obstacles to clear perception of one’s true being are desire for pleasure and fear of pain. It is the pleasure-pain motivation that stands in the way. The very freedom from all motivation, the state in which no desire arises, is the natural state. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your mind is steeped in the habits of evaluation and acquisition, and will not admit that the incomparable and unobtainable are waiting timelessly within your own heart for recognition. All you have to do is to abandon all memories and expectations. Just keep yourself ready in utter nakedness and nothingness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

What is sought hides not by being terribly complex and achievable by progressive endeavor. It hides (brilliantly) by being already all that is, it is the Open Secret- constantly available, constantly speaking to you through all the senses. It hides by being astoundingly simple. The mind loves to make it difficult and esoteric so the story can go on. Levels of enlightenment and understanding are really a great ignorance and beautifully arrogant. Its This, now. So there is nothing to do, nothing that needs to be done and any practice of a spiritual nature is a total rejection of This – it is clearly saying that this is not it right now, and if I meditate or study or whatever then I might get there, or I might get closer. And so the story goes on and on and on and on, towards some imagined goal. On and on and on – until it doesn’t. Timelessness appearing as a story that ticks in time and moves. So astoundingly beautiful. – Kenneth Madden

First of all, abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual. Abandon any desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

In peace and silence, the skin of the “I” dissolves and the inner and the outer become one. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you feel miserable ? Try the other way : indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which “I am” is timelessly present. Soon you will realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels that disturbs. Avoid the disturbance, that is all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Don’t talk of means, there are no means. What you see as false, dissolves. It is the very nature of illusion to dissolve on investigation. Investigate – that is all. You cannot destroy the false, for you are creating it all the time. Withdraw from it, ignore it, go beyond, and it will cease to be. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Supreme is the easiest to reach, for it is your very being. It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything but the Supreme. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Too much analysis leads you nowhere. There is in you the core of being which is beyond analysis, beyond the mind. You can know it in action only. The legitimate function of the mind is to tell you what is not. But if you want possitive knowledge, you must go beyond the mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Efforts to quiet the mind or to ignore thoughts cannot succeed with any consistency. Only when Full Realization strikes, only when the “Oh my gosh !” moment happens – only then does the mind dissolve. What to consider meanwhile ? It is true that, if you are instructed to “avoid thinking about an elephant,” the only thing that you can think of is an elephant. So, what is the answer ? The answer is not to try to be rid of a disturbing thought. The answer is to ask when a thought is interrupting the peace, “WHO is thinking that thought ?” Only by relinquishing belief in the false identities that inspire thoughts can the thoughts come to an end. Only by abandoning the “this” and “that” in such beliefs as “I am this” (role) or “I am that” (role) will the peace and quiet of only the “I Am” ever happen. – Floyd Henderson

The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of “I” and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the “I” and the “mine”. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Believe me, there is no goal, nor a way to reach it. You are the way and the goal, there is nothing else to reach except yourself. All you need is to understand, and understanding is the flowering of the mind. The tree is perennial, but the flowering and the fruit-bearing come in season. The seasons change, but not the tree. You are the tree. You have grown numberless branches and leaves in the past, and you may grow them also in the future – yet you remain. Not what was, or shall be, must you know, but what is. Yours is the desire that creates the universe. Know the world as your own creation and be free. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do, you do for your own happiness. To find it, to know it, to cherish it is you basic urge. Be true to your own self, love your self absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them. Don’t pretend to be what you are not, don’t refuse to be what you are. Your love of others is the result of self- knowledge, not its cause. Without self-realization, no virtue is genuine. When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection. But when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear, and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. Only self- realization can break it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Experience leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden which is heavy enough. You need no more experiences. The past ones are sufficient. And if you feel you need more, look into the hearts of people around you. You will find a variety of experiences which you would not be able to go through in a thousand years. Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself your own. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is the instinct of exploration, the love of the unknown, that brings me into existence. It is in the nature of being to seek adventure in becoming, as it is in the nature of becoming to seek peace in being. This alternation of being and becoming is inevitable; but my home is beyond. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

[If you are still dreaming] it is because you have not really understood that you are dreaming. This is the essence of bondage – the mixing of the real with the unreal. In your present state, only the sense “I am” refers to reality; the “what” and the “how I am” are illusions imposed by destiny, or accident. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The word God means consciousness having two states: at rest (pure awareness), and in motion (manifestation). In this there is truly no separation as the essence and ground of all that exists is consciousness, and true love is only present where there is no separation; true love is ‘no separation’. The Christian idea that ‘God is Love’ points to this, and love of one’s fellow man naturally follows from the realization of no separation. – Colin Drake

In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future; all appears and nothing is. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The first true glimpse of this is sometimes known as Enlightenment or Awakening, although in almost all cases the habitual tendencies of the mind and the body reappear and apparently veil this Knowingness again. The subsequent establishment in this understanding, sometimes known as Self-realisation, is not a process towards a goal. It is a re-orchestration of the body, mind and world that comes from understanding, rather than going towards it. Enlightenment is instantaneous. Self-Realisation takes time. – Rupert Spira

There can be no experience beyond consciousness. Yet there is the experience of just being. There is a state beyond consciousness, which is not unsconscious. Some call it super-consciousness, or pure consciousness, or supreme consciousness. It is pure awareness free from the subject-object nexus. Consciousness is intermitent, full of gaps. Yet there is the continuity of identity. What is this sense of identity due to, if not to something beyond consciousness ? – Nisargadatta Maharaj

As long as you deal in terms : real – unreal, awareness is the only reality that can be. But the Supreme is beyond all distinctions, and to it the tern “real” does not apply, for in it all is real and, therefore, need not be labelled as such. It is the very source of reality, it imparts reality to whatever it touches. It just cannot be understood through words. Even a direct experience, however sublime, merely bears testimony, nothing more. The Universal Mind (chidakash) makes and unmakes everything. The Supreme (paramakash) imparts reality to whatever comes into being. To say that it is the universal love may be the nearest we can come to it in words. Just like love, it makes everything real, beautiful, desirable. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is little difference between the conscious and the unconscious – they are essentially the same. The waking state differs from deep sleep in the presence of the witness. A ray of awareness illumines a part of our mind and that part becomes our dream or waking consciousness, while awareness appears as the witness. The witness usually knows only consciousness. Sadhana connsists in the witness turning back first on his conscious, then upon himself in his own awareness. Self-awareness is Yoga. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is “try”. Allow enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality with its addictions and obsessions. Don’t ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure. What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are; now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of success. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Pain and pleasure are the crests and valleys in the ocean of bliss (ananda). Deep down there is utter fullness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is the identity of what you are, and there is the person superimposed on it. All you know is the person. The identity, which is not a person, you do not know, for you never doubted, never asked yourself the crucial question: “Who am I”. The identity is the witness of the person, and sadhana consists in shifting the emphasis from the superficial and changeful person to the immutable and ever-present witness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Know yourself to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind. That is enough. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is itself the background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There are no conditions to fulfil. There is nothing to be done, nothing to be given up. Just look and remember, whatever you perceive is not you, nor yours. It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are not the field and its contents, not even the knower of the field. It is your idea that you have to do things that entangle you in the results of your efforts – the motive, the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense of frustration – all this holds you back. Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is only your mind that prevents self-knowledge. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

To know that the known cannot be me nor mine, is liberation. Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits, the state of wonder at the infinite reaches of the being, its inexhaustible creativity and total transcendence, the absolute fearlessness born from the realization of the illusoriness and transiency of every mode of consciousness – flow from a deep and inexhaustible source. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realization. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately, you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Relax and watch the “I am”. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. It is transfigured and becomes the real Self, the sadguru, the eternal friend and guide. You cannot approach it in worship. No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayers remain on the surface only; to do deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking. In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just look away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling “I am”. The “I am” is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the “I am” will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling “I am” merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else. When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognize it at one as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end, and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

As long as one is conscious, there will be pain and pleasure. 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. Consciousness is an itching rash that makes you scratch. Of course, you cannot step out of consciousness, for the very stepping out is in consciousness. But if you learn to look at your consciousness as a sort of fever, personal and private, in which you are enclosed like a chick in its shell, out of this very attitude will come the crisis which will break the shell. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember to remember that the perceived cannot be the perceiver. Whatever you see, hear or think of, remember – you are not what happens, you are he to whom it happens. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Concern yourself with your mind, remove its distortions and impurities. Once you had the taste of your own self, you will find it everywhere and at all times. Therefore it is so important that you should come to it. Once you know it, you will never lose it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The whole of it is [imagination]. Even space and time are imagined. All existence is imaginary. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your dwelling on the fact “I am” will soon create another chance [of self-realization]. For attitude attracts opportunity. All you know is second-hand. Only “I am” is first-hand and needs no proofs. Stay with it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

The very desire to live is the messanger of death, as the longing to be happy is the outline of sorrow. The world is an ocean of pain and fear, of anxiety and despair. Pleasures are like the fishes, few and swift, rarely come, quickly gone. A man of low intelligence believes, against all evidence, that he is an exception and that the world owes him happiness. But the world cannot give what it does not have; unreal to the core, it is of no use for real happiness. It cannot be otherwise. We seek the real because we are unhappy with the unreal. Happiness is our real nature and we shall never rest until we find it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

How many times will you pound your skull against a brick wall before you realize no one can ever give you love ? No one can ever love you. There is no love “out there”. You are the only love that exists. There is no other love. – Stephen Wingate

There are no real problems. Even when you are in the depths of sorrow, tears flowing, your heart clenched tight, drowning in despair and sadness, is there really a problem ? There are no real problems. Everything is welcome and free to arise in you. You are the love in which everything arises. You are that which is aware of all that arises. You are not a separate person who can suffer. There is no separate person, there is only consciousness. There is only consciousness, and consciousness is love. Everything arises in this love that you are. – Stephen Wingate

Be aware and let it be ! – Stephen Wingate

There are no correct experiences to have. The well-being we have sought by trying to rearrange thoughts, feelings, and sensations is always and already present as the seamless flow of everything that arises. – John Astin

No wonder “you” cannot see this : This is a freedom that a “person” will never see. How could a “person” ever accept that everything happens spontaneously, of its own accord, in the absence of the person ? The Tao (or Oneness, or God, or Life, or Spirit, or Emptiness…) has no centre, no mind, no personal volition. It appears as everything, but itself is nothing. Nothing manifesting as a world, as everything there is and is not. And there is only the Tao, which is to say there is no Tao at all. And even to speak of it, even to think of it, even to do that is to lose it forever. And yet the thinking and the speaking are fully the Tao; there is nothing that it is not. It is the no-thing by which everything appears. And it’s not even that, because it’s not an “it” at all. When speaking of the Tao, silence is the only way. – Jeff Foster

Absolutely all that appears is permanently pointing back to the source or consciousness; it is not only the beautiful things and the clear words. Nothing would appear, no experience would arise without consciousness. Because the ego-centered mode of operation objectifies consciousness, seeking continues. When attention turns away from objects, consciousness is revealed to itself. – Felipe Oliveira

Get out of your head, drop all the concepts and you are free — as you are — right now. Try it ! – Stephen Wingate

There is NO answer in the mind. – Bob Adamson

It’s helpful to realize that enlightenment and awakening are just concepts and do not exist as states that can be attained. Believing in the ideas of awakening or enlightenment keeps you on the path of seeking and suffering. Waiting for an “a-ha” experience or an experience of “I get it now,” will also keep you on the path of seeking and suffering. All there is, is this. Right here, right now. This is it. There’s truly nothing to gain. If you’re frustrated and experiencing psychological suffering, there’s an underlying belief that there’s something other than what is here and now, and there’s a belief that you exist as a separate, controlling entity or ego who can exercise his will to attain something better or different than what is here and now. There is no way to avoid what is here and now — happiness, sadness, anger, joy, peace or frustration. There is no way to grasp onto the pleasant experiences or avoid the unpleasant. You do not exist as a separate, controlling entity who can exercise control over your experience. – Stephen Wingate

See what you actually are, not what you think you are. You are not a seeker, a person, an unadvanced soul or any other concept proposed by mind. You are nothing short of the non-dual reality here and now. The answer is not in the mind and cannot be approached by any definition, concept or thought. Before the next thought appears, you are. Your being and its aware nature are fully evident. Your identity as that is clear now, if you take a few moments to verify this. – John Wheeler

The ego is a concept, an assumption. It is merely an idea. What is that idea ? It is the notion that you stand apart from the deeper reality of things as an independent and autonomous self, a limited being. As you look into this matter, you find that this assumption proves to be entirely false. So the ego simply evaporates due to discovering its non-existence. There is no “ego death” needed or possible, because there is no ego present to die. – John Wheeler

If you look closely at thoughts moment by moment, you will see that the thoughts are not generated by a conceptual “I” at all. “You” actually do not create the next thought. It appears and the mind steps in and erroneously interprets that the thought was generated by the phantom character called “I”. There is no such entity present. – John Wheeler

Our mind, based on misunderstanding, assumes we are a separate person apart from reality. Then we seek a path, practice, goal and so on. But the problem is a creation of thought. Without the thoughts, is there a problem !? The concept on which all other troubling concepts is based is the notion of the separate “I”. The one with the problem (the “I”) is the problem itself ! Until this is seen, the seeking, suffering and doubts cannot help but go on. How can an illusory character let go of an illusion which is, in fact, itself ? – John Wheeler

We go around in circles thinking that if we get the right explanation, awareness will just appear. But awareness is the space in which that sentence appeared. It is that close. It is what you already are. This space is aware regardless of whether the story of development is being told within it or the story of Snow White. It is that fundamental. It is easy to get really sidetracked from the basic recognition of present awareness by continuing to go into reasons, process, mental understanding. All rational (and, for that matter, irrational or non-rational) explanations of separation, non-duality, and everything else are appearing within a basic, aware space that is totally present now. Without that space, THESE WORDS COULD NOT APPEAR. – Scott Kiloby

There is a presence here regardless of what you think. This presence is totally untouched by thought, in one sense. It is here whether you think, “I’m present” or you think, “I’m not present.” But if there is a movement to look for presence in thought it feels as though it is missed or not here. The self, which is like a time-bound, thought-based story, believes that thought provides the answer to everything. It is only natural to look, then, in thought for presence. But it isn’t there. Thought is appearing and disappearing in presence. So the one who would go looking into some concept for presence is, itself, a concept. Instead of looking to the next concept, what is it that sees the concept ? In that seeing, the recognition of awareness is available. That is awareness, shining effortlessly, in that moment of noticing a thought. That which sees the thought is already awareness. In the next moment, there may be a tendency to go back into thought again, but what is it that sees that next thought ? It isn’t a different awareness. It is the same awareness, the space that is looking at these words right now. – Scott Kiloby

Awareness is the basic space of life. Without it, nothing is experienced, known, or felt. The appearances are inseparable from awareness. Even if you have the thought “But I’m a person”, that thought cannot appear without this basic space within which the thought appears. Noticing thought as it appears can help to recognize the space within which it is appearing. But whether you notice a thought appearing is, ultimately, irrelevant. But noticing and not noticing are equal appearances that come and go within awareness. So your identity must lie there, as awareness, not in the things that come and go. Those who make that space their intention, by simply looking at what is prior to each appearance see that this basic, timeless, unmoving space is what they are. Everything else, and that includes everything, is an inseparable appearance of that space. – Scott Kiloby

The confusion comes from emphasizing thoughts again rather than being interested only in this space within which the thoughts appear. People spend 20 or 30 years going back into thoughts to try to grasp non-duality. A more direct path, in my view, is to stand as presence right now. See that it is the only thing that you can never argue or be confused about. This space of awareness is simply here and awake. The thought, “I get it”, and “I dont get it” are equal appearances of this space. This space does not require any mental understanding to recognize itself. Mental understanding can provide a conceptual framework. But all thinking happens within this space. This space is what sees these words right now. It is that simple. Stick with that basic fact. It is key. Confusion, doubt, certainty and uncertainty about what I’m saying are all appearing equally within this basic space that is simply present and aware. – Scott Kiloby

In the recognition of inseparability, there is nowhere to go. The seeking game of time is over. Your present experience is none other than love. Everything is drenched in love. What you took to be anger or fear or thought, and you were subtly dismissing, now becomes none other than the space from which it arises. You know yourself as this great space but you see that what appears in the space has no separate existence. So nothing is pushed away. When a thought or emotion appears, you see that it is already on its way to disappearing because there is no longer any movement to witness away, detach from, neutralize, overcome, or deny the appearance. Everything comes and goes, leaving no trace. This is the natural perfection. Nothing actually covers up or obscures awareness. Everything is seen to be proof of awareness, none other than it. – Scott Kiloby

We pretend that we’ve lost paradise only for the joy of finding it again. When paradise is regained, it’s realised that it was never lost. But as long as we’re searching for paradise, it is impossible to notice that this is already it. – Richard Sylvester

Sit quietly and look inside, feel the sensations in your chest. Notice how some are protective. These are the “felt” defenses. Honor and thank them. Now look behind them to what they are protecting. There might be a quiet, or an ordinary, openness. Let yourself get curious, and feel it. You might notice it is restful, with not a lot happening there. Rest and allow the body to be nourished by the stillness. If there is a sense of relief or gratitude, let that express itself… if there is any lingering agitation, let it be as it is and notice it is appearing in a calm openness. Now, the mind might express some doubts; if it does, allow them – and invite the mind to take a rest. As your attention is resting, notice that it does this naturally when it encounters peacefulness. Also invite the body to rest. Any sensations and emotions will alert you to where there is remaining tension, and where gentleness is needed. As everything within starts to relax, feel it deeply with gratitude. Now, observe attention itself… become curious about its ability to soothe body and mind. Express gratitude for no reason, and then rest as you are. When the body and mind are at rest, it is easy to see who we are, innate naturalness, the presence that is always in the background. Before, your attention was on the personality – not the property of being that was wearing it. Now that role can be surrendered. Somehow, the body, emotion and sensations have always known our true nature. They have always presented themselves to this gentle openness within, asking for kindness and understanding. – Pamela Wilson

Man is the only escapist animal. The escapism has become a deep rooted mechanism in man. The same he goes on doing with psychological things. If there is fear, then rather than encountering it he goes in another direction – prays to God, asks for help. Feeling poverty, inside poverty, rather than encountering it he goes on accumulating wealth, so that he can forget that he is poor inside. Seeing that he does not know himself, rather than encountering this ignorance he goes on collecting knowledge, becomes knowledgeable, like a parrot, and goes on repeating borrowed things. These are all escapes. If you really want to encounter yourself, you will have to learn how not to escape. Life has to be encountered. Whatsoever comes before you, you have to look into it deeply, because that same depth is going to become your self-knowledge. – Osho

To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in the body or in the mind. Just remain unaffected. This complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof that at the core of your being you are neither mind nor body. What happens to the body and the mind may not be within your power to change, but you can always put an end to your imagining yourself to be body and mind. Whatever happens, remind yourself that only your body and mind are affected, not yourself. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The “here” is everywhere, and the now always. Go beyond the “I-am-the-body” idea and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time. Once you have understood this, the main obstacle to realization is removed. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Ask yourself when any object of the body, mind or world appears, “How far is this appearance from experiencing ?” And now, “How far is experiencing from myself ?”. Now, to take it deeper, ask yourself, “What substance is present in the appearance, other than experiencing ?” And now, “What substance is present in experiencing other than myself ?”. See clearly that all appearances are made out of experiencing and experiencing is simply another name for myself, ‘I.’See clearly that the appearance, experiencing and myself are one. – Rupert Spira

That which IS does not have to say “I am”, for no thought arises that I am not ! – Ramana Maharshi

Through identification with thinking, we are seeking in time for a self that is illusory, a self that is being created by the activity of seeking itself. – Scott Kiloby

Right now, recognize present awareness. Don’t move to manipulate any appearance within awareness. See that the appearance is not
separate from awareness. – Scott Kiloby

If you see some “thing” move, change, appear and disappear in an way, that is not awareness. That is an appearance of awareness. Awareness is the awake, timeless space within which appearances come and go. No matter how deeply awareness is recognized, no insight that arises as a seeming result of this recognition is actual awareness itself. Insights are appearances of awareness. They also come and go. They are wonderful. Enjoy them when they come. Repeat them if you like. Share them with friends. They are not, however, awareness. Be clear about that. – Scott Kiloby

It is the dualising mind that fragments the seamless totality into people, objects, selves, others and the world. This mind then seeks to alleviate the suffering that is inherent in its own fragmentation of experience and by so doing, simply add more fuel to the fire. – Rupert Spira

Nothing is done by me, everything just happens. I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Give up all and you gain all. Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source. In that light the world appears dimly like a dream. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Words can bring you only up to their own limit; to go beyond, you must abandon them. Remain as the silent witness only. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The seeing is the only doing necessary. – Ramesh Balsekar

To become free, your attention must be drawn to the “I am”, the witness. Of course, the knower and the known are one, not two, but to break the spell of the known the knower must be brought to the forefront. Neither is primary, both are reflections in memory of the ineffable experience, ever new and ever now, untranslatable, quicker than the mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

We’ve taken appearances to be separate. But when you look into them, you see that really they are not. – “Sailor” Bob Adamson

Consciousness never goes anywhere. Consciousness never becomes anything. There is only Consciousness, there is only Being, which simultaneously creates, witnesses, expresses and experiences itself in every experience we have. – Rupert Spira

Meditation is a universal Yes to everything. – Francis Lucille

Silence is the main factor. In peace and silence you grow. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Be fully aware of your own being, and you will be in bliss consciously. Because you take your mind off yourself and make it dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being, of being well. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Nothing is wrong with you, but the ideas you have of yourself are altogether wrong. It is not you who desires, fears and suffers, it is the person built on the foundation of your body by circumstances and influences. You are not that person. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are not the body. You are the immensity and infinity of consciousness. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The mind is discontinuous. Again and again it blanks out, like in sleep or swoon or distraction. There must be something continuous to register discontinuity. Memory is always partial, unreliable and evanescent. It does not explain the strong sense of identity pervading consciousness, the sense “I am”. Find out what is at the root of it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

To be free is to be simple, and to be simple is to simply be. It is not a state to attain, nor an attainment to state. The simplicity of being excludes no particular state or experience, nor does it depend on any particular state or experience. It embraces and includes all states and experiences, while being free of and prior to all states and experiences. To simply be is absolutely inevitable. As everything simply is. Including any and all imaginable complexification and complication. You simply are. Including any and all imaginable striving and yearning to become – whatever you may want to become. Nothing will change whether you realize this or not. Nothing will change whether you relax into simple being or not. So you can as well relax. Whether relaxation happens or not. – Svante Odmark

If all there is is Consciousness, if there is only Consciousness, then why or for what are you still seeking ? If there is only Consciousness then right now you must be That and every thing else that appears in and as awareness must also be That, including any sense of separate self. Any appearance of mundane, ordinary existence can be no less of Consciousness than any appearance of unconditional love, wholeness, bliss, stillness, silence or anything else. Does anything really need to be transcended, found or let go of ? – Nathan Gill

When there’s exclusive identification with the content of awareness, with the story of ‘me’ as an imagined entity, there’s a tendency for the awareness aspect of Consciousness to be objectified as ‘the beyond’, a state or realm which once attained will offer oneness, lasting peace. But in actuality there is no beyond, nothing to be attained ‘ultimately’. There’s simply this as it is: simple presence. This is already that ‘realm’. Consciousness (awareness and the presently appearing content of awareness) is already one or whole, and when the story of ‘me’ – of identification – is seen as just a play, a movie, then all pursuit of oneness, all pursuit of the beyond or whatever, quite naturally becomes obsolete. – Nathan Gill

What has been sought all along is found to be none other than this which is the seeking. The ultimate goal or prize turns out to be what already is. There is nothing and no one to find. There is awareness with no one being aware. All along You have been the butt of your own cosmic joke. The magnificence of all appearances, everywhere you look and seek is simply Your own play or dream of being. There is nothing and no one and yet there is awareness whereby everything appears, including this appearance as an ordinary man or woman. You are, and always have been, completely awake, aware and present, but merely mesmerised by Your own cosmic play. The character, Nathan, sought enlightenment as an escape from what appeared as the problems, trials and boredom of ordinary life. The ordinary life continues but no longer in distraction from presence. The search for the extraordinary is over – life is as it is. – Nathan Gill

You are Consciousness, oneness, all that is, the source and appearance of all. All appearances rise and fall in awareness, nothing else is ever happening. People are passing, clouds are going by, conversations are going on, thoughts appear and disappear. All unfolds presently in awareness. This appearance as the character is already the perfect expression of oneness – nothing needs to change for this to be so. No awakening or enlightenment is needed – all of this is simply the story in the play. There is only already awakeness as oneness, regardless of whether there is mesmerisation with the play of images, or resting in recognition as your true nature. This present appearance, however ordinary or extraordinary, is the content of awareness. Awareness and content are one – Consciousness. You are Consciousness – awake and aware and presently appearing as everything. – Nathan Gill

Seen in clarity, life appears as a great play. You – Consciousness – play all the roles and it is part of the play that You usually play the roles without knowing Your real identity. But sometimes, as part of the show, there is recognition of Your true nature. When there is involvement as a character in the play without recognition of Your true nature the role is taken seriously and all the dramas of life seemingly appear from this. If a role is played where there is recognition of Your true nature, the play is seen for what it is. When Your true nature becomes obvious, the character doesn’t disappear in a flash of light, nor put on ochre robes and have disciples, nor teach ‘spiritual’ truths – although any of these is possible, depending on the pattern of the character’s role in the play. The character will likely appear as he or she did before recognition. The character is likely to continue to lead what is an ordinary life in the play. It is not even necessarily so that the character tells anyone or communicates what is now obvious. The whole play has no purpose or point beyond present appearance. It is Your cosmic entertainment. You are Your play. It has no existence separate from You. – Nathan Gill

When the whole conceptual story of a life extended in thought beyond the present content of awareness is no longer seriously entertained, there is a natural relaxing into ease. Identification as the ‘I’, or psychological self-sense, is merely an appearance in awareness, an addition to the appearance of the body image. The allowing of life as it is – rather than any efforts to be rid of thought or ‘I’, or to become ‘enlightened’ – allows seeking to fall naturally away. Within the play, all efforts to be rid of ‘I’ merely reinforce identification with it. Resting in life as it is does not bring ordinary bodily life to an end in some magical firework display of enlightenment. Thought continues to arise, life carries on, but it is no longer burdened by the complication of the search for unity. Life is seen as the expression of wholeness, rather than as a search for it. You are Consciousness. Whatever Your present appearance, it is already perfect, including any play of identification as ‘I’, and also any seeking to be rid of ‘I’. Life as the character is simply the play of appearances in awareness and has no requirement for awakening. There is only already awakeness. – Nathan Gill

The play of life is not a separate creation watched and presided over by You. You – Consciousness – appear presently as the play, already wide awake, unable therefore to awaken. You are always obvious to Yourself; never hidden. The characters in the play have no separate existence, only an apparent one. The characters are You celebrating Yourself, immersed in the great play of life, playing the game of looking for Yourself, sometimes recognising Yourself within and as the appearance of Your play. This communication about clarity has no particular relevance or significance over any other part of the play. It carries no merit and has no point. There is no purpose for You to find Yourself. With clarity, all of this is made obvious – Your present appearance as the play in all its myriad forms, the recognition of the non-necessity of everything. Right now You are Consciousness, appearing as a character in Your play. Maybe You think You need confirmation. Forget it. Relax. You already are That. – Nathan Gill

What is, right now, is perfection. Presence has not arisen from the past and is not leading to the future. All appears presently as a play in awareness. The apparently separate individual may be involved with self-improvement, spiritual life or anything else throughout the unfolding of that life. But only the clarity of what You really are undermines the search for awakening or for being anything other than what already is. – Nathan Gill

Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search for happiness. It is because you are not happy that you want to be happy. Find out why you are unhappy. Because you are not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain and therefore you call it worldly; you then long for some other pleasure, without pain, which you call divine. In reality, pleasure is but a respite from pain. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The most uncomfortable, tragic event can unfold into wisdom. The most futile, unprofitable enterprise is a journey of revelation. Some games may be more enjoyed than others, but each game is the expression of perfection, the reflection of that which longs to see itself, which is that longing and nothing more. The frustrated longing of the seeker is the sweetest, most apropos feeling, the clearest reflection of life’s yearning to be. How strange and paradoxical that we cannot see what we are, when what we are is all we are. – Suzanne Foxton

The pleasure to be is the simplest form of self-love, which later grows into love of the self. Be like an infant with nothing standing between the body and the self. The constant noise of the psychic life is absent. In deep silence, the self contemplates the body. It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet. Be like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to be. You will be a fully awakened witness of the field of consciousness. But there should be no feelings and ideas to stand between you and the field. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Every thought, every feeling, is a visitor. You just say : Welcome. Come in and sit with me. – Pamela Wilson

Be still, absolutely, completely still. Receive yourself. Drink yourself. Be nourished by yourself. You are Stillness. Be who you are. – Gangaji

The most sublime truth of all has never been stated or written or sung. Not because it is far away, but because it is so intimately close. – Gangaji

Relax and watch the “I am”. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It does not need to be complicated. Just simply sense your self and do not worry about inside or outside or going deeper. Sense that you exist right now, and then stay with that sense of ‘I’ or ‘me’. But do not worry about whether it is the right way of sensing your self. Simply sense your self just as you are right now. Once you sense your self just as you are right now, simply stay with that sense of your self. If a thought or feeling arises, notice who is having the thought or feeling. Obviously ‘I’ am having the thought or feeling. And so then you just return to staying with that sense of ‘I’. That is all you need to do. Just rest while sensing your self. Everything else is up to divine grace, and it is taking good care of you. – Nirmala

When you stop searching and you calm down and you put your books away, and you confront yourself and see what you are all about, that will bring about bliss faster than anything you can ever imagine or ever do. – Robert Adams

When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realizes its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested. – Eckhart Tolle

You are too full of gibberish, you know too much. Because of your borrowed knowledge and too many words moving inside you, you cannot see the wordless beauty that can only be experienced in silence. – Osho

Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic. People come and go; you register without response. It may not be easy in the beginning, but with some practice you will find that your mind can function on many levels at the same time and you can be aware of them all. It is only when you have a vested interest in any particular level that your attention gets caught in it and you black out on other levels. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Let the dream unroll itself to its very end. You cannot help it. But you can look at the dream as a dream, refuse it the stamp of reality. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Right now, recognize present awareness. Don’t move to manipulate any appearance within awareness. See that the appearance is not separate from awareness. This is the main pointer in Living Realization. – Scott Kiloby

Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is “try”. Allow enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality with its addictions and obsessions. Don’t ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure. What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are; now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of success. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Leave it all behind you. Forget it. Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs. Abandon all verbal structures, all relative truth, all tangible objectives. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Above all, we want to remain conscious. We shall bear every suffering and humiliation, but we shall rather remain conscious. Unless we revolt against this craving for experience and let go the manifested altogether, there can be no relief. We shall remain trapped. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

All of this is so incredibly simple. We learnt that whatever happens in our mind somehow is blocking you from going somewhere. I am saying that Awareness, the goal of all enquiry, cannot be on the other side of working through any process, because Awareness is that within which even the attempt to work through to get to something arises and is perceived. – Mooji

We have the feeling that to get to Truth you must work through something: some method, some process, to untangle some knots, climb some mountain, sit in some cave… and THEN Truth is the prize at the end of your striving. But Awareness, which is synonymous with Truth, is that already within which the very striving, the attempt and the practice arises and is perceived. This is an atomic discovery. – Mooji

Just keep in mind the feeling “I am”, merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts, you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection, and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling “I am”. Whatever you think, say or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Hold on to the ‘I am’ to the exclusion of everything else, the ‘I am’ in movement creates the world, the ‘I am’ at peace becomes the Absolute.  – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all to change ? Realize once for all that neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one thing thoroughly. That is all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are not what you think yourself to be, I assure you. The image you have of yourself is made up from memories and is purely accidental. 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. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you feel miserable? Try the other way: indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which “I am” is timelessly present. Soon you will realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels that disturbs. Avoid the disturbance, that is all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your true home is in nothingness, in emptiness of all content. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event; you watch all unconcerned, in the full light of clarity and understanding. You understand precisely what is going on, because it does not affect you. It may seem to be an attitude of cold aloofness, but it is not really so. Once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness. If it is not there, you are merely interested, for some personal reasons. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Evil is the shadow of inattention. In the light of self-awareness it will wither and fall off. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

[For a Westerner] the right procedure is to adhere to the thought that he is the ground of all knowledge, the immutable and perennial awareness of all that happens to the senses and the mind. If he keeps it in mind all the time, aware and alert, he is bound to break the bounds of non-awareness and emerge into pure life, light and love. The idea “I am the witness only” will purify the body and the mind and open the eye of wisdom. Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is free of all desires. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future; all appears and nothing is. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Stay open and quiet, that is all. What you seek is so near you that there is no place for a way. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

THIS is the “Peace of Nothing Wrong” ! – John Wheeler

It’s very easy to discern between reality and illusion, because there’s only illusion. – Stephen Wingate

Just look away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling “I am”. The “I am” is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the “I am” will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling “I am” merely helps in turning the mind away from everyting else. When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognize it at one as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end, and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Anything that claims to be ‘the way it is’ or ‘a higher truth’ is paradoxically, both ‘correct’ and erroneous at the same time – as valid as saying muflaterfog. The word Muflaterfog is just sound, SOUND happening – As are all so called spiritual teachings… Just sound happening. Written words are just squiggles happening on a screen or piece of paper. So called powerful or enlightened spiritual writings (squiggles) are no no more or less meaningful than reading a Charles Dickens novel (squiggles). Amazing, unique, perfect – yet ultimately, meaningless. So really, no reason whatsoever to write these words here, but life’s a bit like that really – It just happens. These squiggles just happen. Forget seeking ‘enlightenment’. All is well. – David Brockman

So in terms of apparent enlightenment, you are it already. Nothing need be said or recommended. A feeling of not quite seeing this is a feeling of not quite seeing this; utterly perfect and divine – a fresh, pristine ignorance! – The miracle of ignorance at all ! The oceans and the mountains; deserts and great cities; aeroplanes and squirrels; your memory of an apparent past and the apparent ability to read these words (squiggles) just happen – is just happening. From nothing to everything. An incredible illusion. Ultimately, nothing has ever happened – and nothing WILL ever happen; yet everything is just happening. This is what the word heaven is pointing to in the bible – Your timeless Life right now. – David Brockman

The whole apparent arena of self-help is a presently arising pipedream. If you like the idea of a dreamed person feeling better about their dreamed life then great, go ahead; seek help. Why not ? You have no control in the matter anyway. There IS no-one there. There IS no ‘you’ ! It’s just imagination arising presently. So who or what could be found ? Imagination. – David Brockman

To go beyond, you need alert immobility, quiet attention. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

The ‘I’ is a thought and it cannot think. The belief that the ‘I’ can think is delusion and dualistic nonsense. – Gilbert

If you believe you are suffering and you are going to get enlightened, and then embody the enlightenment, there is an imaginary story playing in your head. Do you see this ? But when you see there is only consciousness, the whole story falls apart. There is no one to get enlightened, and there was never anyone suffering. It was happening in the story, as a story. So this is why many say, “No one gets enlightened”. And also, at the same time, you see there was never anyone suffering. All your stories get thrown away. All there is, is consciousness and the stories that are playing in your head—stories of a suffering person, stories of an enlightened person, or stories of an awakened person who must embody his awakening. They are all stories and none of them are true. The only truth is “I Am”, this consciousness is, and you’re done. There is nothing else. There are no levels of attainment. No levels of embodiment. There is no one to embody anything. That is all conceptual nonsense. Believing in that conceptual nonsense is delusional and creates more suffering for yourself ! Get out of your head, drop all the concepts and you are free, as you are, right now. Try it ! – Stephen Wingate

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. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just remember what you are. Use every incident of the day to remind you that without you as the witness there would be neither animal nor God. Understand that you are both, the essence and the surface of all there is, and remain firm in your understanding. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember to remember that the perceived cannot be the perceiver. Whatever you see, hear or think of, remember – you are not what happens, you are he to whom it happens. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Keep the “I am” in the focus of awareness, remember that you are, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Keep quiet, undisturbed, and the wisdom and the power will come on their own. You need not hanker. Wait in silence of the heart and mind. It is very easy to be quiet, but willingness is rare. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

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 (satva) 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 into light, from inadvertence to awarenesss. 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

Search and you shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more. Anyhow, begin by realizing that the world is in you, not you in the world. Your personal body is a part in which the whole is wonderfully reflected. But you have also a universal body. You cannot even say that you do not know it, because you see and experience it all the time. Only you call it “the world” and are afraid of it. Both anatomy and astronomy describe you. You know the world exactly as you know your body – through your senses. It is your mind that has separated the world outside your skin from the world inside and put them in opposition. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in the body or in the mind. Just remain unaffected. This complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof that at the core of your being you are neither mind nor body. What happens to the body and the mind may not be within your power to change, but you can always put an end to your imagining yourself to be body and mind. Whatever happens, remind yourself that only your body and mind are affected, not yourself. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Witness the disappearance of thought. Observe the absence of a witness. Witness the disappearance of thought. This directive will stop the mind. Thought will cease. The witness is nothing but a descriptive thought arising that ‘I am seeing’. The actuality is simply ‘seeing is happening’. There is no ‘I’ that sees. SEEING that simple fact is enough. It may appear ‘for the mind’ as a small opening, a glimpse of pure open cognition happening. It is not a small opening, it is actually the vastness of presence-awareness, which has no size, small or large. It has no dimensions at all. The 3 Dimensional world appears in THAT and is THAT. Everything appears in the SEEING. The mind believes in a point of view and adds a story of ‘me’ the seer. It is just words appearing. Thoughts appear and disappear, yet they have no substance whatsoever. See that. Know that. – Gilbert

Freedom comes through renunciation. All possession is bondage. If you do not have the wisdom and the strength to give up, just look at your possessions. Your mere looking will burn them up. If you can stand outside your mind, you will soon find that total renunciation of possessions and desires is the most obviously reasonable thing to do. You create the world and then worry about it. Becoming selfish makes you weak. If you think you have the strength and courage to desire, it is because you are young and inexperienced. Invariably the object of desire destroys the means of acquiring it and then itself withers away. It is all for the best, because it teaches you to shun desire like poison. No need of any acts of renunciation. Just turn your mind away, that is all. Desire is merely the fixation of the mind on an idea. Get it out of its grove by denying it attention. Whatever may be the desire or fear, don’t dwell upon it. Here and there you may forget, it does not matter. Go back to your attempts till the brushing away of every desire and fear, of every reaction, becomes automatic. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind. Also you must have moments of complete inner peace and quiet, when your mind is absolutely still. If you miss it, you miss the entire thing. If you do not, the silence of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

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 but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

What drives the interest in thoughts is the seeking for reality or identity in them. When one finds that these do not lie in the thoughts, but in that which is the substratum of the thoughts, the identification with thoughts automatically subsides. – John Wheeler

You say, “Thoughts seem to cloud and block awareness”. The problem here is that you are constantly watching the thoughts, instead of noticing what the thoughts are appearing in. Get interested in that instead of always talking about the mind activities ! If you put your hand in front of the sun, can you complain that the sun is coming and going ? If you are staring at your hand, this is what you will say. But you cannot even see your hand without the sunlight. It is the same with thoughts and awareness. – John Wheeler

The perceiving is not suffering. – John Wheeler

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

If there is no I-thought, no other thing will exist. – Ramana Maharshi

It is not necessary to scrutinize each and every thought, a scrutiny of only the I-thought, the root of all thoughts, is quite sufficient. – Ramana Maharshi

The first person thought, ‘I’, has this peculiar property:  if (by enquiring ‘Who am I ?’) attention is focused on it in order to discover what it is, this ‘I’ thought will subside. – Ramana Maharshi

First of all, establish a constant contact with your self, be with yourself all the time. Into self-awareness all blessings flow. Begin as a centre of observation, deliberate cognizance, and grow into a centre of love in action. “I am” is a tiny seed which will grow into a mighty tree – quite naturally, without a trace of effort. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Look at yourself steadily – it is enough. The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out. The “I am” is the door. Stay at it until it opens. As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are waiting at the non- existing painted doors, which will never open. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Moods are in the mind and do not matter. Go within, go beyond. Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness. When you reach the deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind’s surface-play affects you very little. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

When we concentrate our attention on the origin of thought, the thought process itself comes to an end. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Give all your attention to the question: “What is it that makes me conscious ?”, until your mind becomes the question itself and cannot think of anything else. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of “I” and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the “I” and the “mine”. The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of “I am”, which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. “I am this, I am that” is dream, while pure “I am” has the stamp of reality on it. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Relax and watch the “I am”. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is because the “I am” is false that it wants to continue. Reality need not continue – knowing itself indestructible, it is indifferent of forms and expressions. To strengthen and stabilize the “I am”, we do all sorts of things – all in vain, for the “I am” is being rebuilt from moment to moment. It is unceasing work, and the only radical solution is to dissolve the separative sense of “I am such and such person” once and for good. Being remains, but not self- being. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

So, if we think we are a person (and feel unhappy as a result) there are two things that can be done. One, is to seek the source of that apparent person. As we turn our attention towards our own Being, this very one, the apparent entity who seemed to turn his attention, is revealed to be none other than Presence itself. And two, taking our stand as this aware presence, we can cooperate with the realignment of the mind and the body, and indeed the world, with this new stance. It just requires patience, clarity and courage. Presence has seemed to veil itself from itself by taking the shape of dualistic thought. But being the very substance of all experience, Presence has also provided within every experience, the way back to itself, a golden thread….the way of investigation and contemplation. From the point of view of a person these two possibilities will inevitably feel like a doing – so be it. They are Presence’s gift of grace to itself. – Rupert Spira

Go back to knowing that it is simple. The fun is in the busy-ness as long as it’s fun for you. And when you see that it’s just more of the same stories, all about ‘me’, drop it. You can observe what goes on benignely, but keep going. From the position of observer, take that last step. Who’s the one observing ? Go there. Who is that ultimate, absolute observer, where ‘seeing itself’ arises from ? Let attention rest there. Let it be ok that nothing has happening. Let the show be over, let the movie, the story of ‘I’ as an individual person, be over. And see what happens. Truth will reveal itself, absolute clarity of how this matrix works, will show itself to be no more than a matrix. And somehow, a capacity to enjoy what ever is unfolding is always there. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to have good health, you don’t have to do it before your body dies, it’s got nothing to do with anything : it’s right now, place your attention behind any stories, any concepts. From there, freedom arises, beauty arises, love arises. But don’t take my word for it, do it. And prove me wrong, I’d be delighted. I’ll take on that challenge any day (laughter). Do it and find out. So blessings on all of us, who’re pretending to be human. – Jac O’Keeffe

You are the Self. You just have to stop giving energy to the thoughts that make you feel you are other than the self. – Mooji

As far as the search for truth is concerned, 98% of our thinking is rubbish. The remaining 2% is garbage. Throw it all out and be empty ! Truth cannot be caught by intellect alone – grace is needed. Satsang is the call of grace. – Mooji

All the while a silent laughter sings, like wind through an open window saying : be deeper still, stand at Zero. – Rumi

Awareness is complete perceptual openness in all experience. It is freedom in immediate perception rather than being focused on stories. The whole field of perception opens up in timeless awareness to include all perceptions. We may find ourselves having a lot of thoughts and a lot of emotions, even very strong emotions that we could have never tolerated before we began gaining confidence in awareness. This is the source of compassion : to allow everything about ourselves to be as it is. – Great Freedom

In “sitting in silence”, there is no goal of attaining silence. There is just the sitting in silence and recognizing yourself to be the silence, and everything else to be a mental projection. Everything. If it doesn’t exist, when you sitting in silence, then it doesn’t actually exist. If it doesn’t exist when I’m not thinking about it, that means it doesn’t exist, it cannot be ultimately real. – Adyashanti

Whatever arises, love that. – Matt Kahn

While there may always be some level of conditioning arising, in time you’ll see, there isn’t an “I” with whom it belongs. – Matt Kahn

Ignoring the mind is a beautiful sadhana. This is what many of the sages did. They ignored the mind out of existence. It loses its influence and its potency when it is ignored. When the attention is not straying, when it is not picking up all types of nonsense, then you will find that you are in peace. – Mooji

Q: The seer and the seen: are they one or two ? M: There is only seeing; both the seer and the seen are contained in it. Don’t create differences where there are none. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

A breakthrough in meditation is happening when you enjoy being who you are, enjoying it unconditionally. Once the mind enters, the fragrance of sitting in meditation becomes will power; : “I will succeed to reach higher”, “I will prove that I can find it”, “I will achieve what I came here to do”. So we can sit in meditative posture full with will power and discipline, but this will simply be another act, another doing. Meditation is not a doing. Meditation is resting in that space of simply being yourself, not trying to achieve it and not waiting for something to release you out of it. Resting in that which you are already is meditation ! Usually that is overlooked because there is an idea hiding in the unconscious. An idea of what this moment ‘should’ be like, what I ‘want’, what I’m ‘afraid of’, ideas. Meditation happens when you sit in the theater of the mind and suddenly, no matter what movie is projected on the screen – boring, scary, a drama, a thriller – all of a sudden you lose interest in the movie. You have simply watched it too many times. Without an effort comes a mysterious pull within you to move inwards and to rest, awakened rest in the silence of your being. It is a peaceful rest in a state of being in which we don’t need to gain any fulfillment, without a need for stimulation of the senses and without the need to chase after our dreams. You can look at this as your natural willingness to be who you are, unconditionally, totally, without any effort to go somewhere, without any need to accomplish something, without any wish to chase after anything. You rest in that which you are and you are totally present, in the Here and Now. Discover that flame within you, and suddenly the waiting for the gong that ends the meditation is no longer there. This is the timeless moment of meditation. It is timeless, because you are not waiting for it to finish. When expansion of consciousness is happening, it is a state of grace not of will power. If you stay with will power, the waiting for the gong will always be there, ticking : “A little while longer and I’ll have a break”, “A little while longer and the meditation is over”. But you are not in a prison. Awakening is a state of being that reveals when your realization is opening to see how liberated you are, how joyful it is to dissolve into this moment and to be totally present. Not by doing something, but with expansion of consciousness; beyond dreams, fantasies, expectations. Rather than waiting for the meditation to finish, find the crack in that body/mind mechanism. The crack that leads you – even if just for a single moment but a moment that becomes eternity – the crack that leads you to total peace, resting in the now where you are not doing meditation, but when you are being meditation itself. – Tyohar

In all the great spiritual traditions, at their heart is tenderness – just to be kind inside, and then everything rights itself. Fear rests, confusion rests, everything that was perturbing the system rests, because they know that when you are tender inside you no longer need their services, because you have returned to your true nature. – Pamela Wilson

What if you discovered not a single thought you’ve ever thought was absolutely true ? Not ONE ? – Ariel Bravy

What if you found that everything that happens is the BEST possible thing that could happen to you ? What could say otherwise ? Only the mind. – Ariel Bravy

Life is about the journey, not the destination. Don’t seek a result from reading this sentence. Enjoy the reading itself ! – Ariel Bravy

Fear of the unknown ? You are all that is. Thus you’ll only find more of yourself there. That’s all that’s there. – Ariel Bravy

What is it that neither arises nor ends ? What is it that notices the arising and the ending of anything ? – Ariel Bravy

Space is the ultimate allower of All That Is. Fear may be here. Don’t run. Love may be here. Don’t run. Be the spaciousness that you are. – Ariel Bravy

There is great Love here for you. Here. In this moment, as the moment itself. Be in the moment. Be in Love. Same thing. – Ariel Bravy

Is your method of living not working for you ? Try pretending you are God pretending to be you. It’s magical. – Ariel Bravy

Your thoughts are not you, so why be so concerned with controlling, quieting, or stopping the mind ? Just dont get caught in thought ! Thats it ! – Ariel Bravy

I used to try really hard to “be in the now”… until I realized that it’s actually impossible to NOT be in the now. – Ariel Bravy

Who would you be if you were freely yourself, didn’t judge or limit yourself, and weren’t in fear of others’ judgment ? – Ariel Bravy

Ego transcendence seems to include deep clarity into one’s own toxicity and emotional flare-ups. They arise, and we can let them go. – Ariel Bravy

Life is happening exactly the way it should be. How do you know ? That’s the way it’s happening ! – Ariel Bravy

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 but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

(Adyashanti at Chicago satsang 7/7/09 when a questioner had just returned from a relaxing, nurturing weekend at a holistic spa. Now she was dealing with intense emotions including fear when she returned to workplace) – Whatever’s held seeks to be experienced. Usually what’s uncomfortable is the resistance to the emotion. Pose questions. “Is it possible to experience this fear wholly without resistance ?” Invite, not demand. We’d all much rather be invited, than demanded to try something. It’s not unnatural to feel fear, but when it’s held as “I don’t want to experience this right now!”, it can be toxic. When it originally came up, we were not able to be fully conscious so gets trapped. It waits until you are ready to be conscious. Then it moves through your body. It’s just the pulsing flow of life and Life knows how to process what isn’t needed. Your system is literally detoxifying emotionally. Your only job when it arises is to stay conscious. If you stay conscious, it moves of its own accord. This often happens after a period of openness. The mind has an idea that openness is dangerous. So fear arises. Actually what’s dangerous is contracting life. – Adyashanti

Keiji, a long-time Zen student, approached his master and said : “I don’t see how there can be any enlightenment that sets you free once and for all. I think we just get ever greater glimpses of Buddha-nature, the vastness that is our true Reality. It’s an ever-expanding process”. The master, looking penetratingly at Keiji, replied. “That may be what you think. But what is your experience, your experience right now ?”. Keiji looked momentarily confused. “My experience right now, Master ?”. “Yes. Do you know yourself as Keiji, having ever-expanding experiences of Buddha-nature ? Or do you know yourself as Buddha-nature, having the experience of Keiji ?”

The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. – Eckhart Tolle

The truth is that you already are what you are seeking. — Adyashanti

Has it ever occurred to you that you are seeking God with His eyes ? – Adyashanti