The True Nature of Reality

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. All manifestation is in the opposites: pleasure and pain, good and bad, high and low, progress and regress, rest and strife.....they all come and go together, and as long as there is a world, its contradictions will be there. There may also be periods of perfect harmony, of bliss and beauty, but only for a time. What is perfect, returns to the source of all perfection, and the opposites play on.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. ‘I am’ itself is the world; it contains the entire world, that should be your conviction. Just as in a dream, when you feel that you are awake, but actually you are not and your world at that time is the dream world. Similarly this knowingness (in the waking state) contains this so-called real world; that conviction must come. The truth is that there is no difference between (dream) consciousness and (waking) consciousness, although they appear to be greatly different; all consciousness is one.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. With firm conviction, you abide in this knowledge ‘I am’ only; bereft of body-mind sense, only ‘I am’. If you dwell therein, if you be that only, in due course it will get mature. And it will reveal to you all the knowledge. And you need not go to anybody else.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. You have to go within. Whatever great things have happened in nature, however powerful, still they disappear right here. These situations appear and disappear. This is actually abstract, what is solid here is the knowledge ’I am’. The seen and seeing disappear. I tell this only to those who are prepared to listen. Whatever appears is bound to disappear.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. First there was no message ‘I am’ and also there was no world. Instantly, the message ‘I am’ and this magnificent world materialized out of ‘nothingness’! How amazing! This message ‘I am’ is nothing other than the advertisement of the Eternal Truth..  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Brahman means the emanation of the world, simultaneously confirming that ‘I am’. In this Brahman everything is illusion, but who understands that? The principle that understands, realizes, and witnesses is the ‘Parabrahman’. Witnessing happens to the ‘Parabrahman’. In this manifest state everything is ever changing, nothing is permanent, and all is illusion.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. You have to stabilize in your present true nature, ‘I am’. All other secondary and redundant objects should be got rid of. Do not focus your attention on any of these things. The whole process is to be in your source. At present, what is your source? ‘I am’. Catch hold of that ‘I amness’ and be in it. You have to realize your own self. You must be at the borderline between ‘I am’ and ‘Not-‘I am’’.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. .... I didn’t know I was, presently I know I am, this is the same ‘I’ with the knowingness mantle over it. This is the way the very Absolute transformed Itself into this grosser consciousness state, the state of appearance.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. I am fully established in that unborn state but I still am experiencing this state of multiplicity, but it has no effect on me.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. The knowledge ‘I am’ is nothing. That knowledge is like a guest; it comes and goes. You have come here; you are very clever. Now what did happen? All the knowledge, which you had collected elsewhere and brought here, is rendered useless and redundant. So long as beingness is there, all worldly activities will go on. But you now realize that ‘You’ are neither the activities in the beingness nor the beingness. ‘You’ as the Absolute, are none of these.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Transiency is the best proof of unreality.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. The fragrance or sweetness of the food-essence body is the knowledge ‘I am’. It has no name and form; it is the ‘I love’ state, the ‘I-taste’. But from your body-mind state, you will go to pilgrimages and various gurus. So long as the consciousness is there, that humming goes on, and who does the humming? The principle which is humming and saying, ‘I am, I am’ is itself your guru.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Maya is the primary source of illusion. At that point, love for the Self begins: ‘I am’, the love to be. Its expression is all this manifestation.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. I am one, but appear as many.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. When all the false self-identifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary Diversity.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj Thanks to Tony Carr for the exquisite photographs of spring flowers in Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, Cape Town.

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Even if you are quite ignorant of the ways and the means, keep quiet and look within; guidance is sure to come. You are never left witout knowing what your next step should be. The trouble is that you may shirk it. The guru is there for giving you courage because of his experience and success. But only what you discover through you own awareness, your own effort, will be of permanent use to you.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. The Guru is basically without desire. He sees what happens, but feels no urge to interfere. He makes no choices, takes no decisions. As pure witness, he watches what is going on and remains unaffected. Victory is always his, in the end. He knows that if the disciples do not learn from his words, they will learn from their own mistakes. Inwardly he remains quiet and silent. He has no sense of being a separate person. The entire universe is his own, including his disciples with their petty plans. Nothing in particular affects him, or, which comes to the same, the entire universe affects him in equal measure. In reality, the disciple is not different from the Guru. He is the same dimensionless centre of perception and love in action.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Who is the Guru, after all? He who knows the state in which there is neither the world nor the thought of it, he is the Supreme Teacher. To find him means to reach the state in which imagination is no longer taken for reality, for truth, for what is. He is a realist in the highest sense of the term. He cannot and shall not come to terms with the mind and its delusions. He comes to take you to the real; don't expect him to do anything else. The Guru you have in mind, one who gives you information and instructions, is not the real Guru. The real Guru is he who knows the real, beyond the glamour of appearances. What exists for you does not exist for him. What you take for granted, he denies absolutely. He wants you to see yourself as he sees you. Then you will not need a Guru to obey and follow, for you will obey and follow your own reality.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Surrender to the Guru.....why exteriorize? Surrender to your own self, of which everything is an expression.  Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realize your true nature. Verbal self-surrender, even when accompanied by feeling, is of little value and breaks down under stress. At best it shows an aspiration, not an actual fact.  When there is total surrender, complete relinquishment of all concern with one’s past, present, and future, with one’s physical and spiritual security and standing, a new life dawns, full of love and beauty; then the Guru is not important, for the disciple has broken the shell of self-defence. Complete self-surrender by itself is liberation.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Beware of all that makes you dependent. Most of the so-called ‘surrenders to the Guru’ end in disappointment, if not in tragedy. Fortunately an earnest seeker will disentangle himself in time, the wiser for the experience.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. The true teacher will not imprison his disciple in a prescribed set of ideas, feelings, and actions. On the contrary, he will show him the need to be free from all ideas and set patterns of behaviour. Satsang, the company of the noble, does not mould, it liberates.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on realizing Yourself beyond the sense “I Am”. If the sense "I Am" can be perceived, it cannot be Who You Are. What perceives? Who or what are You?  Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. The objective world is nothing but a sport or art of this ‘I am’ consciousness. Your true nature is beyond this. There is no intrinsic value in this consciousness of ‘I am’, except to know and realize its illusory nature.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on realizing Yourself beyond the sense “I Am”. If the sense "I Am" can be perceived, it cannot be Who You Are. What perceives? Who or what are You?  Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Once we have accepted the definition of Reality of being that which persists or is at all times the same, then we know that Reality can never change. The objective world and the consciousness of ‘I am’ (In deep sleep there is no feeling of ‘I am’) is constantly changing, so from this we can infer that whatever changes is only an appearance and not a Reality.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on realizing Yourself beyond the sense “I Am”. If the sense "I Am" can be perceived, it cannot be Who You Are. What perceives? Who or what are You?  Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. The consciousness of ‘I am’ is the world, and there is nothing wrong in seeing or witnessing this world. The mistake comes in only when you take it to be real, as we almost all wrongly do.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on realizing Yourself beyond the sense “I Am”. If the sense "I Am" can be perceived, it cannot be Who You Are. What perceives? Who or what are You?  Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Once I have realized the nature of this consciousness of ‘I am’, how it has appeared on my true nature and that it is truly only an illusory thing. When I have fully Known and realized this, then the consciousness of ‘I am’ (within which is contained the vast Universe), dissolves or merges in Me.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj Away on a short trip - the next pointer will be posted on Thursday.

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on realizing Yourself beyond the sense “I Am”. If the sense "I Am" can be perceived, it cannot be Who You Are. What perceives? Who or what are You?  Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. My true position is at all times beyond this consciousness of ‘I am’. Whatever comes out of this ‘I’ consciousness (mind, body, world etc) – when I know that I am not this, why should I depend on any mind, method, idea or technique which come out of this illusory consciousness?  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on realizing Yourself beyond the sense “I Am”. If the sense "I Am" can be perceived, it cannot be Who You Are. What perceives? Who or what are You?  Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. The ‘I am’ is the purest form of attribute (it can be even said to have no attributes). When even this pure attribute goes it is ‘Parabrahman’, ‘Brahman’ (God or ‘I am’) means that ‘the news’ has arrived. When this ‘news’ has gone, it is ‘Parabrahman’.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on realizing Yourself beyond the sense “I Am”. If the sense "I Am" can be perceived, it cannot be Who You Are. What perceives? Who or what are You?  Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. On the state of ‘non-beingness’, the beingness appeared together with manifestation, creating a feeling as if ‘I am’; who that is, is not important, only ‘I am’ is important. The initial humming of the beingness as ‘I am, I am’ is the duality. But who accepts the duality? The ‘non-beingness’ accepts duality with the beingness. The Absolute ‘non-being’ state, by assuming the being state, becomes dual in manifestation.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj