I Am That, by Nisargadatta Maharaj ...

“All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one—this is the ultimate solution of every conflict.”

“You are not in the body. The body is in you.”

“The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. ...Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends.”

“You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.”

“You need not reach out for what is already with you. Your very reaching out makes you miss it. Give up the idea that you have not found it and just let it come into the focus of direct perception, here and now, by removing all that is of the mind.”

“See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for inquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don’t be lazy to think.”

“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 the understanding is the flowering of the mind.”

“The yogi comes to know many wonders, but of the self he remains ignorant. The gnani may look and feel quite ordinary, but the self he knows well.”

“Nobody ever fails in yoga. It is all a matter of the rate of progress. It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. When one is fully matured, realization is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow. Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right.”

“You can only know your self 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. You literally progress by rejection—a veritable rocket. To know that you are neither in the body nor in the mind, though aware of both, is already self-knowledge.”

“We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave. By imaging that you are born as so and so, you become a slave to the so-and-so. The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history.”

“There is no need of a way out! Don’t you see that a way out is also part of the dream? All you have to do is see the dream as dream. ...Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.”

“You want something like round-the-clock ecstasies. Ecstasies come and go, necessarily, for the human brain cannot stand the tension for a long time. A prolonged ecstasy will burn out your brain, unless it is extremely pure and subtle.”

“Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost.”

“If you want to make real progress, you must give up all idea of personal attainment. The ambitions of the so called yogis are preposterous. A man’s desire for a woman is innocence itself compared to the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss..”

“Do not try to know the truth, for knowledge by the mind is not true knowledge. But you can know what is not true—which is enough to liberate you from the false. The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind. It is when you do not know, that you are free to investigate. And there can be no salvation, without investigation, because non investigation is the main cause of bondage.”

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

“You merely dream that you roam about. In a few years your stay in India will appear as a dream to you. You will dream some other dream at that time. 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.”

“What you need will come to you if you do not ask for what you do not need.”

“Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not set you free, because you are free. See yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.”