Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Renowned Advaita Vedanta teacher.

A prominent teacher of Advaita Vedanta who is best known for his teachings on non-duality and self-realization. His approach was direct and experiential, encouraging seekers to explore the nature of their own consciousness. His book, "I Am That," is a significant text in the study of Advaita Vedanta, offering profound insights into the nature of the self and reality. His teachings are valued for their simplicity and depth, guiding individuals toward understanding their true essence beyond the mind and ego.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes about Love

  • 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.
  • Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.
  • You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over.
  • Life is love and love is life.
  • The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.
  • Knowing that you are nothing is Wisdom, Knowing that you are everything is Love.
  • To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net [the matrix]. It is not hard to do so, as the net is full of holes. Look at the net and its many contradictions. You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love and happiness, and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and you overeat. You want friendship and you exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them - your very seeing them will make them go away.
  • Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.
  • You need not get at it, for 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. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.
  • Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers.
  • There is nothing wrong with duality as long as it does not create conflict. Multiplicity and variety without strife is joy. In pure consciousness there is light. For warmth, contact is needed. Above the unity of being is the union of love. Love is the purpose of duality.
  • All I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect.
  • Love.. is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity.
  • Suffering is primarily a call for attention, which itself is a movement of love. More than happiness, love wants growth, the widening and deepening of awareness and consciousness and being. Whatever prevents that, becomes a cause of pain, and love does not shirk from pain.
  • All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing -- glue your self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both.
  • In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife; you are the love between two.
  • Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfill them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real, the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be are expressions of your longing for happiness.
  • By all means be selfish; the right way. Wish yourself well, labour at what is good for you. Destroy all that stands between you and happiness. Be all; love all; be happy; make happy. No happiness is greater.
  • Sometimes I feel I am everything, I call that Love. Sometimes I feel I am nothing, I call that Wisdom. Between Love and Wisdom my life continuously flows.
  • 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 recognise it at once 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.
  • "I AM" itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither body nor mind, but the love of the self in you for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity, and that is love.
  • Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless.