Before you go further

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot.
By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.

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When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected.

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All that a guru can tell you is: 'My dear Sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you take yourself to be.'

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To expound and propagate concepts is simple, to drop all concepts is difficult and rare.

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There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking.


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Understanding the ‘I am’, your sense of ‘being’ or just ‘presence’ is extremely important as on it rests the entire outcome of the teaching. Firstly, are you at all aware of your ‘being’ or of the fact that ‘you are’? You have ‘to be’ before anything else can be, your sense of ‘presence’ or the feeling ‘I am’ is very fundamental to anything that has to follow. Secondly, this sense of ‘being’ or the feeling ‘I am’, was it not the very first event or happening before any of your living experiences could begin? Apply your mind go back in time to the moment when it dawned on you that ‘you are’ or ‘I am’. This ‘I am’ is still there with you, ever present, ever available, it was and still is the first thought, refuse all other thoughts and come back there and stay there. So try to understand and grasp this ‘beingness’ or ‘I amness’ that is inherent in you. The more precisely and clearly you do it the more rapid would be your progress.

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Having understood the ‘I am’ in every way, the next thing is to stay there, establish yourself in your sense of ‘being’ and not deviate from it at all. The very moment you start thinking about anything else you can be lest assured there have been ‘add-ons’ on the basic ‘I am’ and it has lost its purity. Reject anything that is ‘I am plus …’and so forth because all the rest are contaminants and do not go with it.

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All this is not as easy as it sounds it is hard work, your consistency and perseverance are keys to you success. Separate the ‘I am’ from ‘I am this’ or’ I am that’ or ‘I am so and so’ all these are add-ons and have been loaded onto you by others and society. All these appendages on the ‘I am’ maybe of some value in your day to day living but if your goal or quest for eternity, then they are impediments. You will have to separate them from the ‘I am’ and just keep in mind your sense of ‘presence’ or the feeling ‘I am’.

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Right from the day you came know that ‘you are’ to this day you still know that ‘you are’. All add-ons have come and gone are transient but the fundamental ‘I am’ has remained unchanged and is the only certainty. This ‘I am’ is impersonal, it’s common to everybody and wordless, the moment you came know that ‘you are’ you did not know any words or language, which came later. Based on this non-verbal ‘I am’ you could later on say verbally ‘I am’ in whatever language you were taught. From this small minuscule ‘I am’ further knowledge grew leaps and bounds to gigantic proportions. So all knowledge stems from the ‘I am’, it is very fundamental, the base, the origin, the root of everything. You have to hold on to this ‘I am and let everything else go.

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You are definitely sure that ‘you are’ only then everything else is! Not before that. Since the ‘I am’ lies at the very base of everything and is common to all, does it not form the totality of being? Throwing aside everything, come back to this sense of ‘presence’ or ‘being’ in all its purity and it would heal your mind. The use of the word ‘heal’ is very important as it clearly suggests that the mind or whatever has been loaded on the ‘I am’ afterwards is a pain an illness that needs to be cured. There is also here a hint towards something that is beyond the ‘I am’.

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This sense of ‘being’ is always there, fresh as ever, it doesn’t leave you, it’s always available. At whatever stage you are in your life it has stuck to you unchanged. Circumstances, relationships, people, ideas and so forth everything else has been changing and is inferential but the ‘I am’ remained and has stood throughout this turbulence. And what would happen when this ‘I am’ goes? What would remain? The hint is now more emphatic on something beyond the ‘I am’, the Absolute.


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In reality you were never born and never shall die. But now you imagine that you are, or have, a body and you ask what has brought about this state. Within the limits of illusion the answer is: desire born from memory attracts you to a body and makes you think as one with it. But this is true only from the relative point of view. In fact, there is no body, nor a world to contain it; there is only a mental condition, a dream-like state, easy to dispel by questioning its reality

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Before you go further you must accept, at least as a working theory, that you are not what you appear to be, that you are under the influence of a drug. Then only will you have the urge and the patience to examine the symptoms and search for their common cause.

All that a guru can tell you is: "My dear sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you think yourself to be."

Trust nobody, not even yourself. Search, find out, remove and reject every assumption till you reach the living waters and the rock of truth. Until you are free of the drug, all your religions and sciences, prayers and yogas are of no use to you, for, based on a mistake, they strengthen it.


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Neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself.

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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.

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Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual.

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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.

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Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life. As a sane life is free of pain, so is a saintly life free from suffering. A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable. He is friendly with the inevitable and, therefore, does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does not shatter him. If he can, he does the needful to restore the lost balance, or he lets things take their course.

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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. I am in a more real state than yours. I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person.

As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other, but my mental process has come to an end. My thinking, like my digestion, is unconscious and purposeful. I am not a person in your sense of the word, though I may appear a person to you. I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being. There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all. No thing is me, so I am nothing. Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least. Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence.

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It is choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing--food, sex, power, fame--will make you happy is to deceive yourself.


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Perfection is a state of the mind, when it is pure. I am beyond the mind, whatever its state, pure or impure. Awareness is my nature; ultimately I am beyond being and non-being."

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Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now, all
is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.