mind boggling book - only had my copy for a few months and i've already given away 4 copies to friends... the question and answer format is perfect for just picking it up, opening it to any page and letting it tell you what you need to know at that moment - kinda like the I Ching or Tao Te Ching... some of the questions were absurdly idiotic, but Nisargadatta patiently answers them with simple metaphors that even a child might understand - unfortunately i think few of the questioners did... not quite ready yet...
the only thing i can really criticize is he repeatedly refers to God / Supreme in the masculine as "he" / "him" / "his" - perpetuating a deeply conditioned infantile patriarchal delusion of a masculine 'God' that even i saw through as a teenager... but of course he was immersed in a deeply imprinted patriarchal culture that sees the feminine as spiritually inferior to the masculine (Buddhist nuns must STILL stand and bow when a monk enters a room they're in) and apparently he never got that inane patriarchal filter cleaned out...
But don't listen to me - listen to him:
-------------------------------
"Ultimately nothing is mine or yours - everything is ours. Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the entire universe."
"Attachment is born along with the sense of 'ME' and 'MINE'. Find the true meaning of these words and you will be free of all bondage."
"The very admission 'I am ignorant' is the dawn of knowledge. An ignorant man is ignorant of his ignorance." [just as those in denial deny their denial]
"Relatively, what causes suffering is wrong, what alleviates it is right. Absolutely, what brings you back to Reality is right and what dims Reality is wrong."
"Once you realize that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end. Without this realization you identify with the externals like the body, mind, culture, religion, nation, humanity, even God or the Absolute. But these are all just escapes from fear."
"There is nothing wrong with your world, it is your thinking yourself to be SEPARATE from it that creates disorder. Selfishness [the delusional belief in SEPARATION] is the source of all evil."
"In my world love is the only law. I do not ask for love - i give [live] it."
"The end is in the beginning. You end where you start - in the Absolute."
"The universe is perfect as a whole and the part's striving for perfection is a way of joy." (Yet we are afraid of the better and cling to the worse.) "This is your stupidity, verging on insanity."
"Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare."
"Do try and you will find in pain a joy which pleasure cannot yield, for the simple reason that acceptance of pain takes you much deeper than pleasure does."
"When an ordinary man dies, what happens next is all according to his belief. As life before death is but imagination, so is life after. The dream continues."
"Personal 'love', however intense, invariably BINDS [and ATTACHMENT is NOT love]; love in freedom is love of all. When you are love itself you are beyond time and numbers. In loving one you love all, in loving all you love each. One and all are not exclusive."
"Love of one and love of all merge together in love, pure and simple, addressed to none, denied to none."
"Love is a state of being. Sex is energy. Love is wise, sex is blind. Once the true nature of love and sex is understood there will be no more conflict or confusion."
"When the sense of DISTINCTION and SEPARATION is absent - you may call it love."
"Above the unity of being is the union of love. Love is the meaning and purpose of duality."
"The realization of unity is beyond mind. To me, nothing exists by itself. All is the Self, all is myself. To see myself in everybody and everybody in myself most certainly is 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 equally, naturally and spontaneously. But when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it."
"Don't bottle up your love by limiting it to the body, keep it open. It will then be love for all. When all the false self-identifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love. Get rid of all ideas about yourself, even of the idea that you are God. No self definition is valid."
"To the ignorant, all that they cannot understand is madness. The Supreme Reality manifests itself in innumerable ways. Infinite in number are its names and shapes. All arise, all merge in the same ocean - the source of all is one. What IS, is lovable. Love is not a result or emotion - it is the very ground of being."
"Enquire, investigate, doubt yourself and others. To find truth you must not cling to your convictions; if you are sure of the immediate, you will never reach the ultimate.Your idea that you were born and you will die is absurd: both logic and experience contradict it."
"Investigate your world, apply your mind to it, examine it critically, scrutinize every idea about it - that will do."
"Be attentive, enquire ceaselessly. That is all."
"What you need will come to you, if you do not ask for what you do not need. Yet only few people reach this state of complete dispassion and detachment. It is a very high state, the very threshold of liberation."
"You want to save the world? Can you save the world before saving yourself? And what means being 'saved'? Saved from what? From illusion. Salvation is simply to see things as they are."
"Discard all traditional standards [customs, cultural beliefs]. Leave them to the hypocrites. Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas [delusional belief systems] is good. As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace."
"When the 'I am myself' goes, the 'I am all' comes. When the 'I am all' goes, the 'I am' comes. When even 'I am' goes, reality alone IS, and in it every 'I am' is preserved and glorified. Diversity without separateness is the Ultimate that the mind can touch."
"To divide and particularize is in the mind's very nature. There is no harm in dividing. But separation goes against fact. Things and people are different but they are not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites but no opposition."
"Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave to the so-and-so."
"Do you know God that you talk of HIM so freely?" [ughhh!]
"The Supreme is the master - and consciousness HIS servant." [ughhh!]
"What is God? Is HE not the very light by which you ask the question?" [ughhh!]
"God is not only true and good, HE is also beautiful. HE creates beauty for the joy of it." [ughhh!]
"Everybody dies as he lives. I am not afraid of death because i am not afraid of life. I live a happy life and shall die a happy death. Misery is to be born, not to die."
"To me, dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery."
"There is no 'my self' and 'his self'. There is the Self, the only Self of all. Misled by the diversity of names and shapes, minds and bodies, you imagine multiple selves. We both are the Self. This talk of 'personal self' and 'universal self' is the learner's stage - go beyond, don't be stuck in duality."
"When you are concerned with truth, with reality, you must question everything."
"There is absolutely no difference between me and others, except i know myself as I am. I am all. I know it for certain and you do not."
"Man alone can destroy in himself the roots of pain. Others can only help with the pain, but not with its cause, which is the abysmal stupidity of man."
"Time and space are in the mind. The law off cause and effect [reap what you sow] is also in the mind. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only."
"You pray to save one while thousands die. And if all stop dying there will be no space on Earth."
"The sun of truth remains hidden behind the cloud of self-identification with the body. The realized man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he."
"By focussing the mind on 'I am', on the sense of Being - 'I am so-and-so' dissolves. 'I am a witness only' remains and that too submerges in 'I am all'. Then the all becomes the One and the One is yourself - not to be separate from me. Abandon the idea of a separate 'I' and the question of 'whose experience?' will not arise."
"You have created the world's sorrows out of your own desires and fears - you deal with them. Having given 'reality' to the picture on the screen, you 'love' its people and suffer for them and seek to save them. It is just not so. You must begin with yourself - there is no other way."
"To take appearance for 'reality' is the cause of all calamities. You are the all-pervading, eternal and infinitely creative Awareness - Consciousness. All else is local and temporary [and illusion]. Don't forget what you are."
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An important book, highly recommended
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 5, 2023