Image representing someone tuning into nonduality

Welcome to our selection of quotations on nonduality.

What is Non-duality?

Non-duality means ‘not two’. Non-duality is a philosophy where the distinctions between self and others dissolve into oneness.

This post brings together impactful quotes from revered nonduality teachers, offering insights into this ancient wisdom.

Nonduality, or Advaita, suggests that our perception of separation is more illusion than reality. These quotes, from the timeless teachings of Ramana Maharshi to the modern perspectives of Sailor Bob Adamson, challenge us to look beyond our habitual understanding of identity.

As you delve into these quotes, let them open your mind and heart to the possibility of a world beyond duality, where oneness reigns supreme. Let's enjoy the journey together into this realm of deeper understanding and connection.

In nonduality circles, these quotes or sentences are often called pointers. This is because they are not the truth - no words are the truth themselves - but they point towards a deeper truth.

I hope you get as much out of these quotes as I do.

Ramana Maharshi Quotes

"Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains." - Ramana Maharshi

ramana quote happiness — Ramana Maharshi quote on happiness

“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.” - Ramana Maharshi

“Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?” - Ramana Maharshi

“Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain.” - Ramana Maharshi

“Realization is not the acquisition of anything new nor is it a new faculty. It is only removal of all camouflage.” ― Ramana Maharshi

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.” ― Ramana Maharshi

“There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present.” ― Ramana Maharshi

Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes

“Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave.” – Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj

“All you need is to get rid of the tendency to define yourself. All definitions apply to your body only and its expressions. Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly. “- Nisargadatta Maharaj

“The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind – the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Put your awareness to work, not your mind. The mind is not the right instrument for this task. The timeless can be reached only by the timeless.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj

“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.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj

“In nature nothing is at a standstill, everything pulsates, appears and disappears. Heart, breath, digestion, sleep and waking – birth and death – everything comes and goes in waves. Rhythm, periodicity, harmonious alternation of extremes is the rule. No use rebelling against the very pattern of life.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sailor Bob Adamson Quotes

“You will never ever find the answer in the mind. Mind is to grasp things, it cannot comprehend the no-thing.” - Sailor Bob Adamson

“Because thinking appears in awareness like a cloud appears in the sky, realise that thinking is in essence awareness. Understanding this, thinking cannot obscure awareness.” - Sailor Bob Adamson

“Yesterday’s realization is not a bit of good – it is dead, it has lost its vitality. It is useless to try and cling to or hold onto an insight, understanding, or realisation, for only in its movement can ever-fresh and new insights of truth or reality appear.” - Sailor Bob Adamson

“The idea of enlightenment or self-realisation as a one-time event or a lasting and permanent state or experience is an erroneous concept. Understand-ING or know-ING is alive in the immediacy which can never be negated.” - Sailor Bob Adamson

“Belief in dualistic thinking is the problem. In non-dual awareness, dualism only appears to be so. How can there ever be any duality in non-duality?” - Sailor Bob Adamson

“The reflection is not in the mirror, but of the mirror. You cannot say it isn’t there, but you cannot say it is – try and grab it if you can.” - Sailor Bob Adamson

Alan Watts Quotes

"You are the universe experiencing itself" - Alan Watts

“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing. ” - Alan Watts

"Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be" - Alan Watts

"The menu is not the meal" - Alan Watts

"This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play" - Alan Watts

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves" - Alan Watts

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had" - Alan Watts

"By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us" - Alan Watts

"No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen" - Alan Watts

Papaji Quotes

“Mind is nothing but thought. You can’t separate thought itself from the mind.” - Papaji

“Surrounded by nothingness you have to do nothing. You have to do nothing to be who you are. Nothing at all.” - Papaji

“The way to live a happy beautiful life is to accept whatever comes and not care about what does not come.” - Papaji

“The whole world is your own Self. So who is good and who is bad?” - Papaji

John Wheeler Quotes

Just see that what you really are, right here and now, is that presence-awareness that is the basis on which thought is happening.

“If there is nothing to do to end seeking and suffering, why talk about all this?” - John Wheeler

“A cave may have been dark for thousands of years, but when you bring a torch into the cave, the light instantly obliterates that darkness.” - John Wheeler

“We never become 'enlightened' tomorrow because tomorrow is imagined in the mind.” - John Wheeler

“You always exist prior to the mind. At some point, you turn back and notice the fact of your own being. Then you are home, even though you never left home. This is not a result of some fantastic ability or spiritual prowess. It is just a matter of simple looking.” - John Wheeler

“As you can see, all these binding thoughts revolve around the sense of 'I. Nail down the identity of the 'I' and all problems resolve.” - John Wheeler

“Because the 'I as a thought is really very intangible, all types of other ideas get wrapped around it, in order to give it some semblance of solidity.” - John Wheeler

“The most direct teachings set aside all philosophizing and theorizing and go directly into an investigation of the import (real meaning) of the word 'I’.” - John Wheeler

The moment I saw that the 'person' I thought myself to be was not there, that it was a false assumption, I directly experienced a profound freedom from all problems, doubts and suffer-ing. It was remarkable. I did nothing at all. - John Wheeler

“No amount of thinking can free you from the riddles created by thought.” - John Wheeler

“Know with assurance that you are not a limited person bound up in thought. You are the sky-like presence-awareness in which the whole universe is appearing.” - John Wheeler

Tony Parsons Quotes

"We are on a wheel on which everything is continually repeating itself over and over again in differing images" - Tony Parsons

"All and everything is oneness, and all that we do is get in its way by trying to find it" - Tony Parsons

"When the listener is dropped, there is only the sound... Nothing is needed, all is fulfilled" - Tony Parsons

“There is never any situation in which we cannot be united with the present.” - Tony Parsons

"I rest in that which never comes and never goes away." - Tony Parsons

“Although there is no such thing as nonduality it seems that there are many different ideas about what it could be.” - Tony Parsons

"For I am already that which I seek. Whatever I seek or think I want, however long the shopping list may be, all of my desires are only a reflection of my longing to come home. And home is oneness, home is my original nature. It is right here, simply in what is. There is nowhere else I have to go, and nothing else I have to become" - Tony Parsons

“Awareness does not divide or suppress and thereby give energy to the unreal. It simply sees what is.” - Tony Parsons

Jim Newman Quotes

"The suggestion is, there is no real separation, no person. Separation is only apparent and the person is illusory." - Jim Newman

"The experience of real separation... is exactly the need to know, which makes the unknowable freedom of 'what is' seem out of reach." - Jim Newman

"There is no free will or choice involved." - Jim Newman

"The end of the 'I am experience' is the recognition, that there never was one. Real Separation is a dream." - Jim Newman

"Non-separation is never realized, found, or known. But can be recognized by no-one in the falling away of the illusory experience of real separation." - Jim Newman

"The end of seeking... is the end of the need to know, which is the end of questions and search for answers as the causeless end of the questioner which never was." - Jim Newman

Meister Eckhart

“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love.” - Meister Eckhart

"Be willing to be a beginner every single morning."- Meister Eckhart

"The most important hour is always the present. The most significant person is precisely the one sitting across from you right now. The most necessary work is always love." - Meister Eckhart

Cameron Reilley Quotes

“Every thought, decision or action you’ve ever had or done was the only possible thing that you could have done at that particular point in time based on the neural architecture and chemical composition of your brain at the time.” - Cameron Reilly

“Learning to happily embrace the fact that everything, all possible future events, has already happened is one of the keys to experiencing permanent serenity.” - Cameron Reilly

“When you learn to accept the true nature of time, you might find that you cease worrying about future events and instead learn to happily embrace them. That has certainly been my experience.” - Cameron Reilly

“Einstein demonstrated (and subsequent experiments have extensively confirmed) that time exists as a dimension of space. If all of space exists “now”, then all of time also exists “now”.” - Cameron Reilly

“Friedrich Nietzsche, in his last original book “Ecce Homo”, referred to this philosophy as “amor fati”, the love of (one’s) fate.” - Cameron Reilly

“The writer of the film was the Big Bang. The director is the Laws Of Physics. You are being “acted” by these mechanisms. You always have been, since the day you were born. You have no free will. In fact, it’s absurd to think you have free will.” - Cameron Reilly

Paul Smit Quotes

“Enlightenment is not a mystical or supernatural experience that makes you feel as though you were on LSD for a week.” - Paul Smit

“Insight into non-duality is enlightenment for lazy people because you don’t have to do anything to achieve it.” - Paul Smit

“The only thing that prevents you from being enlightened is the fact that your brain is filled with ‘false’ presumptions.” - Paul Smit

“Non-duality is not a religion. It doesn’t pass judgment on right and wrong, it doesn’t know rules, methods, or rituals, and is only a reference to the truth, thus, not being the truth itself.” - Paul Smit

“The simple message of non-duality is that one’s life is a movie.” - Paul Smit

“As soon as we realize that life is a movie in which everything goes as it should go, we find peace.” - Paul Smit

“From the non-duality point-of-view, our life is also a movie in which the scenes succeed each other and can not be any different than they are right now.” - Paul Smit

“The one thing that cannot be denied is that it is always ‘now.’ Even if you’re reminiscing about old times or thinking about the future, you are still doing that in the now.” - Paul Smit

“You don’t have to ‘do’ anything to be enlightened! You don’t have to eat like a vegetarian. You don’t have to worship a guru. You do not have to clean your chakras.” - Paul Smit

“The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror - going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing.” - Zhuangzi

If you want more, check out our mindfulness quotes.

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Powerful Non-duality Quotes: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Insights