Is Devotion Enough?

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Jan 6, 1981

Q: Does it matter if one does not understand intellectually but simply has devotion?

M: If you have that devotion, knowledge will proliferate out of it. When it is said that out of devotion somebody meets a God, it is not a personality God, but the devotee himself proliferates into the knowledge, into profundity - he becomes Godly. That God will be so long as the devotee knows himself; when the devotee subsides into nothingness, the God also subsides into nothingness. You have come to the conclusion that in the final analysis your balance sheet is nil.

Out of the essence of the digested food in the body the IAMness is there. What you are presently is the outcome of this food material. If the food isn't available, where are you? What about all this profound knowledge which you have collected?

Don't arrogate to yourself the doership of anything - it is all happening. If you are not, what is the need for all the disciplines, including God? Even if you are fully convinced about this, you are reduced to nothing; nevertheless, on the death bed you will take the last drop of medicine to survive.

This is real liberation; to know that you are nothing. All your knowledge, including yourself, is liquidated - then you are liberated.

If you think you have done some great deed, then you will be planning to go to Heaven, you are obsessed by concepts, you are not liberated. This knowledge is fit for that one who has devotion to the Guru; only that person is fit to receive this knowledge.

Q: Although we have been listening to these talks for many years,we never feel exhausted.

M: There is that fascination to listen to this again and again. You are not collecting words and sorting them, you are getting the impact of the words and then letting them go.