Q: What is austerity?
M: Once you have gone through an experience, not to go through it again is austerity.
To eschew the unnecessary is austerity.
Not to anticipate pleasure or pain Is austerity.
Having things under control at all times is austerity.
Desire by itself is not wrong.
It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience.
It is the choices you make that are wrong.
To imagine that some little thing -- food.
sex, power, fame -- will make you happy is to deceive yourself.
Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.
Q: Since there is nothing basically wrong in desire as an expression of love of self, how should desire be managed?
M: Live your life intelligently, with the interests of your deepest self always in mind.
After all, what do you really want?
Not perfection; you are already perfect.
What you seek is to express in action what you are.
For this you have a body and a mind.
Take them in hand and make them serve you.
Q: Who is the operator here? Who is to take the body-mind in hand?
M: The purified mind is the faithful servant of the self.
It takes charge of the instruments, inner and outer, and makes them serve their purpose.
Q: And what is their purpose?
M: The self is universal and its aims are universal.
There is nothing personal about the self.
Live an orderly life, but don't make it a goal by itself.
It should be the starting point for high adventure.
Q: Do you advise me to come to India repeatedly?
M: If you are earnest, you don't need moving about.
You are yourself wherever you are and you create your own climate.
Locomotion and transportation will not give you salvation.
You are not the body and dragging the body from place to place will take you nowhere.
Your mind is free to roam the three worlds -- make full use of it.
Q: If I am free, why am I in a body?
M: You are not in the body, the body is in you!
The mind is in you.
They happen to you.
They are there because you find them interesting.
Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy.
It is full of zest and affection.
It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded.
It does not know evil nor ugliness, it hopes, it trusts, it loves.
You people do not know how much you miss by not knowing your own true self.
You are neither the body nor the mind, neither the fuel nor the fire.
They appear and disappear according to their own laws.
That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do, you do for your own happiness.
To find it, to know it, to cherish it is your basic urge.
Since time immemorial you loved yourself, but never wisely.
Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the self, that is all.
Be true to your own self, love your self absolutely.
Do not pretend that you love others as yourself.
Unless you have realised them as one with yourself, you cannot love them Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are.
Your love of others is the result of self-knowledge, not its cause.
Without self-realisation, no virtue is genuine.
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.
When you realise the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.
But when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it.
Alienation causes fear and fear deepens alienation.
It is a vicious circle.
Only self-realisation can break it.
Go for it resolutely.