Purpose of the spiritual life

'That's what the spiritual life is about – bringing a greater consciousness into these little robotic bodies, so that they become more intelligent…'

'The next stage of our true evolution is… the evolution of the being in the body… endeavouring to realise its own being, rather than realise a world of emotions and the rest of it. That's what my teaching is about. So the question is… on behalf of the human race, are you ready and prepared to give up your old attachment to your feelings… Are you prepared to make the greatest sacrifice that you can make on this earth?… I ask you… to bite the bullet and give up being emotional…'

'The basic truth of the spiritual life is to be able to contain my emotions, not to let them out… My teaching is to contain those… to contain them, because they have to be mastered, because there is no end to them.'

'In the spiritual life… there is a sort of an aim in the beginning… the aim is to reduce myself, to reduce my selfishness, to reduce my thinking, to gradually clear yourself out… [to] clear out the blockages in you. You must come back to your senses – that's what the spiritual life's about. You have to stay up here in your senses and stop acknowledging your emotions and feelings, stop giving in to them.'