Attachment creates pain and frustration. Attachment is the thing that we seek to overcome in self-discovery. Attachment creates pain, and if you don’t like pain and suffering, frustration and misery, you must overcome attachment. Attachment on a basic level means not getting caught up in desires. Desires pass through us like the wind passes through the leaves on a tree. The wind moves the leaves to and from. Desire passes through us and can create movement, a stirring, a rustling within the self.

Desire is neither good nor bad. It just has a simple result. Some people feel in spiritual practice that in order to attain higher states of consciousness, to lead a happier life, they have to overcome desire. It’s impossible to overcome desire. It’s like trying to overcome the Earth or the solar system or God. It’s not necessary to overcome anything in order to attain liberation. Enlightenment and liberation have nothing to do with overcoming anything. Rather, they involve acceptance and dissolution. If you fight against your desires, you get ensnared in them. If you don’t do anything about your desires, you get ensnared in them. Desires are not necessarily bad. It depends on the desire. Let’s take a look at desire and attachment.

There is something that we call dharma. Truth. The idea is that there is a universal movement or motion that is correct. When desire is in concord with dharma, then desire does not create pain. When desire runs contrary to dharma, then desire creates pain.

Let me give you an example. You have many different sides to your being. And each of those sides seeks happiness in different ways. Now, if we go to your absolute self, your highest aspect, we find nothing but light. Your real being is timeless and endless light. It has no beginning, it has no ending. It’s static and ecstatic consciousness, beyond description. When you are absorbed in that light, meaning when your attention is fully focused on your own infiniteness, then you feel no suffering, no pain, no desire, no frustration. Everything is perfect perfection. This is the stateless state that all human beings, and all beings, sentient and non-sentient, seek. We call it God-consciousness. No worries, no problems, no second mortgages, no lines at the bank teller’s window. Endless, infinite consciousness. It’s what they call heaven. And it exists right here and right now. You simply have to become aware of it.

Imagine that you’re a very, very tall person and that your head, the top part of your being, exists in that world, in that state. Then let’s say that there are other levels of your being that cut through other parts of your body, as if we segmented your body. Your feet and up to your knees is in one segment, from your knees maybe to your waist is another segment, from your waist to your neck is another segment and then from your neck to your head is another segment. Let’s say that your head is in the superconscious. It’s in the highest reality. It’s in that timeless state that we call nirvana, or heaven, or perfection, whatever terms you like. Now, that part of your being doesn’t seek to do anything. It doesn’t have desires. It’s a cloudless sky. Other parts of your being, though, get caught up in desire.

We all have a physical body, and the physical body is moved by desire. We all have a subtle physical body. The subtle physical body can also be moved by desire. But our absolute self is far beyond desire. The part of us that causes us pain, then, is the physical body, the subtle physical body, and of course the mental body. These are the three avenues of self, the three segments below the head. Let’s say the physical body is that area from the knees down. Then maybe the next area up would be the mind, and above the mind the subtle physical, and then above the subtle physical, the superconscious. There are various divisions we can make; these are all just divisions that try to describe something that’s really beyond words.

Now, desire usually involves the body and the mind and sometimes the subtle physical. The idea is simple. You want an ice cream cone. If you don’t receive the ice cream cone, then your desire is frustrated. When your desire is frustrated, you lose the lessons of experience, which means not to get angry because when you get angry it does nothing except cause you to go to a lower bardo. You lose the lessons of experience, and when you lose the lessons of experience, of course, you lose discrimination. Discrimination means that you get so wrapped up in your anger at this point that you forget to ask what is right or wrong, maybe you go punch the wall or punch your friend, or whatever it may be. Suddenly instead of just seeing the beauty of life, because you didn’t get your ice cream cone when you wanted it, you’ve become enraged. Then all of life is ugly, everything is terrible, life is just meaningless. And you can descend further. That’s the problem with desire.

Having things isn’t bad. There’s nothing wrong with having an ice cream cone if you want one. I mean, if you’re overweight, you might not want one if you’re trying to maintain a certain weight level. But otherwise there’s nothing wrong with having an ice cream cone. The problem is that you become ensnared by it. That is to say, if you don’t get it you’re unhappy. If you do get it, you build it into such an experience that it rarely comes up to your expectations, although ice cream sometimes does. Perhaps we should put ice cream in a whole separate category. But in any case …

So, we think all day about, “Well, gosh, around 4:00 when I get out of work I’m going to zip down to the old ice cream parlor; I’m going to get a Häagen-Dazs Rum Raisin ice cream cone,” or whatever your favorite is. And we wait for that moment and then we finally get there. They’ve run out of our flavor. “Ooohhhh! Nothing else will do, life is terrible.” Or, we’ve built up the experience so much that when we have it, it really isn’t quite as good as we remembered—must have been something wrong with the shipment, and we’re unhappy. Or, let’s suppose it all worked out. Let’s suppose we did get that ice cream cone, and it was the most wonderful ice cream cone that we’d ever had. Fantastic ice cream. But then after a while it’s all gone. Well, we can try and repeat the experience and order another and another and another. But we’ll find that as our appetite slackens, the sensual experience will suddenly change. It won’t be pleasant any longer. We’ll be satiated.

Why does this all happen? In other words, we can’t be happy from the fulfillment of desire, or if we are, it’s only a transitory desire, then it goes away. What’s the problem here? Well, it has to do with the nature of the physical. A Chevrolet is not a Ferrari. If you drive the Chevrolet like you would drive a Ferrari, you’re going to get into a bit of trouble. It doesn’t corner that well, it can’t go that fast. It’s important to understand that happiness does not come from the physical.

The physical exists and has a sheen and a tone all of its own. But it doesn’t make you happy. The physical at its best, meaning your body and its sensations, is quiet. It doesn’t distract you. When your body is in pain, when you’re ill, when you don’t feel well, when you’re in a state of desire and expectation, at these times, you notice your body. Otherwise the body is relatively unnoticed. And that’s how it should be. But when you focus on things that are in the physical realm, you become fixated or attached to them. Attachment means that you want to hold onto an experience, a person, an idea, a way of being, a self — but there’s a sense of fixation. You feel that you want to hold onto it because you enjoy it, and if you continue holding onto it and experiencing it again and again, your enjoyment will last.

Now the problem is, the universe doesn’t work that way. Nothing in the physical or mental or astral worlds lasts. Everything is transitory. It’s a self-defeating notion. Ultimately, no matter what you hold onto, if it’s physical, mental, or subtle, it will change, it will transform, it will go away. You’re just setting yourself up for unhappiness.

The nature of reality is freedom. And when you try to block the nature of reality through your fixations and attachments, you create problems for yourself, you become unhappy. Now, if you wanted an ice cream cone — you saw that a part of you wanted to have an ice cream cone and it seemed like an appropriate thing to have -— and you had the ice cream cone and enjoyed it and then just kept on going, there’s no attachment. If you didn’t make that big of a deal out of the ice cream cone, it was one moment in a series of endless moments—you noticed it, you enjoyed it, it was pretty in its way, as all of life is. If you got there and they didn’t have the right flavor, it would be exciting to know that life is exposing you to another flavor. If you didn’t compare the way it had tasted before, if you took it as a new experience, then you would not be disappointed by the flavor, as opposed to how it had tasted the week before. You see, it’s attachment that fixes us in time. We become a body in time. You’re not a body in time, you’re a limitless awareness.

That’s the problem with attachment. Things are not bad. You’re not bad. What causes a problem is when you become affixed to things. Now, the reason this happens is that you have been taught or conditioned to believe that happiness comes from physical possessions—money, sexual gratification, owning a big home, artistic experiences, whatever it may be. You feel that it will make you happy. These things don’t make you happy. They can neither add nor take away from your state of happiness. You just think they do. For a while they may indeed give you some sort of a temporary satisfaction. But if you understood that what you really want is to merge with eternity and that all of the experiences you seek are attempts to do that, then it will be easier for you.

The primary want in your being is to become one with all of existence, to experience the superconscious—limitless, perfect bliss, ecstasy, stillness, whatever you wish to call it. Our attempt to hold onto people, relationships, things, experiences, careers, all of these things, are attempts to do that. They’re fleeting attempts to try, within the transitory, within the physical frame of reference, to experience eternity. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing eternity in the physical, transitory frames of reference, as long as you don’t think that that will make you happy. Happiness comes from experiencing the superconscious or realizing that we are the superconscious. Then, when you have that understanding, that knowledge, when you live in that world of light all the time, you’re free to roam the world, as am I.

I can go anyplace and be happy. I can be in any experience. I can experience any frustration, any loss, any gain, success, failure; it’s all the same to me. My body will experience pain and not necessarily like it. My emotions can be painful. My thoughts can be painful and unhappy. But I now live beyond all of these conditions. I am no longer bound by my body, by my emotions or by my mind. I stand far beyond them in light. I am light. I am free to walk in the world, to have sensual experiences, non-sensual experiences, and just enjoy them because I don’t pay that much attention to them. I observe my self — parts of my selves — going through them, knowing that life is directing all things. Just as the electrons move around the atom without wondering why, so I move around the universes without wondering or knowing why.

Knowing why is a function of the mind. If the mind seeks to know why, that’s fine. But there’s a level of knowledge or understanding that we call love, that is beyond knowing why. It just is. When you raise to that level of attention, there is no attachment. And if you see parts of your being fixating, you are able to step beyond that fixation and all the fixations dissolve. As you step in and out of samadhi, in and out of nirvana, all the fixations go away.

From my point of view, there’s no attachment. From your point of view, there still is. Parts of my being could easily become attached. No one is beyond attachment, as long as there’s someone to be attached. But when we dissolve ourselves in the superconscious, then there’s no one to be attached, therefore there’s no attachment. That’s the way you overcome attachment. Not by stopping your desires, not by ignoring them, but by dissolving yourself in light. By becoming what you really are, in other words.

Dissolving is a way of speaking. You don’t dissolve. It would be just as accurate to say that you become what you really are—your higher self, eternal consciousness. Then you don’t even notice desire, you don’t even notice attachment. If you sit there in light, who could notice? All of the ecstasies that have ever been or will ever be could present themselves in front of you, and you wouldn’t even feel them, compared to the pure light of eternity. That’s really the way you do it.

The way you overcome attachment, which causes pain, is not by giving up relationships, giving up possessions, or all that sort of thing. You might want to pull back for a while if you’ve gotten so wrapped up in relationships and possessions and careers. Sometimes it’s nice just to shut off the faucet for a while, to just give ourselves a little distance. It’s easier that way, if we break contact for a while with things that we’ve been wrapped up in, so that we can breathe a little bit and gain our balance. But then you go back in. The world is fun. People are fun. Life is filled with beauty. Even in tragedy there’s beauty, if you can see the eternal within.

This is what meditation and yoga teaches us. Meditation and yoga teaches us not to try to change the world, because it’s always changing. But to observe and to enjoy, to allow eternity to express itself through us freely as it will, and to allow eternity to enjoy itself as it will. Our job is simply not to hold on.

You can’t hold onto anyone. You don’t own anyone. The idea of holding onto someone in a relationship is absurd. How can you hold on? Everyone is light. And you’re light. Light can’t hold light. You may think that you’re a person who can retain something. But I assure you, death will take away from you all those things that you cling to, and then you will experience great suffering and loss. While now you are alive, you can realize the truth, and if you realize the truth, you will be free. Then you can play in the world and enjoy the world. You’ll still suffer at times. You’ll still feel heat and cold, pleasure and pain—unless you’re completely absorbed in the superconscious, in the highest meditation—you’ll feel these things, but you won’t be that affected by them; you’ll understand them.

A great conductor who is leading a symphony orchestra, if suddenly a fly is buzzing around his head, he’s not going to get all excited and mad and start swatting at the fly and upsetting his orchestra. He simply ignores it. He gets on with what he has to do, his concentration is strong enough. Eventually the fly will go away. When you’re absorbed in higher consciousness, when desires that could cause attachment pass through you, you simply ignore them. You say, “No, this isn’t right. If I become wrapped up in this person or this experience, I won’t be happy.” Because when you become wrapped up, you get pulled down from the superconscious awareness. Your attention fixes on a physical experience or mental experience.

Now the big attachments in self-discovery have nothing to do with attachments to cars or people or love relationships. Those are the basics. And if you’re still working on those, I suggest you work through them quickly because there are larger and more exciting challenges ahead of you. The big challenges, the big attachments, are states of being, are states of awareness. Universes. The big attachment is not to someone else or something else, but it’s to ourselves. To the way we see life, to what we believe we are — our understandings, our ideas. And these are the best, the most fun, the most exciting attachments to destroy or to slay. You use discrimination, meaning you can see beyond the surface to eternity. Then you rid yourself of all attachments and then you’re free. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Good luck! [Rama laughs.]

You can do it. I did it. If I can attain liberation, anyone can attain liberation. That should give you great hope. It’s not that difficult. If you really love light and you really want that and you simply give everything that you have and everything you are for what you believe, it’s quite simple. If you don’t do that, then how can it possibly happen? If you give 60 percent of your attention to self-discovery and to overcoming your attachments and suffusing yourself with light, then it will happen in 60 percent, and 40 percent it won’t be. If you find a path, follow it, and devote 100 percent of your attention to it, then you will become the path itself — in time. It just takes time to become timeless. And it’s kind of fun. There’s no rush to get there. Going there is a beautiful experience also.

Attachment—the less you deal with it the better. You’ll suffer as long as you want to. When you get tired of it, you’ll listen. Then you’ll give up attachment, give up trying to hold onto people, places, possessions, your old selves. You’ll meditate, devote your life entirely to self-discovery while living and working in the world and having a good time, helping as many people as you can without thinking too much of yourself, and everything will be delightful. Till then you’ll burn. Such is life. [Rama laughs.] Sorry about that. But — it goes away after a while. Life goes away after a while, and death goes away after a while, so don’t feel too bad about it. There’s something good waiting for you. If it hurts now, it won’t hurt forever, I assure you. Life is light. Just be patient and work like mad.

Inaccessibility. Well, inaccessibility is essential if you live in the world. As you know, we live in a world that has several billion physical beings — people — living in it, all of whom are on varying levels of self-awareness. Many of these beings are what we call in the trade not too evolved, meaning that they’re in their very early stages of existence.

Think of the Earth as a school, a giant school that runs from kindergarten through graduate school. And then of course there are teachers who teach at varying levels within the school. Those teachers may be at a static level themselves. The teacher may complete college and now teach first grade, and the teacher’s not progressing. Some teachers, while they teach, continue to make progress. Then there are those who are old tenured faculty and they keep up their research and attend meetings, but they’ve just reached a point where they know their stuff pretty well.

Along the path we have different teachers. And these teachers are sometimes people, sometimes they’re nonphysical beings, occasionally, that help us. Sometimes they’re the other people around us who don’t call themselves teachers, they’re just human beings we can learn from. Nature is a great teacher. If you need to learn something, go take a walk on the beach at sunset, take a hike up in the mountains by yourself, just listen to the rhythm of nature. Listen to the wind. Go to the desert. There’s so much to learn from the pulse of nature, if you listen. You can be in nature and just be filled with thoughts and learn nothing, or you can walk with a silent mind and see all of eternity.

In my estimation, a great deal can be learned from going to the movies. Movies are the art form of the day. The movie is to the 20th century what the novel was in the 19th century. And I personally feel that a great deal about human consciousness can be learned through the arts, through drama, and film today. The cinema is certainly a place to learn about varying states of consciousness, ways of seeing. It’s fascinating.

Inaccessibility, then, means we recognize and accept that the spaceship Earth has lots of divisions, lots of different levels, and that the vast majority, let us say 90 percent of the people on the Earth, are not too evolved. They’re still in grammar school and junior high school. And that they fight a lot and they hurt each other a lot and they hurt themselves a lot. Their energy is not very stable. Now, if you happen to be a spiritual seeker, one who is refining their nature and overcoming hatreds and jealousies and fears and all these things, you have to realize that the odds are not necessarily against you, but let’s say that the history of spiritual seekers has something to offer or teach us.

From age to age, spiritual groups and spiritual seekers are persecuted and very often killed for their belief in God. That’s what history teaches us. We learn to be inaccessible. We learn from history. We learn that it’s good to veil the light, to a certain extent, in most cases. If there’s someone who will understand and appreciate your spirituality, it’s fine to be with them and discuss it. But in most cases, it’s good to blend.

Why do people stand out in the world? Well, usually two reasons. Reason one is they stand out because they’re very fixated in their egos and they want people to notice them. They think that if people notice them, if they’re famous, be it in a small circle of friends or in world terms that will make them happy. This is illusion number 99 in a continuing series of illusions. Some people stand out without meaning to stand out. They stand out simply because they’re different, because their views are different, their ways of living are different, or because they’re following or performing a task in this world—Lincoln stands out, Gandhi, Kennedy, many others. They stand out as great individuals.

Now, the problem is, of course, when you stand out you draw attention to yourself. When you draw attention to yourself, it’s very easy to get wrapped up in attention and wanting more attention, and you become attached to it and fixated and of course you lose your ability to discriminate, and your high consciousness becomes a low consciousness. The other problem is when people fixate upon you, they send vibrations. Whenever anyone thinks of you, a vibratory force is directed towards you on a subtle physical level, on the astral level. When people hate you, that hate touches you.

The classic example is a woman who is scantily dressed and is walking down the street in front of the place where they’re building the new building, and all the construction workers whistle at her and yell at her and wave at her and throw a lot of sexual energy at her. Now, she may enjoy the attention, but what she doesn’t realize is that on a subtle physical level, the energy they’re throwing at her is harming her subtle physical body. Also, maybe later, if she keeps walking down the street and it gets a little darker, someone will put a gun to her head, take her home, rape her, and kill her. I mean, this happens. This is the extreme, but it happens on many levels.

Inaccessibility means that you just don’t show up. You blend. The master of inaccessibility is the chameleon. This has nothing to do with what you feel or what you really are. It’s just an intelligent way to live. It’s the way of the survivor. The way of the survivor is to change as circumstances change. Now, that doesn’t mean you should ever abandon your principles. This has nothing to do with inaccessibility. That’s being chicken. You should always stick with your principles. But it’s necessary, if you wish your principles to succeed in the world, to live and to implement them. You may have wonderful ideas about the world. But if you leave the world too quickly, your ideas will leave with you. Occasionally there comes a time when we have to stand up, expose ourselves to the world, and be accessible to do what’s right. And if we die doing so, then we have to do that, if that’s what’s right, but that’s in an extreme situation. Then we’re not afraid of death because we see we’re already beyond death.

But in most day-to-day living situations for spiritual seekers, it is not necessary to be accessible. You can be accessible by the way you dress, you can be accessible by the way you act — if you laugh too loudly, if you show your enthusiasm too much, if you are too morose—in other words, you shouldn’t let people see your feelings. In a nice world, everyone would understand and no one would take advantage of your feelings. However, in this world, very often there are persons who will prey upon you, upon your feelings, your emotions. If they see that you’re dejected, they’ll make fun of you or try to drain you further. If they see that you’re elated, they’ll become jealous.

In a spiritual community, it’s a good idea to blend. If you meditate very well, if you’re doing very well spiritually, don’t let anyone know. This is inaccessibility in terms of fairness. You have to realize that human nature goes through many changes, that each one of us has many sides. Let’s say you went and saw the spiritual teacher and spent time together, and suddenly you decided to tell all your friends about it and you’re very inspired, and suppose you’re not even showing off but your enthusiasm is genuine. By doing this, what you’ll do is probably not inspire anyone, but you’ll make people jealous.

You have to realize, take into account, that everyone isn’t perfect yet, that they all are working through different things. And as a favor to another human being, you don’t put them in a situation whereby they can do harm to themselves. You anticipate their level and you watch out for them, you care about them. While it might inspire you to tell somebody about your experience when you went and saw the teacher and you had lunch together or something, your friends might become jealous. They think, ‘Well, why did so and so go, why didn’t I get to go?’ Now, true, maybe they shouldn’t feel that way, but they do. That’s reality. And if you want to walk around on cloud nine thinking, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, they put themselves in that situation, I’m not to blame if they want to think those thoughts,’ then you’re a very selfish human being. If you really care for others, you anticipate how they feel. And while you can’t think their thoughts for them, nor should you, in any way that you can be of comfort to them or of service, you do so.

If you’re going to visit some poor relatives, you don’t wear your most expensive clothing because they’ll feel bad. That’s humility. In order to be inaccessible, you need to be humble. If you’re proud, you won’t be inaccessible, you’ll want to show off. But you’ll be the loser, you’ll be the victim.

Inaccessibility is a very good quality. It’s good not to tell everyone your life story. It’s good not to feel that you need to expose yourself that much, because it’s ego. It’s good to listen and to learn. It’s fun to inspire people, but don’t make yourself the central attraction, the diamond in the tiara. It’s really not necessary. You’ll cause yourself and others more harm.

In the world, very few people will understand meditation and the superconscious, let alone some of the miracles or the siddhas. They’ll doubt you or fear you or whatever it may be. It’s very good to be quiet and still about what you do. Don’t push it. Even if you’re very enthused and very inspired and your life is changing—now you’ve become a vegetarian and you’ve given up smoking and life is great — not everyone is going to understand. Don’t try to give a detailed explanation of meditation to somebody who’s working at the plant, unless they’re really interested. Just say, “Hey, I meditate, it’s relaxing, you know.” In other words, speak to people on the level that they’re on. Because otherwise you don’t do a service to them. When you speak to people in terms that they can understand, then they respond nicely.

It’s very important to be unattached and inaccessible emotionally. Otherwise, you will suffer again and again and again the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, my friends. The principal thing I see in all of you, all of you human types, is that you are so accessible and so vulnerable and so attached emotionally. It’s necessary to love all, not just to love one. When you love one, you make yourself a potential victim. When you love one, you are at the mercy of that one. The only time you should love one is if you love an enlightened being who will not hurt you. And even then you shouldn’t confine your love to them, you should confine your love to eternity.

Now, you don’t have to love everyone. People who say, “Well, I love everyone,” they don’t know what they’re talking about. Let’s go sit them next to Adolph Eichmann or someone like that, you know, Charles Manson, and let’s see how long they love. It’s an idea, it’s a theory: “I love everyone.” And it’s a nice theory. You don’t need to love everyone. Everyone’s not particularly loveable in the form that they’re currently in. You can love everyone’s essence, but it’s not necessary that you love the substance.

When you love one person, you’re a hostage, you’re an emotional hostage. If the person you love, if you’re attached to them, feels that you’re wrapped up in them, then they will probably abuse you, if their nature is not pure and refined. You’ve opened yourself up, you’re vulnerable. Only open yourself to God, never to a human being. Human beings, you simply cannot trust them. Which is not saying anything bad about them. That’s the nature of being a human being—the mind changes, the emotions change. They’re wonderful, but they’re not stable.

If you deal with an enlightened person, they’re extremely predictable. You’ll never know what they’ll do, but you’ll always know it will be good, no matter what it is. Otherwise, when you deal with anyone else, they’re very intractable. They love you one moment, they idolize you; the next moment they hate you. They’re still bound by their emotions. When you’re enlightened, you can just stand back from that. You know that you will always do what’s dharma. You have nothing to do with it any more. It’s out of your hands. No one else is that predictable.

Don’t open your heart up. You can love without opening your heart. That’s how you’re inaccessible with your emotions. To be inaccessible emotionally doesn’t mean that you don’t love and care. You’ll love and care much more than you do now — much, much more. It simply means that you don’t allow yourself to be hurt by anyone, because it won’t help you and it won’t help them. You love someone, and if they choose not to love you, you can walk away from them and never see them again, if that’s what’s necessary, and not feel any pain, or if you do it will go away quickly. It’s unattachment. It’s inaccessible. It’s much, much better because then you can really love.

Try not to spend too much time with anyone. Spend time with different people, otherwise you become too accessible. When you become accessible to other people, they hold you back. When you spend a lot of time with the same people, they tend to see you in the same way unless they’re very advanced spiritual seekers. Every day they see you and they develop an idea of you and then when they see you they project that idea, they have a dream of you. And you, without realizing it, will conform to their projection. It’s very hard to change, if you’re around the same people all the time. Try to make new friends. See your friends when you want to, but you should always be making new friends. We’ve become so fixated in each other. It’s not healthy spiritually at all. And you make yourself much too accessible.

Don’t talk about the same things all the time, don’t read the same books, don’t go to the same places. You want to become inaccessible not only to other people, but also you need to be inaccessible to yourself, to the parts of yourself that you’re trying to transform. In order to be inaccessible you must break up your routines. Human beings, like birds, are creatures of habit. It’s very easy to stalk a person, once you learn their routines. Try not to be a person of routines. Don’t be fixated on getting a certain amount of sleep every night, sleeping in the same room, living in the same place, wearing the same clothes, working at the same job, having the same friends, using the same toothpaste, driving the same type of car, feeling that you’re human.

If you’re interested in learning about inaccessibility and breaking up routines, I think the master teacher is Don Juan through Carlos Castaneda. I think in Journey to Ixtlan and Tales of Power, there are some very fine discussions about becoming inaccessible and breaking up routines. And through the stories in the books it is very clear why this is advantageous.

You must be very careful in the world. The world is filled with violence. The way spiritual people escape violence is by perceiving it before it comes and avoiding it. That’s what God has given us. God has given the highly evolved people not necessarily physical strength—sometimes we have that—but God has given the spiritually evolved people two great gifts to survive. One is the ability to see and sense danger and problems before they occur through our intuition and to avoid them, and also to be very pleasant when we are in a difficult situation. The other is when we get in that difficult situation, God has given us complete unattachment, so we can do whatever is necessary, without any feelings of remorse, without getting caught up in our emotions. If necessary, we can take a life without blinking an eye because we realize that we can’t take a life, that only God has that power. If necessary, we can give our own life without blinking an eye because there is no life to give, there is only eternity.

Inaccessibility and overcoming attachments give you a very beautiful life. As you meditate and go deeper within the self, you find that there’s radiant happiness everywhere. There’s a kind of fulfillment far beyond the muck that most people call love and happiness. But you have to live yourself into that higher level, you have to burn through your different selves until you come to the purified being that you really are, and this is the process of self-discovery. Try to apply these principles in your life. If you do, I think you’ll be very, very pleased with the results.

Inaccessibility and attachment.