The earth doesn't belong to anyone. It is the land upon which all of us are to live for many years, ploughing, reaping and destroying. You are always a guest on this earth and have the austerity of a guest. Austerity is far deeper than owning only a few things. The very word austerity has been spoilt by the monks, by the sannyasis, by the hermits. Sitting on that high hill alone in the solitude of many things, many rocks and little animals and ants, that word has no meaning.

Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.

We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall.

As the beauty of the picture depends not on the painter but on the picture itself, what I say must depend on its own intrinsic value and not on the authority of my attainment, nor on the authority of others.

The purpose of having the title 'World-Teacher' is to acknowledge, to show, the condition of mind and heart when you have achieved. It is like saying: 'I have painted a picture'. It is like saying: 'I have written a poem'. It is an assertion of the fact of attainment, rather than the narrow understanding that is given to labels and phrases. What the phrase indicates is of importance.

Why haven't we, with all our cunning, experience, resolved this problem of fear completely? Isn't fear the cause of the 'me'?

It is only in a very quiet mind that great things are born; and a quiet mind does not come about through effort, through control, through discipline.