Sometimes I pass my time in counting the evolutionary numbers. It is infinite, this illusion, as infinite as God. This is zero. The illusion is zero. The result is zero. But that which produces zero is infinite in its working, e.g., 7 minus 7 is zero. 8 minus 6-plus-2 is zero.

1,000 minus 500-plus-500 is zero. You can bring about this result in an infinite number of ways. Why the trouble? To have consciousness. The smell is in the rose, but not the smelling. God has powers, bliss, light, peace, but He wants to express Himself. So, to gain consciousness, all this fun, And what fun . . . ! I love the fun . . . yet in this fun I suffer infinitely.

In response to a question, Why is there suffering? Baba answered: Suffering is essential for the elimination of the ego, just as it was necessary for you to wash the stain off my coat.

Everything you do put your mind to it and then forget it, but do not be attached to it.

"Tomorrow we will have again silence in the evening, as yesterday, the 12th, but under one condition which is very important — that we do not look around at each other to see what they look like or how they do it. We must not follow them, but look at Baba and feel as if we were alone with him. But we must do it naturally, without strain and we must not feel conscious of our bodies, feet, hands, etc. Let the head be the center of your body. When it is, you then forget your body and you can then think of me.

Will Backett asked what to do if we feel pressure in the head. Baba replied: "Relax as if going to sleep. Close your eyes, if not you see the body. When you close your eyes and take your head as center of your being, then you do not feel the body. Do it easily and don't worry if you cannot do it."

Nadia said, "I sat with my eyes open yesterday." Baba replied: "If you can look at me in such a concentrated manner that you forget your body, it is best. If you do not close your eyes, look at me, but be so immersed in me that you forget your body. This is very good. I leave it to you.

"What I mean is, I work internally for the world, and if you, during that time, forget your body and concentrate on Baba you share the work. My work and I are inseparable, like the rose and its smell. Both are inseparable, but the rose is not the smell and the smell is not the rose. The thorn and its pricking are inseparable, but the pricking is not the thorn, nor the thorn the pricking."

Talk at the Manzil Bungalow, April 13, 1937

As I said this morning, it is time we started dying. Dying, not meaning the ordinary death, but the death of low sense desires. It is all bliss, and yet all are miserable because of ignorance. This ignorance causes desires to be fulfilled, yet the goal of each and every one is to attain the 'no-desire' state. Is it clear? It is all happiness, infinite, unfathomable, bliss when you desire nothing. This is the goal. This is death, and not the death which is preached by priests. They all give a gloomy picture — hell, etc. It is all life, not death; only let your desires die! But how?