"The reality has remained untouched by your dreaming. The world of having is nothing but a world of dreaming.

"The religious person is one who has become aware of the futility of it all. You cannot have anything except yourself. And all that you have except yourself is a deception. It is an illusion. And, in fact that which you have possesses you more than you possess it. The possessor finally becomes the possessed. You think you have so many things – riches, power, money – but deep down you are being possessed by those same things, you are being encaged, enchained, imprisoned by those same things.

"Look at the rich people. They don't possess riches – they are as poor as any other poor man in the world, they are as beggarly as any other beggar. In fact, whatsoever they possess possesses them. They are burdened by it.

"So the first thing to be understood is that these are the two doors: having, being. If you are still lost in the dream of having, you are in the world. You may be sitting in a cave in the Himalayas, that makes no difference – the world is still there because the world is in the very desire to possess. And nobody has ever possessed anything.

"Only one thing can be possessed and that you already have with you – your own self, your own consciousness. But to have that being, one has to work hard. You cannot get to it easily. First you will have to detach yourself from the world of having. That will be almost like a death because that's where you have got identified – you are your car, your house; you are your bank balance. And when you start awakening out of this dream you start feeling as if you are disappearing because all your old identities start disappearing. One identity disappears, one part of your being disappears. There is emptiness left behind.

"When all your identities disappear and simply you are left, there is only pure space – as pure as life, as pure as death, nothing else is there – that is your being. Only that being can be possessed because it is already there."