"Then the more money comes, you invest it for still more money, and this way it goes on. Only means and means and means, and never does the end come closer. So even a stupid person becomes aware sooner or later that he is moving in a vicious circle and there seems to be no way out of it – except to drop out. For an intelligent person – one who thinks about his life, meditates about it – it is very obvious.

"So nonattachment is not so difficult in the worldly things, but when it comes to the inner powers, the psychic powers, they are so close to your being and so infinitely satisfying, it is almost impossible to be nonattached to them. But if you are not nonattached, then you have again created a world and you will remain far, far away from the ultimate liberation.

"Because whatsoever you possess possesses you, the sacrifice has to be total, utterly total. You have to drop everything that you can possess – except your nude nature. That which cannot be sacrificed, only that can be left. That which can be sacrificed should be sacrificed.

"In this sutra Patanjali is asking almost the impossible, but that too becomes possible through understanding. It is very satisfying, gratifying, to have spiritual powers, and it gives you such a subtle joy of the ego, so pure that you cannot feel any sting in it. It never frustrates you. In the worldly things there is much frustration – in fact nothing but frustration. It is a miracle how people can avoid seeing this. It is a miracle how people can go on deceiving themselves and believing that there is some hope. The outside world is hopeless, it is doomed.

"Howsoever big a house you can make, or howsoever powerful you become politically, economically, socially, death is going to take them all away from you – and not much intelligence is needed to understand this. But the inner powers, death cannot take them away. They are beyond death and they never frustrate you. They are your powers; your potentialities come to flower. There seems to be no need to sacrifice them, no need to renounce them."