"I have a totally different concept of desire. Firstly, desire itself is existence. Desire without any object, desire without being goal-oriented, unmotivated desire, pure desire, is existence. The energy called desire is the same energy as existence.

"Desire has not to be destroyed, it has to be purified. Desire has not to be dropped, it has to be transformed. Your very being is desire; to be against it is to be against yourself and to be against all. To be against it is to be against the flowers and the birds and the sun and the moon. To be against it is against all creativity. Desire is creativity.

"The Eastern scriptures are perfectly right when they say that God created the world because a great desire arose in him – a desire to create, a desire to manifest, a desire to be many from one, a desire to expand. But these are only metaphors; God is not separate from desire. Desire means a longing, a great longing, to expand, to become huge, to be enormous – as huge as the sky.

"Just watch people, watch desires, and you will understand what I mean. Even in your ordinary desires, this basic thing is present. In fact what the man who wants to have more and more money really wants is not money but expansion, because money can help you expand. You can have a bigger house, you can have a bigger garden, you can have this, you can have that – your territory will be bigger, your freedom will be bigger. With more money you will have more alternatives to choose from.

"The man who is after money may not know why he is after the money. He may himself think and believe that he loves money, but that is only on the surface of his consciousness. Go deeper into his unconscious, help him to meditate, and you will be surprised and he will be surprised to find that the desire for money is not really desire for money, it is the desire to expand.

"And the same is the case with all other desires. Men want more power, more fame, longer life, better health, but what are they desiring in these different things? The same, exactly the same: they want to be more."