It is a hard job to know about your own Self. Take the case of the food that you eat with your own mouth. You feel it in your stomach but after that you do not experience what happens to it at each stage. How then can you know, without acquiring the special means for it, the Truth that lies behind the sheaths that encase and enclose you - the Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vijnanamaya and Aanandhamaya (sheaths of material, vital energy, mind, intelligence and bliss)? Clear your intellect or intellectual power (dhee shakti) of the cobwebs of the ego, the dust of desire, the soot of greed and envy, and it becomes a fit instrument for revealing the Swarupa - the Inner Truth. "Know yourself, know the Inner Motivator, the Antaryamin” - that is the exhortation of the scriptures of all faiths. For, unless you are armed with that knowledge, you are like a ship without a compass, sailing on a stormy sea.

- Divine Discourse, Apr 16, 1964.