Man's highest aim is to know God, and we should eliminate whatever retarding factors there are. Whatever are helping factors, we should adopt in our lives.

Who is affected by passions cannot obtain liberation.

All Masters, whether they came in one religion or the other, have been very particular about this point. What are we doing? These things are given great stress, but we people don't care. That's the pity. Buddha says, "I proclaim the annihilation of lust. I teach the doing away with lust. Nirvana means the subsiding of all human passions. When inner fires of lust are extinguished, then one enters into the Nirvana. This is the lesson of lessons." … This is the most important thing and the most ignored. 

Our attention, which is the expression of our soul, is diffused into the world through the outgoing faculties and is identified with them, so much so that we have forgotten ourselves.  

As I told you, it is the soul alone that can know God. Like knows the like. Soul is a conscious entity; God is all consciousness. So the first thing is that we should know ourselves. All Masters, whenever they came, they gave out the same thing: Know thyself. 

How can we know ourselves? By liberating ourselves from the clutches of mind and the outgoing faculties; or, you might say, by analysing ourselves from mind and matter; or, still further, you might say, by rising above body-consciousness. When you know yourself, you will see that that very God whom you find within is already there.