In plain words
What, after all, is spirituality? Is singing bhajans spirituality? Is saying ‘Sai Ram, Sai Ram’ spirituality? Or is going to holy places spirituality? All these are nothing but man's weaknesses! What is true spirituality? We must root out the animality in man. We must light up divinity. This is the right meaning of spirituality.
What keeps us far from God is mainly two things: envy and Ahaṅkāra
Today people do dhyāna. They practise japa. And along with it they nurture animality too. If you keep your animality, however many sādhanas you do, all of them are in vain! All these sādhanas amount to cheating God Himself. That is not what doing sādhana means. We must put far from us the animal qualities within us: cruel minds, wicked minds, injustice, wrongdoing, bad conduct, untruth, envy, Ahaṅkāra. This is true spirituality. What keeps us far from God is two things: envy and Ahaṅkāra. Envy is like the pest that blights the tree of life. Ahaṅkāra is like the worm at its root. These two are bringing the tree of life to ruin. What makes one lose humanness entirely is this envy and Ahaṅkāra, nothing else! One who has these is truly not even a human being. How can such a one be called a sādhaka on the spiritual path? This is a game of playing one thing in front and another behind! Doings still more full of fault. Such people join bad company; they do not join Satsaṅga. For, because there are bad qualities and bad thoughts in them, bad company draws them. That is why we must take refuge in the conscious principle called ‘Sat’. Vināyaka Caturthī teaches the very principle by which we put bad qualities far from us and gather good ones.