In plain words
What does that mean? Reality is within oneself. If what is within oneself is truly good, the reaction will be good, and only good. But only when what is within oneself is bad does a bad reaction come to us. So if you forget both action and reaction and remain tranquil, you can attain a sacred form. So if man wants Śānti: Śānti is not something to be had in a market, nor something a company supplies. Nor something a friend gives as a gift; it lies within oneself alone. One must realise for oneself the very thing that is within oneself. That is, we must make the effort to reduce our resolves little by little.
Desires Beyond Limit Are the Very Cause of Unrest
When many kinds of desire grow in us, the strength of the Ātma wanes little by little. How so? Look at a small example. Today you have so many desires. As soon as you get up at daybreak you must have coffee, tea. A little later you must have a cigarette or a bīḍī. A while later still you will be trying your hand at some game of cards! Or else you sit down after switching on some TV. You are a man with so many habits; cut down a few of them. Make the effort this very day. Cut down tea, coffee, smoking, drinking and the like, and see. See for two days. The sharpness of your intellect will grow a great deal. But it is not intelligence alone: Ānanda too will spring up.
Through these desires beyond all limits, through these cravings, our understanding and our course keep going astray. Because understanding and course go astray, we are forgetting our state. We are forgetting the state ‘I am a human being’. When we forget the state called ‘humanness’, we lose even the wealth called Jñāna. God gave every human being these four: understanding, course, state and wealth. But just by losing it, our condition is changing like this.