"Fifteenth Spiritual Instruction" by Swami Chidananda

Reduce Your Wants

If you have four shirts, reduce the number to three or two. Lead a happy, contented life. Avoid unnecessary worry. Have plain living and high thinking.

Reduce your wants. If you have four shirts reduce the number to three or two. Lead a happy, contented life (sada santushta Yogi). Avoid unnecessary worry. Here there is an equal of Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings in the next sentence—Have plain living and high thinking. This was Mahatma Gandhi’s instruction to all his correspondents as also to students and the whole nation, and which, during his own lifetime, he himself practised.

Gurudev says in His book on Sadhana that a karma yogin reduces his wants and slowly controls the indriyas. He serves all with pure, cosmic love, with sama bhavana (equal vision) as manifestations of the Lord. Jealousy vanishes completely in the long run by constant service.

The restless mind must be rendered quiet by reducing your wants, by destroying useless earthly desires. Have one strong desire for liberation. Then you can open your mind to the higher spiritual influences. The Divine Light will slowly descend. You can actually feel the inner change and spiritual uplift. Gradually the personal consciousness will merge itself into the Cosmic Consciousness, the individual will, will merge into the Divine Will or Cosmic Will. This is the state of samadhi or Super-conscious state. Man has become transmuted into God now. After many ages he has gone back to his original home or abode of Immortality and Eternal Bliss.

[TWENTY IMPORTANT SPIRITUAL INSTRUCTIONS, A Series of talks on Swami Sivananda's Twenty Important Spiritual Instructions.]