Asteya ‘s spiritual meaning does not simply mean ‘not stealing an object from another person’, since the meaning of the words ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘mine’ or ‘foreign’ depends on various factors. Asteya, actually, means not to steal from our own selves. All people constantly steal from themselves. If you observe your life as well as that of other people around you, you will see how elementary and prosaic it is. People make five types of movement: eating, sleeping, working, fighting and entertaining themselves. However, humans come into this world having endless possibilities to develop their talents, to become ingenious, to fulfill any desire, to reach higher states, to become like Christ, Buddha or Zaratustra. Instead, people have a mind only for their family, work, small goals and desires suitable for animals. You are like the owner of a great castle who, however,  lives in its the basement. You can find the exit to all the beautiful rooms, you can live in all the rooms at the same time, but you come close to imagining it. This castle only means a few million dollars in your pocket - and millionaires often end their lives by committing suicide - great fortunes seem to be more significant than any wild fantasy. Just as an ant is incapable of understanding the life that humans lead, you are unable to be aware of your infinite prospects and potential. The individual is a slave of the collective unconscious, blindly imitating the thoughts, actions and desires of the social circle in which he or she belongs.

People spend their time without being aware, working like donkeys without an aim, because they need to spend their life somehow, often looking to the outside for what they could find inside: seeking knowledge, happiness, power, authority, searching for the love of God outside outside. Yet, everything is inside us. The power coming from the outside is temporary, fickle and may easily be lost. The knowledge from books, without the equivalent experience, is futile and dead. The happiness coming from the outside is transformed into suffering and pain. If you have a desire, at first you should perceive the state that you wish to reach, imagine that the desire has been fulfilled, experience it, and understand if in reality it provides the state of wholeness you wanted to achieve. You already know about it inside you. Just visualize and experience what you desire with greater intensity. Increase this feeling inside you and, then, you will be independent from what is ‘external to you’. In the past, you needed an external motive or to be left alone or to receive advice from somebody in order to have this feeling, but now you are free. It is only a feeling, a movement of energy in the body, which depends only on you. Power is the will, the knowledge, the happiness, the love for the whole world. Yoga is the development of the inner activity, the development of the energy. An ordinary person is externally active, but internally passive, while one’s feelings and mind change as if they were flung from the outside. It is important that you learn to control them consciously, in order not to be dependent upon the external world. You steal from your own selves, when you live expecting for something to happen by itself or for someone else to do something for you, waiting for the prince or the magician to come to you. This will never happen, because everything dwells only inside you.

What you need is celebration. But you are waiting for holidays or for a work permit so that you can celebrate. You also need food, drink, friends and presents; in some cases you celebrate because you were offered a promotion or a prize. Still, you should and can be in constant celebration, without a cause, just by holding on to the feeling of the movement of cosmic energy inside you: this always exists and waits for you to open up and fill up with it.

This is true wealth.