Ignorance is at the root of all desire and fear, which are painful states and the source of endless errors

Q: Life is sad.
M: Ignorance causes sorrow. Happiness follows understanding.
Q: Why should ignorance be painful?
M: It is at the root of all desire and fear, which are painful states and the source of endless errors.
Q: I have seen people supposed to have realised, laughing and crying. Does it not show that they are not free of desire and fear?
M: They may laugh and cry according to circumstances, but inwardly they are cool and clear, watching detachedly their own spontaneous reactions.  Appearances are misleading and more so in the case of a jnani.
Q: I do not understand you.
M: The mind cannot understand, for the mind is trained for grasping and holding while the jnani is not-grasping and not holding.
Q: What am I holding on to, which you do not?
M: You are a creature of memories; at least you imagine yourself to be so. I am entirely unimagined. I am what I am, not identifiable with any physical or mental state.
Q: An accident would destroy your equanimity.
M: The strange fact is that it does not. To my own surprise, I remain as I am -- pure awareness, alert to all that happens.
Q: Even at the Moment of death?
M: What is it to me that the body dies?
Q: Don't you need it to contact the world?
M: I do not need the world. Nor am I in one. The world you think of is in your own mind. I can see it through your eyes and mind, but I am fully aware that it is a projection of memories; it is touched by the real only at the point of awareness, which can be only now.
Q: The only difference between us seems to be that while I keep on saying that I do not know my real self, you maintain that you know it well; is there any other difference between us?
M: There is no difference between us; nor can I say that I know myself, I know that I am not describable nor definable. There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself. And that vastness is also love.
Q: You see love everywhere, while I see hatred and suffering. The history of humanity is the history of murder, individual and collective. No other living being so delights in killing.
M: If you go into the motives, you will find love, love of oneself and of one's own. People fight for what they imagine they love.
Q: Surely their love must be real enough when they are ready to die for it.
M: Love is boundless. What is limited to a few cannot be called love.
Q: Do you know such unlimited love?
M: Yes, l do.
Q: How does it feel?
M: All is loved and lovable. Nothing is excluded.
Q: Not even the ugly and the criminal?
M: All is within my consciousness; all is my own. It is madness to split oneself through likes and dislikes. I am beyond both. I am not alienated.
Q: To be free from like and dislike is a state of indifference.
M: It may look and feel so in the beginning. Persevere in such indifference and it will blossom into an all-pervading and all-embracing love.