Before You Can Do Anything To Be Free, You Are Free - 23rd Oct. 2015

Actually, freedom is much simpler than any mind can imagine. It's much simpler than that. Whatever ideas we might still have about freedom, it is even simpler than that. Don't have to feel anything, don't have to think anything, don't have to believe anything, don't have to practice anything, don't have to go anywhere. And also, in doing any of these, it makes no difference. It makes no difference to freedom. It's prior to any of this. Before you can do anything to be free, you are free. Even in the pretend bondage of personhood, you are free. And the mind will come and say, 'But then what? This doesn't help me. What am I supposed to do? I want to be free.' This is the pretend game that I'm talking about. You are already there. If the mind is saying that you must get to it, what is the starting point of where you are? What you are? We look at that. So we start the work. The destination is different from the starting point. Do we know this? I'm going towards freedom from where? You cannot get out of your freedom.

Then you say, 'But I don't feel free.' Who is the 'I' who feels? 'I still don't think I'm free.' Who knows of thoughts? How is this one bound? It's just some sort of a hypnosis that we have believed ourselves to be that which never existed. That is the struggle. When we look, we look, we look, we don't find, and yet we want to give freedom to that one that we cannot find. Who can do this? Nobody has ever been able to achieve this. It is only when they proclaim that this has happened, then it is only part of the delusion itself, and a fairly nasty part of the delusion, when the pretend person is pretending to be the free person. It is as much a delusion as the person idea itself. Nobody, no way that you can ever make this non-existent one free, isn't it? It seems like the most obvious thing. Why does it even need to be said? Yet this is what this whole seeming journey is about.

So all that is actually happening in Satsang is that as part of the play—which actually even this makes no difference to the player—but as part of the play, it is now dropping all of this identity. It is dropping this pretend person. So every day, that's all we've been doing, just going hammer and tongs at this identity which you cannot find. But the voice of the identity, this is the magic trick. If there is a trick in this, it is only this: that there seems to be a voice which is proclaiming the separate one. And this one will protest strongly. This one is the one who protests, 'But I don't see it.' The voice says, 'I don't see, I don't feel it. You are different from me still. Why can't I be more like you?' This kind of thing can come. Who is saying? They never tell you. In the video game also, sometimes they do, but mostly they don't tell you who the narrator is. Whose mouth is speaking those words which we are hearing as thought? They are perceiving thought, but who is speaking those words? Which mouth are they coming from?

It's tricky initially because we've had this voice for seemingly forever. The experts say that it starts at two, two and a half years. The body is two and a half years old and it's not going anywhere. So can we at least experiment and see for a day or two what happens if I don't believe this voice? The voice is saying, 'Oh, it's going to mess up my life. I'm just going to not do anything.' As if you've been doing so well otherwise with the voice that even for a day or two I can't hear it? In that one day or two, I was planning to move the... that's all I say. Let's see what happens. Who is speaking the words of thought and who is hearing the words of thought? Some of you say, 'I need my thought.' If it is your thought, you should already know what it is going to say. If it is coming from you, then why do you need the thought to understand what it is saying?

Now, in the last few years, we've seen all the tricks that the mind can play to pretend to be you. Who are you without your thoughts? What is here prior to thought? Who says there is thought and there is no thought? Who are you without any appearance? Let thought say whatever it wants. Let feelings be whatever they want. Who are they affecting and how? And as you start to look, you will see that nothing is ever affected. No matter which feeling or thought comes, nothing is really hurt or even concerned. And we're not saying anything metaphysical, esoteric, or even spiritual. We're just saying what is here now. Don't even need to label it as spirituality or Advaita. Just a group of friends over here. I'm just looking at what is going on. And as we look more and more like this, you will find that it is laughable that I believed myself to be that one that I just cannot find now. And every time I look, I don't find. Therefore, could it be that it never existed? Never existed. This person, this identity, is never here now. See for yourself what you're going to present yourself to be. Who are you going to be reporting as? And see how that whole process works. In this moment, you are nothing. Now let's see what we present ourselves to be and how did that happen. This is the power of the truth: it is always true in every moment.