Do We Actually Really Know What Is Better?

Our bondage is intellectual (if there is one). Let’s say our ‘seeming’ bondage is intellectual. What is this intellectual or intellect? This evaluative sort of process or power. This evaluative principle which is constantly judging everything and it becomes so pervasive that we feel like that is the way to live. And notice that even now, it [intellect] will look at everything that it hears and tries to put it in your framework of good or bad and also the framework of ‘is this better for me, or worse for me’. And we remain stuck in this idea of ‘better’ or ‘worse’, but ‘for whom’ we rarely check. And then (even on hearing this) we may say, ‘It may be better for me if I was to check’. [Smiles] So, all our judgements seem to be on this paradigm of better or worse… good or bad, but do we really know? Even if it was for ‘me’, let’s say the mythical one was not mythical, do we actually, really know, what is better? Without this idea ‘better for me’ or ‘worse for me’ I feel that most of the struggle is gone. Now, is the ‘going of most of the struggle’ better? [Smiles] Even the words of Satsang are shared in that paradigm (in a way), that if you surrender and if you inquire then something will be better. What if we look at this in most direct way, with no prescription? Today, like fresh, would that be better? [Smiles] I wonder if you can look at it. This seeming ability to judge, this almost voice of judgement that we call the intellect makes us believe that we are limited objects, which have a starting state and an ending state. ‘I am starting here, but it should be better, I have to go towards that which is better and not go towards that which is worse’. This is very primal and we have discussed that we have two concerns about this, the first concern is that (usually) it is evaluating based on what is better for the ‘me’, and this ‘me’ is non-existent. And second is the presumption that it knows what is better or worse. And we looked at this concept of bondage and freedom, struggle or empty of struggle. And this yearning as we call it or the longing for freedom also presumes the starting state which is bondage and an ending state which is freedom. So, in that structure then, you want to keep moving towards better and better and better, towards the ultimate goal of freedom. That is why this point, which is ‘that this is It’ seems so alien because we are used to evaluating ourselves and setting up structures based on which we can then gauge what is better and what is worse. So, what I am inviting [you to] is just a looking, without this judgement that ‘is it better to be better or better to be without better and worse?’ How many are with me? [Laughs] This idea of constantly evaluating ourselves on some paradigm and the seeker is constantly evaluating itself on the paradigm of bondage and freedom. It is seeking freedom and then whatever it feels like (or you presume will be better for your freedom) that you say, ‘is good for me’ and that which you think (it) moves away from freedom, you say, ‘that is bad for me’ (that’s all I am saying). This evaluative criteria presumes a journey, presumes a path: that’s why when you feel like you meet something or someone who is guiding you to that which is immediately apparent, it can seem like very strange. And also, you will ask yourself this question that ‘is it better for me, if I were to check on what is immediately apparent’? This is very primal human conditioning. If you look at your intentions, your judgements, your perspectives on life, what is the spectrum on which they are built? Do we really know what is good for us, what is bad for us?