Who Is the One Looking for Freedom?

Duality Is Bound To Feel Like A Constriction We were saying the other day that most of the trouble is because of this notion of me and mine. But when we look, we see that all these perceptions and sensations are appearing. Actually, nothing divides something as me or mine unless we apply the filter of the mind, the lens of the mind. So, all these sensations are appearing. What makes this voice mine? I don’t see it. This mouth is just speaking away. [Smiles] It could just be another mouth speaking. So this idea that something divides me, some sensations are me and some sensations are not me — and we don’t even leave it at that, we also make a third category, which is that among the ‘not-me’, there are some sensations that are mine, and those also cause us a lot of trouble. This is what we call attachments. So, a set of sensations is me, another set of sensations is mine, and then there is another set which is not me or mine. But in naked perception, in pure perception, these distinctions don’t arise. Now, for thousands of years, masters have told us that once you start making the distinction, then it opens the doorway to suffering. If you make the fundamental distinction of me, that itself is enough. That, I am something, this set of sensations is me, I am this. Then, if you take yourself to be limited in that way, then somewhere, maybe, your vastness calls out to you and says, ‘But you must become bigger’. So, then you say, okay what is the way to do that? I must desire this and I must desire that. That’s the mind’s version of becoming God, by becoming the owner of all that it we can perceive even as not me. Then I say: I want this, I want that, I want this also, I want that also because it is not happy with just this limited set of sensations. Okay, I will increase myself by having a lot of things which are mine. But all of this trouble only started because you firstly labelled yourself as something limited. Do we see like this? Now, in itself, nothing is playing except the mind. In itself a perception of something is not saying, me, me, me or mine, mine, mine, or not me. As I keep saying, look around this room, un-labelled, and tell me where the distinction is. And make no distinction, not just between objects and the space in the room, but also make no distinction between that which witnesses all of this and these perceptions. Don’t even take a subtle position of witnessing. That which is just is. It does not need our position-taking. Now, I can guarantee you that our doubt is only coming from one place, which is the voice of our individuality, the voice of separation, which is saying, ‘No, no, but, what about when I am not in Satsang’. Any random thing: ‘How do I keep this? But who will pay my bills? How will I run my life?’ Life is here now. How are you running it? Who is running it? How are you holding up your being, your existence? Not only don’t you have to not run it, but also you couldn’t stop if you try. Like stop being. [Scrunches face to show great effort] So, the problem is that ludicrous. The mind is the seller of a non-existent problem. And then it says ‘but solve it’. You see, it convinces you that the non-existent problem is a problem and then it says, ‘But you must solve it. Have you really solved it?’ And Satsang is the recognition that there is no problem as such. In Truth, in the company of the Truth, there is no problem. Nothing divides you, nothing separates you. And once you take on this fraudulent division, fake division, then life can have lots of make-believe problems. Once you put yourself in duality, then it is bound to feel like a constriction. Once you see that actually no duality, no opposites, actually applies to me in reality, then even that statement is not needed.