Bondage And Freedom

When we were children, we did not develop such a sense that might have enabled us to know what is bondage and what is freedom. Why? A child is born free. He doesn’t need to have a sense of what bondage is—he lives with freedom. Therefore, we take up the example of those people who are grown up and have begun to feel they have a sense of bondage. At the same time, they know that in that sense there is the dislike of bondage. While facing certain situations, they do not know that the very situations create bondage, that if they execute any action in those situations, the result will be bondage. That is where a human being does not know which action will bind him. …

At the back of the eyes, whether I see or not, there is a human mind. And the mind is thinking all the time. It is moving. We do not know, “Let the mind function. Why do we have to execute our thoughts?” The reason is that at that time we do not know we are free. So we are missing the knowledge of our own freedom. We have associated ourselves with the bound entity of the mind, which cannot function in any other way than whatever it is bound for, or is wheeling, thinking and stopping, and thinking and changing. Being associated with the functioning of the bondage of the mind, I, although free, do not know I am free. So I get associated with the mind, with the eyes and ears, and so become bound by the senses and the mind.

We do not know what this human head is. And many days and years pass without any study. Ultimately, we come to know, “So many years have passed, and that which I have been forever desiring—the sense of freedom—has not yet arrived.” … What is it? You are seeking freedom—even while going outside, going to the bathroom, getting up from bed, going to the office, and doing things. So the work of a human being is to find out freedom by way of his own actions, which should result in the sense of freedom.  But the sense of freedom is not that one action has finished and then freedom came because you got its result. No. For again the mind functions and again there is bondage.

So a human being is not bound by a house, roads, friends, people, books or by forms seen by the eyes or sounds heard by the ears. He is bound by having an agency, the mind. And he says it is there. How is it he believes it is there? Because he is mixed with the mind, so the mind is there, and then he thinks, “I am there.” And when the mind is not there, he thinks he was not there. He does not realize he is always there. But whenever the mind comes again, then he thinks, “I am there.” Whenever the eyes see or the ears hear, he thinks, “I am there.”

What is this phenomenon? A human being is born with a machine, tool, body, or form which has been made in such a way that it is not like a tree or stone. It has consciousness, senses, hands and feet, and they all function without any plan. Then, who plans? We do not know. Because we think we are the body, we have accepted it. By birth it has been accepted that “I am hungry, so I need milk, water, food and to go somewhere.” We are all endowed by birth with the capacity that we are connected to the body, and everybody feels, “I am the body.” So the sense of I arose—which, I had said, is not there in children. As a child, a human being was free from I. He was free from such a sense which says, “I am the body.” That was freedom.

So freedom is where the body is not. Freedom is where the sense of I is not. And a human being is what? His mind, body, senses and organs. The mind and senses are responsible to make the sense that “I exist.” In this way, that which is called the soul, or a person who suffers and enjoys, has been made. It has been made because of the body, senses as well as the mind, which, although invisible, is a sense. So the senses, mind and body of a human being are insentient—yet they appear to be sentient as well as insentient.

Whoever sees this gets confused, whoever knows this gets confused. Who gets confused? The very Being who was not born before, but who was, in the Being state, Pure Free Forever. By birth, he became born as a body, so he became, solid, gross, apparent. And his unapparent, pure free nature is now changed into this nature. This nature is destructible, because in time and space, every body and form changes. So it is now a swabhav, the nature of a human being, as against the Swaroop, Truth, Existence, Bliss, or Pure Being, which is his true nature. Our true nature is indestructible. Why? It has never become a form, it never became in between time and space, it never is time, it never is space.

There is no awareness how a human being is born. There is no explanation, and no one takes care to examine, “Why is it my body came into existence?” So a human being thinks he is only the body, because only from the body does his life start. The body is already solid and bound by time, space, needs, joys, and the sense of avoidance of unhappiness, diseases and sickness. Since the whole body is nothing but in time and space, so it has diseases and pain, a kind of modification. Now, some of the diseases can be counteracted by medicine, or chemicals. … That shows that chemicals are the nature of the body, which mixes with chemicals. The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, body, senses and nerves are chemical. Yet they appear to be like this, and whatever knowledge we have, we know it.

Then, mental worry comes. From where does it come? Mental worry comes only when the mind is there. As a child, the mind was not there, so there was no mental worry. If mental worry comes, then it affects the body. So disease is created by worry and worry is created by disease, and we do not know the nature of both. When the mind creates disease to the body and the body creates disease and sickness to the mind, what should be done? We have to know who is that who can find out what is the nature of the body and the mind, who does not want any worry and disease, and who doesn’t care for happiness that creates bondage, so he does not want that happiness also. That means he must have the nature which must be Swaroop, true. When there is no modification in it, no body is in it, then it is free.

That free nature appears to have become a body. By becoming a body, the very free nature has forgotten its own true nature. So every human being has forgotten his true nature. Even if he knows “I hear somebody saying, ‘Your true nature is Pure Free Forever, you were pure at one time before birth,’” yet he cannot understand this, because he is forgetful, he is sleepy. However hard he hears, but the ears hear sounds only and some meanings which school or teachers have taught him. …

So, what is a human being? He’s not a sheep, goat, dog, elephant, camel, tree or stone. He is a human being with consciousness. And he does not know from where consciousness came. If consciousness is there, then it must have come from consciousness. Whatever is the source, so will be the effect. But he is only dealing with the effect. He does not know the source, and the effect does not tell him the source, because the source is Pure Free Forever.

Therefore, a human being has to know what the nature is of the human body. If he studies, he finds that the body is in time and space and its nature is changing. It is destructible, and its swabhav is that it wants to adopt all the actions which change. The changing mind of a human being adopts actions which change—and the result is changing. So he lives the changing, the destructible. If he is living in the field of the destructible and became habituated in it, but inside he desires, “I should do such actions that I should be free, yet the result is always bondage,” then he needs someone who is Indestructibility, who has come to know his true nature, and at the same time who has studied and come to know the nature of the gross mind, senses, and body, which are all these five elements—earth, water, fire, air and space. These things a human being can know, animals cannot.

So we began to study. These five elements are responsible for making your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, sense of touch, arms, feet and all that. Who has made the changing forms in time and space? Through study, we have come to know there are three powers (gunas)—sometimes it is very fine, sometimes it is very active, sometimes it is very dull—these are the powers. These powers belong to the root nature (mool prakriti). The swabhav of the human body and mind is this root nature, these five elements, the five senses of knowledge, the five organs of action, the mind, intellect and ego, and the five subtle elements (tanmatras). That became the twenty-four (tattwas) which are the swabhav that creates action—the swabhav of the human mind and body.

But what is Swaroop? Swaroop does not belong to a human mind or body. Swaroop means true nature. Our true nature is indestructible. So indestructibility is not the nature of the kshaytra, the body, the tree, or the form. It is the nature of Kshaytragya, which is timeless, bodiless. And it is only the Self, the Me, who knows everything. I have counted twenty-four tattwas, but there is a Knower somewhere. That Knower is Kshaytragya. But one has to know what its true essence is. The true essence is Swaroop, and Swaroop is indestructible. If it is indestructible, then all its formations should be indestructible. So Kshaytragya knows, the Knower knows, that he is indestructible, and thus anything that has been created by him is indestructible.

But as soon as he creates himself as a human being, he forgets. That’s where we say that God has forgotten himself, who he is, or that the Kshaytragya became unconscious of who he is. Unless he remembers, unless he unfolds the knowledge of indestructibility, of that space which is Pure Free Forever, unborn, unchanging, undying, a human being will remain in the field of kshaytra, the body and body formation, and his senses, organs and mind will function, his sleep, dream and waking states will function, and they will continue passing in time and space. And in the end, the time will come that the breath stops and all the actions, all the movement stops.

If a human being does not have this study, he will never come to know what is that with which he is studying, knowing, acting and experiencing the results of action, with which he experiences that “Bondage is there, and I am bound,” and also experiences, “I am bound, but I want to be freedom, so free I am.” What is the solution? Only the master, the Guru, can give you the solution by way of the answer. But you have to be pure enough to get the answer.

The answer is that your reality is not a human structural body to die and decay. Your reality is the Knower, the Space. If you call the Knower as the body, then that has become your mistake. It is called identification. It is called the formation of the Knower. The Knower cannot become form, but you have mixed it, you have accepted a wrong thing. That’s called the ego-sense, and a human being has it. That ego works throughout, which makes the mind and senses, and the mind and senses make the soul, who says, “I am. I am suffering. I will die.”

If you want to be knowledgeable of your own true nature, the freedom, I say what you can do while analyzing: you should hear what the I is. Because the I is there—you say I. If you say “I am the body” and then the body sleeps, at that time the I is not there: the body is there, yet the I cannot say, “I am the body.” That means the I is separate and the body is separate. If you analyze that “I am doing the work of analysis,” then you must be the Nondoer first, the I, and then examine. So delete examination and the doership of examining, and retain I. Keep holding I.

You may say, “Well, I woke up—I woke up as a person.” At that time, keep holding I: the person woke up, not I. The person is changing, and all that. Then you are holding that I is that which is free and the Knower. You may say, “I know that I am hungry.” Keep examining food, hunger and the body—but keep holding I. Hunger and all that belongs to the body, this kshaytra, this tree, this field, but I is free. You may say “I want to go,” then keep holding that the body will go, the mind will come and think, the eyes will see, and all that will function, but keep holding that I is free. In the same way, you may say, “I want to entertain my friends,” then keep holding I and keep entertaining your friends, and know that they are not that I, and you are not bound with that.

So that which is known is all bondage. And that with which you know is all Knower, it is all freedom.

In this way, there is a possibility to examines two fields, two sides of your own. The Knower side means the Master, the Knower, the Self, the God, the Being, the Pure, the Free, the Forever: it is you yourself. To that, I call Shyam Space, or Space only. But you get caught in this space which is beyond air and clouds, and this also changes. But that Space which is Shyam is Pure Space. The very Space, when it manifests, changes into this—people think. But we are to let everybody knows that it never changes. Shyam never changes. That Being never changes. Why? It holds itself that “I am the Knower, and all that which I am seeing is all Me.” So it is all Space, unchanging. But when a human being is born, the very birth makes him forget. He has to remove his forgetfulness of the kind that he associates I, the Knower, with the body and gets bound. So you have come to know what is bondage and what is freedom. Freedom is Space forever. It has never become bound, even while doing your actions, doing and seeing dreams, and doing and seeing the work of sleep. It is free while doing, and seeing, and performing duties and responsibilities as a human being with a body and tool.

If you keep the company of those people who have forgotten, you must know they are all bound. Don’t trouble them. Don’t say they are bound, that they are mistaken. Because you have come to know the freedom, not they. They will not know, because they have not studied. And you cannot make them study, you cannot make them change Therefore the Seer, the Knower, is the one who does not disturb his own creation which is bound—and he knows that it is not bound, it is free. But all the persons, the creation, know that “I am bound.”

In this way, it is essential that we do the study of the Being, the Kshaytragya. But while performing actions with the body, we cannot find it, because it is not Pure Free Forever. There is grass growing, a cow is grazing in the grass, flowers and trees are there, the clouds, sun and shade are there, and people are held in our memories—somebody is coming, somebody is going, a dinner is to take place, somebody has gone, somebody has committed to come. If you are free, then all that is happening, but you will remain free.

Free Being remains free, it is not that the bound being can plan freedom. The bound being can do one thing: he can listen to the master and get the information first of what his true nature is. His true nature is unborn, unchanging, indestructible, Pure, Free Forever. After hearing this, he should be alert in every situation, in the daytime and in the night, and analyze—holding this I—that “I am free, as Guruji has said, as the Master has said.” I is forever free. It has no form, no modification, no crystallization. Nothing touches it. But I is not form. Therefore, one has only to know as a Knower.

So many times I say that you are the Knower. Knower-you, Knower-me is the Knower. But you think you are Dan, you are Alka, you are Veena, and you are Shyam. No. We are the Knower. If the Knower remains, then it is good company, because then we know we are living in the bound space and with bound people, and we can deal with it. Then, you become a very good actor. You act throughout life and remain free. Thank you.