For Freedom...

This question has often been asked for thousands of years. So in reply to one king, who had left his kingdom and become a hermit, one sage came near him and asked this question to help him: “Who are you?”

The king said, “I am a king. I left my kingdom, my queen, ministers.”

“What for?”

“For freedom.”

The king was living in a thatched hut, and instead of a royal robe he had opted to have a sack around him. This has got nothing to do with freedom.

And the sage said: “I will give you enlightenment or freedom here and now. Freedom can be attained here and now. There is no need of any tapas, penance, austerities, sadhanas, practices. Wisdom can be attained here and now. Even if you practice, you have a certain notion to attain something finally, and it is the notion, your notion, that will be fulfilled. It is your desire that will be fulfilled in the end. So when you have to entertain a notion to have something else, why don’t you entertain the notion for the first intent, to have knowledge, to be free?”

How, can this freedom be won? Close association with a saint is quite enough; you will resolve your doubts and your mind will be purified to receive. If your mind is not pure, even if God gives you instruction, you will not be able to get it. You have first to purify your mind. Your mind must be purified. Not in one janma, many janmas, you have to be born, reborn, and then the mind will be purified. So in the last janma, in the last incarnation, there will be the desire to be free and this is going to work. You will be asking, you will be wanting the company of a holy person. Somehow you will be led to him, you will be led to him, somehow you will reach him and stay with him. That is on your part, you have fulfilled your part. The rest depends upon your teacher.

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The knowledge is supreme, and if you cannot assimilate it, you cannot get it, then you have to take up your austerities for a long time, not for one age, many incarnations you will have to take, you see, to fulfill your austerities and purify your mind and get ready to receive knowledge. As all rivers enter the ocean, so all the austerities, practices, will lead you to knowledge. That’s how it’s described in the sutras. So those who follow the knowledge or understand the freedom, its not for the first time that they have been successful, because we see some people who say, “We came here this morning and we have finished our job with you. We go back to our home.” It’s not for this. Some people take a week, and some a month. They don’t see their roots. So whatever time we are spending here, it will not go waste. Surely you will be rewarded by this thing. So best of all is going to be to remove your impediments, hindrances. Only you are going to remove your hindrances and not to achieve freedom-- freedom is already there. Freedom is already there.

***

Only you have to remove what stands between you and the freedom in front of you. Some veil is in front of you and that veil is ego. Ego. If you remove the ego by your own self, or someone who can do it, surrender to that person and he will do it. Only you have to remove this ego. When ego is gone, then the mind is gone and when the mind goes, you are placed in a state of no-mind, and this no-mind is very close to freedom, very close to freedom.

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So this is what has been told and what has been done previously by all those people who got enlightened. No need of leaving the kingdoms and going to the forest now. Again and again we speak of this thing: only get rid of your impediments, and simply stay quiet, that’s all. With the very burning desire, like somebody who is burning, and will run to a well, or a river, or a stream, only for water. Someone who is burning must go to the water; he will not go anywhere else. Like this, if you have the burning desire, “I want to be free, in this life, before the end of this life”, this must be a longing always in your mind, then you will be successful. You will have won the game and you will be very happy always because freedom and happiness and bliss go together. All kinds of other pleasures that we seek fade away immediately with their contact itself. As soon as you contact any touch, any pleasure, it will bite like a serpent. Any pleasure, any rose that you pick, you will have a thorn underneath the rose. That’s how it is described by one Persian poet: when you pick up a rose you’ll have a thorn also near the rose. Like this, when you enjoy any sense pleasure it will bite you, you see. Therefore we have to search for very pure freedom, where there is no unhappiness. Otherwise in the world there is sometimes happiness, sometimes unhappiness. They go on alternating and this is called the world, and this is the experience of the ignorant ones. When there is unhappiness, they don’t like it; when there is happiness they like it. So in the case of wisdom, there will be only serenity. There will be no unhappiness, and no happiness either, you see. There will be total peace. Peace is something else. It has got nothing to do with pleasures and displeasures that belong to the contact of the senses. Bliss has got nothing to do with the senses or the mind or the intellect or even the personality, or the jiva or individual soul. This is a very transcendental, fourth state. Not waking, not dreaming, not sleeping. That fourth state is called Turiya in yoga terminology. This state is always available to everyone, you see.

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You know that you sleep, you know that you dream, you know that this is the waking state, so when these states are projected in front of you, you must be somewhere other then these states, witnessing these states, you see. If we give thought to this, we are experiencing, we are seeing this is the waking state. We see it, we witness the waking state. Dream also. We had a dream last night: it means we had witnessed the dream. When we are in deep sleep, we enjoy the bliss of deep sleep. All these three sates we witness, projected in front of us. We do not question who has been witnessing all these three states, who must be out of these three states. Who is it, that was out of these three states and has projected these three states in front of him? So if he turns his head to this state he will be in the transcendental position and he is in the fourth state. So this is to reject the three states. This fourth state is called the fourth state because there is no name for it, yet it is connected with the three states, so it is called the fourth.

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So to win complete, perfect freedom is yet beyond it, you see. That has no name. Witness these states, that I am not these three states. I am the enjoyer of all these three states, but I am not the three states. So staying here for a long time, you will find yourself that you are the absolute substratum. Absolute essence. And you will see that you have been before the creation of the creator itself. And that’s called peace, quietness, emptiness, from where everything rises like ripples, like waves, all silence you see. That is where we all will have to return -- not return, we are there. But we are otherwise engaged. Therefore we do not know who we are. Who we are in reality, who we had been -- due to some reason we forgot. So this is the matter. This satsang is association -- all of us belonging to the same thought, the same longing, is only for this, just to remind ourselves that we all are living in that peaceful, in that blissful, in that conscious, empty state, which cannot be described by anyone so far. None has ever reached there. None has ever described it.



----Papaji


Satsang in Lucknow