Do you really want Liberation?

Pursuit of liberation begins with a desire for liberation. However, man does not even have the desire for liberation. He is easily satisfied doing a few religious activities. He expects liberation but lacks a genuine desire for it.

Generally, one would eat food when one feels hungry. But in the modern day pseudo-lifestyle, your meal times are fixed. You never ask the body whether it is hungry or not. You know it is the time to eat, so you eat. Such ‘hunger’ can be false. Mere thinking about mealtime can make you falsely believe that you are hungry.

You must try this experiment. Ask someone at home to turn the clock to make it an hour early so it shows 1 p.m., your regular mealtime, when it is actually noon. Looking at the clock, you will spontaneously feel hungry! Or try making it an hour late so it shows noon when it is actually 1 p.m. On that day, you will feel hungry later! If looking at the clock determines your hunger, your hunger is artificial; it is not real. It is only a mental need, not physical. In the same way, religious activities without a yearning for liberation are only mental demands, not the need of the soul. It is only an emotional outburst triggered by external circumstances.

You Want Both

Dig a little deeper into your desire for light and you will realise that you want both, the illumination of enlightenment and the darkness of worldliness. On one hand, you say you don’t need the world; you want only the bliss of the soul. Yet, for happiness, you run towards the world. In short, you don’t wish to become free from darkness, yet you wait for illumination to happen.

Your selfishness can be fulfilled only in darkness, and to remove the difficulties of darkness, you desire light. Don’t you realise that without removing the darkness, you cannot light your lamp? First, realise that you actually want darkness alone. You have always hoped to acquire joy from darkness alone and fear that illumination will shatter your dream world. You love worldliness alone, yet you believe, and make others believe that you want liberation. You speak of liberation but to become happy, instead of bringing changes in yourself, you try changing the world.

You speak of liberation only to comfortably live in the world. How will you light the lamp if you are so attached to darkness? Even if someone tries to light it for you, you will soon blow it out. Even when someone shows compassion towards you, it does not make a difference to you. You are in love with darkness and wish to live in that alone.

Many Enlightened Ones have showered Their compassion upon you in the past. The sun itself has come knocking at your door, but you chose to hide in your darkness. You know that with light, your desire and hope from darkness will be destroyed. So you fear light. As long as you have even a bit of inclination to acquire from darkness, you will not let the lamp be illumined.

Hypocrisy

You are so dishonest that you are not ready to accept the way you are. You do not have the readiness to accept that, ‘I want to live in darkness alone. I want happiness from worldly objects and events.’ You join those who speak about light and show how interested you are in it, but you want to live in darkness alone. If you accept that you are merely talking about light and are not really interested in it, one can find a way out. But you are such a coward that you can’t confess your attachment towards the world. You love darkness but you want to show that you are a lover of light. You can’t give up your attraction of being called religious for there is reputation and honour associated with it.

Your attraction for this honour linked with religiousness makes you start pretending to be religious. You actually use religion to hide your flaws. Showing aspiration for illumination, you continue to hide your delusion. Your cry for light is merely to hide your passion for darkness. There is no inner transformation. You still want to make changes in the outside to gain joy and peace.

There were two friends fishing on the banks of a lake. Seeing the lake-supervisor approach, one of the friends started running. The supervisor chased him, caught him after a mile and a half and said, “You will be prosecuted for fishing without a fishing licence.” The man immediately took out his licence from his pocket and showed it to the supervisor. The supervisor was surprised and said, “If you had the licence, why did you run?’ The man said, “I had the licence but my friend didn’t!’

This man ran far away from the spot so that his friend could escape and hide. The same thing happens in your mental world. You speak so much about liberation and keep your delusion safe and hidden! To conceal your wrong inclinations, you act pious. This is the ‘benefit’ of being ‘religious’ without truly yearning for liberation! No one will doubt you.

If you want transformation, catch your desires. Go to their roots. Start accepting your flaws. That is the first step towards liberation.

Stop Self-Deception

Many approach me for learning how to meditate because they want inner peace. But they show no enthusiasm in fulfilling the conditions necessary for meditation. You can’t get success by merely begging. Unlike a beggar, a true customer is ready to pay the price, for he knows the real value of liberation. If you want liberation without paying its price, you are a beggar asking, ‘teach me meditation, give me satsang, show me the means.’ When it comes to putting anything at stake, you withdraw. If you can’t get by begging, you are fine with the way you are. You keep complaining that, ‘I have a lot of difficulties. Once everything is set, I will begin the pursuit of liberation.’ Amidst the chase for wealth, power, family, status, reputation, etc., you are stranded. The Enlightened Ones ask you to first stop deceiving yourself. If you genuinely desired for liberation, you would have given up everything and worked for liberation alone.

Turn Within

Only when you turn within, you experience bliss. A mind wandering outside can never be happy or peaceful. It gets sorrow wherever it goes. In spite of wealth, status, relations you have remained unhappy and wounded within. As long as you are living with the belief that, ‘I will get happiness from other’, you will remain sorrowful. Happiness is your nature, so by focusing within and staying steady within, you will experience it. If happiness were to come from the other, why haven’t you found it till now? Many times you have extended your begging bowl in front of others, and sometimes had some good fortune too, yet, why have you not been happy? Don’t you realise that those you beg from are beggars themselves, begging from you and others? If indeed they had happiness, why would they demand from you?

All in the world are asking for happiness, yet no one is seen receiving it because asking itself is a mistake. By asking, you continue being outside. You forget that what you are asking is your own inherent nature. What is missing is identification with it.

To turn towards the source, your true Self, for happiness is religion; to turn outwards for happiness is being irreligious. None have ever gained happiness from outside, and those who have turned within have never failed to experience bliss. Even though their ways have been different – some by dancing, some by sitting in meditation, some through devotion and some through knowledge, but the direction was the same, for their destination was the same, the Self.

Where there is forgetfulness of the Self, there is suffering. Where there is awareness of the Self, there is bliss. By remaining outside, you will gain nothing, and by turning within, nothing will remain to gain.