Is This Urge for Freedom More Than Just a Personal Desire? - 11th January 2016

So when we hear like this and we say, 'Okay, I like those attributes—immortal, invincible—so maybe this is the truth, the Supreme,' like that, we have to use these words sometimes so just so that you can accept the truth of who you are. But actually, no label suffices because we can say 'supremely magnificent' and also say 'supremely nothing.' There is nothing phenomenally, and nothing definitely in language, that can be used to describe the truth of what we are. Very beautiful, something I was reading on the weekend by Kahlil Gibran, and he says that one morning I woke up and I forgot to put on any of my seven masks. Very... he says, 'I have seven masks that I put on, and one morning I woke up and I forgot to put on any.' I'm paraphrasing, of course. 'Forgot to put on any of my seven masks, and this was the first time I experienced the truth.'

So the identity, the person, is what he would mean by masks. So if the waking happens, the presence of I Am is there, but we don't then put on any mask after that. What is missing in this? Nothing is missing in this. So this mask of identity, this mask of ideas about who we are—as Consciousness, it is completely in our power to not put them on. Just like it is in our power to put them, to give them our belief or not to. Because sometimes many of us, I see, fall into this Advaita trap. You say, 'There is no identity, therefore who should not believe?' With this, 'don't believe your thoughts, don't believe your next thought' is not a pointer for the identity. Why would I waste my time telling the identity to do something when it doesn't exist? This pointing is just a monologue that Consciousness is having with itself.

So here it is recognizing that there is this power of belief, the power to pretend to be a person. Therefore, it is speaking to itself saying it is only leading to identity, to person. And then immediately we are brought to the right now. There is nothing ever wrong with the right now. It is neither right nor wrong; it is just what it is. Maybe it was Shakespeare who said something like, 'Nothing is ever right or wrong except when we think about it.' So all these clues have been around forever. Just now, who am I without my stories, without my ideas? Who am I? If the truth is true, then it must be present here right now. Stop all waiting. Stop all waiting for mental confirmation and just report from the right now. It cannot escape you. Don't believe any ideas that 'I'm still not there yet' or something like this. The truth cannot escape you because you are it.

Don't try to become the truth. Before you can decide what to do to get freedom, you are free. Before you can take one step towards freedom, you are free. But the identity can never be free. And if you're going to be frustrated about the fact that the identity is not free, then it's going to be a long, long frustration. The infinite frustration will be this one. This is why this is my, you see, delusion that we even have to say this. That we even have to say that the identity cannot be free gives us a clue as to why this is such a big delusion. Why? Because identity does not exist. The identity is just a set of ideas; it does not exist. Therefore, so simply it is seen: it cannot be free, it does not exist. And yet this is the power of our belief. Because we have believed and believed the existence of this non-existent one, that's why we want to make it free. Such is the power of this play.

And it's completely possible that in five years we could be in another level in the play. I don't know whether any of you track the technology news, but Facebook has this device called Oculus Rift, which I've spoken about in the past as well. Now it's available for sale. The first models of Oculus Rift—you put on this headset and you're transported into a different world. I haven't experienced it; this is what I've heard. You're transported in this virtual reality and it seems very real, you see? So it could be that five years later there's an Ananta inside the Oculus Rift sharing satsang over there, trying to convince you that this world that you're in, the Oculus Rift, is just a virtual world. That's all that's going on. And what would I say? Just discover who you was. What were you prior to this appearance? Before all of this starts coming. The trouble is that you're attaching to something that is appearing here. Just go beyond that.

See, inside that virtual reality system also, this would be exactly the same, because actually it is exactly the same. So we don't know at what level of this play, what iteration of this play, we are in right now. Okay, so let's take this example a little bit further. So you put on this headset. What part of you do you carry into this game? Really contemplate. What part of the originality of you do you carry into this game? Has the being changed? The being is the same. The identity could be different. The body is obviously different because you're in this virtual reality and you have this computer body. The being is the same; it's constant. And the awareness—the content is changing, but the awareness remains the same. So this remains unchanging: Consciousness and awareness, awareness itself.

And even in this realm, we have seen that this content here is coming and going. I cannot attach to it. Even emotions, external world objects, people, relationships, money. That is why in this game I feel that questions 'Can you stop being now?' and 'Am I aware now?' are very vital, because these two questions take you beyond the realm of appearances. So do we want help for this character that is coming or going, or is it something more primal than that? Is this urge for freedom more than the quest which is personal? This is what I mean when I ask, because I know this question can cause some confusion, when I ask: 'Are you done playing now?' This is what I mean. Is this urge for freedom more than just a personal desire? Because if it is just a personal desire, then it will not be fulfilled. How to check this? It's an interesting question, that's an interesting contemplation. But in a sense, we check that in every satsang because nothing personal is offered here, and yet we continue to be. And every day, more or less, I repeat that I have nothing here to offer for your identity. There's nothing I can do for you personally.