We Are Already Free

The following is from a talk given by Pravrajika Vivekaprana of Sri Sarada Math, New Delhi, during her visit to La Paloma, Uruguay, in September 2000, following her six-week stay in the United States. The full transcript of the talk was sent to us by Caroline Giorgi.

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Question: How does one become free?

Pravrajika Vivekaprana: Whatever I have understood I can share with you. Advaita Vedanta tries to show me I am already free. Instead of thinking that I am not free, and I have to become free, what makes more sense to me is that I am already free. I just do not know about it. Supposing it was true I am not free or that I have to become free—Would it even be possible to become free? I would say that the idea of living free is what appeals to me most. When I look at my own experience, I realize that it is vanishing every moment. It is a question of whether I wish to hold on to the memory of my experience and feel bound by it and become rigid or whether I will let it go as the time and the moment passes and feel free all the time.

It reminds me of a story. A guru and a disciple are sitting on the bank of a river. It is winter and something black is floating in the river. The disciple says, “Should I go and bring this blanket? It is going to be a very cold winter and we will be needing it.” And the guru says, “If you like.” It was a black thing, so the guru says “if you please, if you want to.” So the disciple jumps into the river and in a short time there is shouting, “Guruji! Guruji! Help me!” So the guru says, “What’s the problem? Why don’t you come out? Why don’t you bring the blanket?” And the disciple says, “The blanket won’t let me go!” It was a black bear.

So think of freedom like that. I want to catch hold of something, that is my rigidity, and when I catch hold of it, it doesn’t let me go. So it is a very strange state of human existence that we do not like to pass through life as if on a journey. It is as if we want to get hold of these things that mark the distance on a highway, and catch hold of them and just remain there, not realizing that we are on a journey, not seeing the movement of our own mind that does not stop, cannot stop, and instead of flowing with the movement, somehow we have the mental capacity to feel ourselves to be bound.

I am not speaking about detachment or renunciation, I am speaking about going with the flow in the sense of enjoying each moment, giving whatever is to be given, experiencing whatever is to be experienced. Not to see the dynamic nature of my own mind is bondage. I accept the idea that as experience, I am dynamic, tremendously dynamic and as the experiencer, the mind itself is very dynamic, so there is no rigidity in me. To accept the idea that there is no rigidity in me, is freedom. That is as much as I have understood. Of course, there are books which say a person who is detached does not feel the duality. However, I feel that this concept implies the dynamic nature of human existence. And this dynamism has to be accepted as very real rather than describing it as an illusion. Our experience is vanishing all the time, therefore don’t be attached. A positive kind of understanding is that our nature is tremendously dynamic, you are dynamic, your experience is dynamic, therefore simply let go and accept it as it is.

Question: And why are we trying to catch every movement?

Pravrajika Vivekaprana: Fear. It is a very deep fear. A deep fear which makes us see our freedom partially in space/time and we are scared of losing it and don’t realize it is my awareness that is making the play possible. I see and there is play. I don’t see and there is no play. So that I am the basic freedom that is being projected outside myself through experience. We somehow think of experience as coming from outside, whereas actually this is not possible. Outside my participation there is no experience. So why do we feel this fear? It is because we don’t realize our own freedom to begin with. That I am free. I am free all the time because I give rise to experience. It is not experience that gives rise to me. It’s very subtle, I know. But this is the only way the human mind can really understand it…

I am very happy you have raised the question of freedom. We need to get back this simplicity. I am free. Nobody ever bound me, nobody can bind me. Nothing can bind me. If I want to feel bound after that, nobody can stop me. It surprises me tremendously that we have these ancient sages in the Upanishads telling us directly, “You are free” and “You are nothing but joy, existence, conscious- ness” and I say, “Oh no! I am not that!”. . .

I often think that the greatest disease of this Age is to feel depressed, helpless, and in despair. And supposing somebody says, “All right, come, I’ll take you out of this depression.” But you pull in the other direction with so much energy that you can’t be pulled out (of depression). So are you powerful or powerless?

Don’t feel helpless. Never say “I am helpless.” The greatest sin in this Age is to say “I am weak.” Swamiji says in one of his lectures that the greatest sin is to call a man a sinner. So if you want to worship a God in this Age, the God is Swami Vivekananda. In our imaginary theories, he is called the incarnation of man and he has given the message that you are free. Just accept it. If you don’t want to accept it, what is the alternative? So many masks, millions of masks all around, which are trying to say, “Look at me. I am this mask. I am not free.”

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