Man is never born free. He is born in chains. He gets born to become free of these chains. So, we were born prisoners, prisoners who live in a labyrinth and have so many walls around us—not just one. We are not aware of it, and that is the worst part of it. We don’t see those “real” walls. We see only these solid walls, which are far less real. We have developed a perspective, and we look at everything through that perspective. That is our prison. We become prisoners of our own concepts, belief systems, prejudices and assumptions. Imagine yourself in a crowd. You can’t see your way out, nor can you see the whole crowd. You only see the few people around you. If you are in a forest, you don’t see the forest, you see the few trees in front of you. Your perspective depends, very narrowly, on your immediate experiences of life and the impressions you have received. You have built your own personal, subjective reality. You have your own little world, and your world is entirely your own creation. Howsoever you may try to share it with anyone else, it is impossible. Each person is a specific product of one’s own prison house. 

The impressions of past lives have programmed us to have a certain attitude. They have given their own color to the entire objective world. To see the world in your own subjective way affects your perspective. We look at everything through that perspective, and that is how we view our own world. Thus, we superimpose our own subjective reality on the outside world, which is already unreal in the sense that our senses do not inform us correctly regarding the nature of the objective world. Thus the relative reality of the outside world gets diluted by our inner relative reality created by our perspective. We are the prisoners of these two relative realities. 

Our belief system, too, heavily affects not only our behavior but it also molds our experiences. Finally it creates our so-called fate. People hold deep secrets in their hearts—secrets of experiences so shameful or painful that they do not want to think or talk about them. These create insurmountable barriers in opening up their energies. Thus, they remain locked within themselves. In order to cover up some inner fears or hidden weaknesses people develop an overly aggressive personality or overly bright social façade. They protect themselves with these shields or buffers, and they lead incomplete lives without much joy or inner freedom. Through this crippling attitude, they create a disappointing life and hypnotize themselves into believing that it is all they deserve, all that is available to them.

Do you know how programmed you are! How hypnotized you are! You think you are regular guys because you don’t stray from your track at all. Since your childhood you have had countless memories. Were they lost on you? Even those which you have totally forgotten…one day they will wake up. When we leave the earth we wake up and so do all our memories. Whatever you think you have forgotten will become very much alive because you have to relive it again in order to transcend it. If you want to transcend something, you have to go through it. If there is a door of fire, you say, “I want to go out of this door.” But to do that you have to go through the door. So everything you have experienced in your life has to be recapitulated by you so that you may know what worth it had, what influence it had, what chain reaction of karmas it had started. After getting all the memories out of your way, you get ready for the next lifetime. If you do not filter them out, then you will carry all the trash from this lifetime to another lifetime. Even after filtering, there is still a lot of baggage we have to carry from the past that becomes our shackles. Those memories are congealed in our subconscious and they sit like a rock beyond which we can’t move.

You had relationships with your father, mother, brother, sister etc. They might have been heavy ones. You didn’t notice at the time, but that was your whole world. You opened your eyes…your mother was your world. Then someone else… Inside yourself you were very wide-awake. As a very small child you were just giving the impression that you did not know anything, could not talk, could not walk, but you knew a lot at an inner level. The child feels how people are talking—in a loud or soft voice, how loving to each other they are, or how they kick each other. If two people quarrel menacingly, even in low voices, the child knows it. It gets threatened. In that helpless state, whatever is heard or experienced goes straight to the subconscious mind, into its memory bank and soon is consciously forgotten. Whatever we bury inside us rots; it doesn’t vanish. Those half-forgotten memories mold and form our later experiences, our conduct, our opinions and beliefs. They color our outlook on men or women or the world. They push us to choose certain directions in life, not necessarily favorable or healthy.

Our conscious experiences give us a perspective, too. A woman married and divorced four times asks an astrologer, “Will you tell me how my fifth marriage will be?” Does she need to consult astrology? Four times she was married. She is carrying her whole astrological chart in her mind and bitterness in her heart. She is lonely. She just wants a male body around the house for security or for an emotional or sexual outlet. She openly says she does not trust men. There is absolutely no earthly reason why that woman cannot have a wonderful marriage this fifth time, but her own programming is her worst enemy and a little provocation from her husband will throw her into the old orbit of past experiences. She will start re-living them for the fifth time.

We don’t have a perspective only about others; we have a perspective about ourselves, too. That is another wall more slippery and treacherous. The moment you have a perspective about yourself, you brand your identity with some characteristic marks totally redundant. Then you never change. You always stay like that. The same is true about your impressions of other people. In childhood, meeting a person is a fresh experience. We have no opinion about others. But when we grow up every encounter with another person leaves an impression on us, which turns into an opinion about that person. So, next time when we meet him, we project on him our judgment about him, and the real person vanishes. Your friends are not ever-changing people as they really are. They are frozen in a character-cast provided by your opinion about them. We are never fresh in our outlook, nor are we fresh so far as our own perspective about ourselves is concerned. These are the barriers on the path of growing freely in a healthy, natural way.

If we were free at the time we were born, why did we get born at all? A free soul doesn’t have to get born. He is liberated. He doesn’t have to take birth. We get born precisely because we are not free. We have to become free from something that has hooked us in the past. So we come like dumb, driven zombies lifetime after lifetime to fulfill some desire. We get born to work something out or do something that previously was not properly done. We messed up something; we overdid something; we under-did something. We didn’t help someone when the need was there. Or, someone didn’t help us. We didn’t have a good spouse, and we yearn to have a good one. Maybe we left our father because we couldn’t get along with him, yet we loved each other, and we yearned to be together. So, for many reasons we may get born. 

Each person is choosing his own territory for certain experiences he needs, and therefore, his choices are limited. It is like someone who is living in a bathroom or kitchen or living room all his life, not realizing there is a beautiful front or back yard, too. Countless people spend their entire life only thinking of their physical needs—what to eat, how to satisfy their appetites, how to provide food for their children. Paradoxically, human beings are certainly very flexible in their perspectives, fixations and obsessions. 

Once there was a great sage who came upon a pig. He said, “What are you doing in a drain?” He took pity on that pig, “You spend all your life in a dirty drain, dirty water. Why?”
The pig said, “Sir, I don’t know what else I should do?” 
“Come with me! I want to help you.” The sage had compassion for him.
The pig trotted behind the sage. “Sir, where are you taking me?” 
“Well, I am taking you to heaven.” 
“What is there in heaven?” 
“Well, there are rivers of nectar, divine music in the air, abundance of ambrosia and other celestial delicacies to enjoy.” 
The pig hesitatingly said, “Would there be a drain there, sir?” 
The sage said, “Don’t be stupid. Do we need drains in heaven?” 
The pig’s pace slackened. 
The sage realized the pig was lagging far behind, “Hey, what ails you? Why don’t you come?” 
“Tell me for the last time, sir, there may not be drains, but is there drain water available anywhere, just enough for my snout?” 
The sage said, “There is nectar…nectar!” 
The pig replied, “Who told you I want nectar? Why do you think that I need nectar! I am very happy with my drain water.” And he ran back, and threw himself into the ditch. 

Many well-meaning listeners skip a meaningful and relevant discourse because they get bored. Lots of people will go back again and again doing their routine. Whatever their preoccupation, it doesn’t give them real pleasure any more because it is so stale. It becomes a heavy burden on them, but they are slaves to their addiction. They get stuck. It’s difficult to escape from the reality that our perspective has created for us. 

If a boy is taught from his birth that a plant doesn’t need much water or soil as much as it needs his love, he may say, “Okay,” and believe you. You’ll be surprised to find there may be very little water in a plant, but the boy will talk to the plant everyday, and the plant will grow. It is very true. It happened in Scotland. Some people carried out an experiment. There was no fertile soil or fertilizers. There was only sand on the beach, but they were growing the biggest fruit, the biggest vegetables. There the boy might be playing Mozart near the plants. A plant might come to the child in his dreams and tell him, “I don’t like Mozart, anymore! And all the time you have been playing Mozart. The other plants like Mozart, I don’t!” The boy says, “I will play Ravi Shankar, okay?” So the plants started growing. Scientists went there and lived for months watching what was happening. Thus, it is true, the plants can talk to us and can thrive only on love. Such a boy will have a different perspective, and for him, the plant will come alive. 

You live in your own reality. If you could only go beyond that reality, then you would find there are other realities, too. You can’t imagine the feeling of joy when you transcend your own reality! How do you do it? The first important thing is that you should truly believe in the truth that yours is just one of the realities or probabilities which you are living. You should not think there is nothing beyond it. The next step is to act on it and sincerely try to find the truth. Once there was a student who professed to be seriously interested in enlightenment. His teacher gave him a copy of Kathopanishad. It is a scripture that describes in a very sensitive and esoteric way the process of self-enlightenment and acquaints us to our true nature. He gave it to the student and said, “Read it with great attention, and whatever you read make it your own.” 
The very next day he came back, and said, “I read it; I read the whole of it in one sitting. You were right, it was so interesting.” 
“Have you any questions?” the teacher asked.
“No,” he said, “It’s pretty self-explanatory.” 
“Self-explanatory? People have spent a lifetime contemplating on the mysteries revealed in that scripture.” The student returned the book. He had read it as if it were a detective novel, and it left no mark on him. We remain locked within our complacency and pretend there are no spiritual or intellectual challenges.

Of course, mere intellectual exercises are fruitless. The land of intellect is a dry land. So many knowledgeable people are around whose lives have no light. There are very few philosophers who became self-realized. Why? They deal so much with concepts, thoughts and theories, but they don’t practice anything themselves! Therefore if you get one little thing, then make it your own. It should be something that touches your heart, then that is the right thing for you.

It is not enough that we intellectually accept the theory that our perspective is a prison. We should do something to break the prison walls.

Once we are convinced that we are prisoners of our concepts, then we should change in some tangible way. What is the way? To move. To do something about it. That is the first step. We express ourselves through three functions that we perform: thinking, speaking and acting. We always do these things in our own specific way. We have a set pattern and we always have a set reaction. All people can easily predict our behavior. “He will say this, he will not say this.” A father says, “I know my son!” For him the son is a piece of machinery encased in a transparent box.

Obviously you are a slave to your routine. So, change. Surprise your friends; surprise yourself. Break down those descriptions that narrow down your personality. Don’t have a stereotyped personality. 

Freedom comes to you if you break the mirror of the image of yourself. We all live and die for an image. If you are trying to have a seat in the Senate, well, you must have an image. That is why they vote for you. Whatever you want to “become,” you need an image for it. But if you are a pilgrim on the path, the endless path of spiritual understanding, you’ll do serious harm to yourself lugging behind you a decadent, redundant piece of memory called an image, which has no spiritual utility. One thing we can do is to change all predictable actions—routines, hobbies, set choices, defined likes and dislikes, etc. Mix them together like cards. Shuffle them well and take any card out. That is your new step. You have to become impersonal in order to loosen and finally cut the strings that are holding you so tight to the personal mundane world. Then you will rise above and obtain the vintage view like the one who has an advantage over others because he is in a helicopter and can see someone a mile away, which you cannot do on the ground. Thus, you should become a stranger to yourself just for the heck of it. Only then can you solve your own problems.

To become a stranger to yourself means to become a witness to your acts and thoughts. It is done discreetly, alone, within your own self. Do things that others may not necessarily know what you are doing. Change the way you think. Whenever a thought comes, re-think it. That is the way to improve. When a thought comes, don’t act on it immediately. Don’t take it as final. When you hear anything, don’t act on it. Think, is it all right for you? If you think it is, do it. That is what a warrior does. He doesn’t wait for a big mission. Every little thing is a mission. 

So, when you think, think again. Before you act, stop. Don’t act. Don’t believe your instincts, or whatever name you give to them; they may be conditioned reflexes programmed in you. You are not an animal. Animals have unerring instincts. An animal goes to a berry tree and doesn’t taste it. It knows that it is poisonous. Your instincts may misguide you. So don’t act impulsively. Stop! And then, if your better judgment says, “This is the right thing to do,” then do it. It is good not to open the mouth unless you are sure three times that what you are saying needs to be said. If no one misses much from your silence, it is better to be silent. 

Only by keeping a strict eye on yourselves can you break the shackles of slavery. There is a vicious chain of reaction that binds you. You say something, and you don’t believe in it, so you don’t act on it. You act, but your act is not in harmony with your thought. And your thought is not in harmony with what you say. So you end up as fake. You have to ask yourself the question, “Why?” When you speak, ask yourself, “Why?” When you act, think, “Why should I act?” And when you think, think about what you are thinking, “Is it the right thought?” Another thing is this: Always put questions to yourself, reflect on whatever you have done—was it right? Introspection and retrospection should go together. At the time when you are doing something, remain aware of what you are doing, and after doing it, look back to be sure it was rightly done. Remember, you are the doer and also the witness. This can be done before you go to sleep with great benefit. Bring to your mind the doings of the whole day, and you will do a great favor to yourself. Reflect, “Could I have done better?” You will cut short the work you will have to do after your death. Because you will work out whatever you have done during the daytime, and you won’t have to postpone it. Your life will become so light. So, remain aware of your actions, remain aware of what words you speak, and also be aware of what thoughts you have. Once you become aware of the thoughts you have in your mind, you will be a finished human being, which is another name for a seer. 

It is also true that we need not completely depend on our past impressions or experiences of this or a past life. We should understand that we are creating our personal reality through our conscious beliefs and attitudes regarding ourselves, others, and the world. So, finally we are thrown back to the irrefutable concept that the secret of power lies now in the present and not in the past. By striving in the right manner we can consciously change our reality. We need not feel helpless thinking our subconscious is directing our life, “I can do nothing about it. I am a victim of my unconscious.” We can certainly bypass it. It is true that the conscious mind has the power to command the subconscious and direct inner forces to help us in creating a life we wish to live.

You belong to a certain level of consciousness. You can push yourself up higher and higher by improving the quality of your thoughts. And then in this very life, without anyone knowing it, you will be leading the life of a sage, a very wise person. Continue doing everything that you are doing now. You will not have to abandon your family; you will not have to sacrifice anything except old habits. After a while certain habits themselves may renounce you, without your renouncing them. And you will drop the old perspective like old clothes that you don’t need anymore. 

Thank you, very much!