The Illusion of Seeking: Why You Are Already Free

You have traveled from far and wide, carrying the heavy burden of your questions, your spiritual practices, and your deep aching desire to find yourself. Let me spare you the journey. Let me shatter your illusion right here at this very moment. You see, you cannot find yourself because you are not lost. To search for the self is the ultimate absurdity. It is the wave in the ocean, running frantically from shore to shore, crying out, "Where is the water?" or "How do I reach the ocean? Which practice will dissolve me back into the sea?" The wave is the water. You are the self. Who told you that you are bound? Who convinced you that you are a fragment, broken and detached from the whole, needing a path, needing a teacher, needing a lifetime of purification to return to the self-aware reality? Who is the culprit who started this entire journey of liberation in the first place? You see, this is the grand trick of the mind. The mind thrives on a journey because the destination means its death. The moment you realize you are already the self-aware reality, the mind's game is over. Look at what you do in the name of seeking. You meditate, you restrain your senses, you torment your bodies, you chant formulas, and you dissect scriptures; you accumulate spiritual concepts like a merchant accumulating gold. But I tell you this: all seeking is a form of denial. By seeking what you think you should be, you deny what you already are. Every effort you make to become free is the very chain that binds you. Why? Because the effort itself assumes that you are currently bound. If you believe you must do something to become liberated, you have already accepted the lie that you are trapped. If you practice stillness, you are reacting to your inner noise. If you practice renunciation, you are still obsessed with what you have left behind. If you strive for enlightenment, you are merely chasing a projection of your own ego. And this is the truth: you are already liberated. You are the self-aware reality from day one. There was nothing else apart from it. Cease all efforts. Sit still and relax into your own being. Because a noise trying to understand silence will only make more noise. But a noise that relaxes itself will give space for silence to exist. You see, you are not the body. You are not your senses. Nor are you the intellect that analyzes these words or hears me. You are the pure, unmoving, stainless self-aware reality in which the entire universe arises, floats, and dissolves. I know you might say, "But Aswin, I feel pain. I feel anxiety. I experience the chaos of the world. How can I be free?" You feel these things because you have mistakenly identified yourself with the instrument. If a mirror reflects a garbage heap, does the mirror become dirty? If it reflects a beautiful garden, does it become holy? The mirror remains exactly as it is: untouched, unstained, and pure. You are that mirror, and you are a self-aware reality. You do not need any method, any technique to become what you already are. We have been fooled, saying that you need a technique and you need a method. You know, that is like a wave saying to another wave, "You know, if you follow this method, we'll all reach the ocean," or that's like a wave from the west saying, "You know, if we go to the Indian Ocean and visit some Indian waves, ashram, we will find our true self." That's all absolute narrow-minded stuff. The body will grow old and wither; let it. That's the nature of the world. The mind will experience joy and sorrow; let it. These are mere ripples on the surface of your infinite, innate being. And I'm not joking. You are the witness, the Sakshi(Witness)—not the girl named Sakshi, but the real witness. You are not the doer of actions, nor are you the enjoyer of their fruits. The belief that "I am the doer" is the black snake that has bitten you. This is what Ashtavakra would say. It has injected you with the poison of suffering. You see, there is no stage to this realization. There is no gradual path. The idea of a gradual evolution to freedom is made for the weak minds who love their bondage too much and are afraid to let it go. They want a lease on their suffering. They want to be told, "Do this for 20 years and then you will be ready." I do not offer you a tomorrow or any such things like that, because I do not want to insult you by giving you a method. I offer you the immediate, uncompromising now. If you wish to be free, know yourself as the self-aware reality and remain free. You do not need to purify your mind before you can realize the self. The most absurd thing anyone can tell you is that you need to purify your mind in order to know who you are. That's like a wave saying to another wave, "Only if you become the most purest wave, you can know what ocean is." That's the most narrow-minded stuff. Can darkness purify itself to become light? Absolutely not. You simply bring the light, and the darkness is revealed to have never existed. You are not bound by anything. Bondage is nothing but the thought, "I am bound." You do not need liberation. You think that you are separated and you suffer. You are already the infinite ocean. Stop acting like a beggar at the gates of your own kingdom. And this is the truth. Disown your virtue. Disown your sins. Disown your concepts of right and wrong, holy and unholy, gurus and non-gurus. These are all dualities born of the mind, designed to keep you spinning in the wheel of samsara (cycle of birth and death) The self is beyond virtue and vice. You are the observer of all and always truly free. Your only bondage is that you see someone else as the observer. Do not look outside for validation. You see, you are the self-aware reality already, whether you like it or not or believe it or not. Do not look inside for an experience. The self is not an object to be seen, felt, or experienced. It is the seer of all experience. You cannot experience the self because you are the self. Who is there to experience whom? Drop the heavy luggage of your identity. You are not a man. You are not a woman. You are not a seeker. You are not a sinner. You are not a saint. You are not a spiritualist. You're not non-dualist. You are not this or that. You are the formless, nameless, timeless, absolutely, purely, utterly the self-aware reality, whether you like it or not. And this is the truth. If you think I'm joking and I'm fooling you, please turn your mind within and see things for yourself. The cage was never a cage actually. It was a wide open field—like this field. Only your stubborn refusal to look at your own hands became the very thing that you are not able to see the chains. Including me, initially, even I was saying it is all very difficult, but let me tell you: it is difficult because we are holding on. Cast away all concepts. You see, melt into your own intrinsic nature. You are the absolute self-aware reality, and you are already free. Rest in that freedom, and then you will understand what I'm saying. And let me tell you something important: the realizing is not done by you or the mind. It is done by the act of realizing.