Freedom

So, our subject is freedom.

It's always the same. How do we become free, free from the limitations of dimensionality? The way we become free is simple, and it's complicated. It's simple in theory, that is to say, all we have to do is stop our thoughts. When thought stops, a doorway opens into dimensions that are pure and unassociated. They're nonbinding realities. They're non-samskaric, which simply means that they're beautiful, they're ecstatic. The consciousness of the worlds that we can get to through thought - those dimensions are very limited. They're limited by time and space, a sense of past, present and future.

We seek a freedom we haven't experienced yet, and we seek an ecstasy we haven't known. Mostly, I think, we seek our own innocence, a state of joy in which we don't feel age, a body, desires or aversions. There's a very pure feeling of beingness, of aliveness that's always there.

We become used to thinking that attainment in self-discovery is external. We get used to the idea that we have to go someplace or that something can pass us by. In other words, we think of inner attainment as having a dimensionality, a physical structure, because that's how our mind looks at things.

Our mind is very visual. We look at the world and we see up, down, back, forward; we're caught up in calendars and watches; we like to look at things very physically. We like to think that consciousness and the mind are dimensional, and they certainly are not. Dimensionality only exists because the mind can perceive life that way, but that's only one simple method that the mind has for perceiving itself, for perceiving life.

Freedom is a difficult thing because we think it's difficult. If you were sitting in a pastoral environment - perhaps you lived in Hawaii, your needs were simple, the rent was paid, the food was provided and there was an instructor you could go and see on a fairly regular basis - perhaps in an environment like that, a stress-free environment in paradise with nothing else on your mind, you could sit and learn to meditate. Perhaps. But as you know, life for most people isn't like that. We have to make a living. We have to deal with automobiles, insurance, income tax. We have to deal with health, hygiene, shopping.

We have to deal with a lot of things, which is why a long time ago they invented the ashram, the spiritual household, where a certain amount of time was spent by each individual in maintaining a physical location, in cleaning the house, in maintaining the gardens, maybe growing some food, but a lot of time was set aside for meditation and prayer. That was the ideal. The idea was you could go lead a fairly simple life, get out of the social system, which is so demanding, and have some time to meditate, hopefully to be with an instructor of self-discovery who was much further along in their understanding of freedom and their attainment of personal freedom than you were.

The problem, of course, with monasteries, ashrams, convents, is very often the director of such an institution is no further along than the people who study there or that the structure becomes so political. Ideally, everyone would be selfless and kind and working for each other's enlightenment, the enlightenment of the whole universe. That's usually not the case. Usually there are people who mean well, who obviously have an aspiration of some type for truth or just want to get away from the world, but usually these institutions become extremely political. In other words, they're really small societies, and much of what you hope to avoid in societies you just find there.

I personally have lived in a number of spiritual communities over the lifetimes and directed a number of them. I feel that in today's world, one is better not to live in such a place because one can, with a minimal amount of effort, earn a very large amount of money these days since there isn't as much of a class system as we had in other lifetimes. A person can really set up their own little ashram, their own little community, in their own little apartment or condominium or house, do commerce with the world and not be undone by it. I've devised a way, through computer science largely, of making a great deal of money in relatively short periods of time and in a way that will actually develop the mind, further the mind's awareness, and that will assist one in being able to meditate, in other words, and be free.