You can never avoid, escape or be free from the mind

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: How to escape the mind?

Acharya Prashant: You will never be able to escape mind.

Never.

In fact, all these things — freedom from the mind, escape from the mind — are touted in the spiritual market but they all are very fantastic nonsense.

How can there be freedom from the mind? What do you mean? Who will get freedom from the mind? The soul? The Self? The Atman? Do you mean to say that the Atman was, at some point, chained, enslaved, and now it will get freedom?

What do you mean by freedom from the mind? As if there is something that the mind has captured and then, there is some agency which will go and liberate that.

But ‘freedom from the mind’ is such a widespread phrase. When you say, ‘freedom from the mind,’ who will be free?

The mind itself.

So, just say, ‘Free mind’. And a free mind means free of itself, which means no-mind then. Who is there to enslave the mind except for the mind! So, what do you mean by a free mind? Who was enslaving the mind in the first place?

Listeners: Mind

Was the Self coming to enslave the mind? There is only the mind and the Self. When you say freedom from the mind, would the Self be liberated? When you say, ‘A free mind’, do you mean that the Self was trying to enslave the mind?

The mind itself is the slavery.

There is nothing called the freedom of the mind, from the mind, for the mind. Nothing.

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