A few people have that desire (for enlightenment), but it is mostly a weak desire. They are not serious enough, sincere enough or honest enough to focus exclusively on that desire. They make a little progress, then succumb to some desire, get distracted, and revert to their old state. This happens again and again. A few steps forward are followed by a few steps back, steps that put you back into the traps of the mind.

Many lives can come and go like this without any real progress being made. Even those who have been very decisive, who have moved towards their goal without getting distracted, can falter when they near the end of their journey. Mind will still be there, and there will be a strong desire to continue to use the mind. These people will come face to face with the Self, but the mind will still be there, evaluating and planning. They will think, unconsciously, ‘I have come this far by my effort, and now I have to use this same mind that brought me here to understand what is happening, and to decide what I have to do next’.

This will cause them to falter and keep them away from their goal, and as they fail to reach that goal, that same mind will become busier, trying to work out why it is not getting what it wants. It will be a very rare person who can drop the evaluating mind and merge into that nothingness, without thinking about it in any way. You have to be serious, and you have to want freedom to the exclusion of everything else. It is just a joke if you think ‘I want freedom’, and then go back to all your old habits, or think that you can attain it by meditating for half an hour a day.

Many people come here and say ‘I want freedom’, but they cannot keep their attention on this goal for any length of time. You walk down a road, determined to go somewhere, but on the way you see a dance performance by the side of the road and stop to watch it. Within a few minutes you have forgotten the purpose of your journey. This is how it is with most people who say ‘I want freedom’.

The determination to focus on the goal and not be distracted is not there. Mind is very tricky. It can fool you at any step of the journey. It can distract you when you have decided to work for freedom, and when you come close to that meeting with your own Self, it can trick you into believing that you are hallucinating and make you believe that what you are seeing or experiencing is not worthwhile.

~ Papaji