Ashtavakra Gita 18.50 -

Here Maharshi emphasizes how important and wholesome is the role of freedom in attaining the supreme goal of spiritual pursuit. First he refers to the goal of joy, happiness. Our life is interactional, no doubt. Interactions are in and by the senses in the body. One sense after another comes in contact with its respective objects, producing five sensations, namely sound, touch, etc. When these trickle down to the mind, happiness or unhappiness results, which is not the creation of the objects or the senses. Senses merely send their pulses to the brain.

Any experience, including happiness, is produced by the mind. Seeker’s focus, hence, should solely be on the mind itself. Mind will generate happiness only when it is free of all agitations, concerns and the like, the root cause of which is desire and delusion. The whole task is thus to free the mind of desire and the consequent shackles. Finding desire to be harmful and unnecessary, drop the habit and make the mind free.

Desire and hatred make a dvandva set, pair of opposites. Freedom is actually freedom from all dvandvas. Krishna explains in Gita that the supreme abode is reached when one sheds the feeling of undue self-respect, delusion, delusional clinging, etc. All these result in sukha-duḥkha dvandvas. When one develops evenness towards the inevitable sukha and duḥkha, he reaches the supreme abode (Gita 15.5 ).

Call it by any name, the supreme Abode is not the least outside one’s body. It is not even in the body. It is in the supra-material plane of Consciousness, in that of the mind and intelligence. It is far closer than the body and its inside.

Let your attention be inward. Make the mind free of all strangleholds of various emotional urges. Let the intelligence also be free of all delusion and doubts.

The lightness and transparence that dawn inside you, when the mind and intelligence become free, bring all the attainment that the seeker yearns for.

When you say fire or think of fire, do your tongue and mind get burnt? Likewise, when you are free, no act of the mind and intelligence taints you at all.

Krishna points in Gita: When intelligence assailed constantly by doubt, after listening to the conflicting words of the Scriptures, becomes still, free, then is the supreme spiritual attainment (Gita 2.53 ).

See how important is the freedom from desire and doubt. Supreme redemption as well as the supreme abode and restfulness, are gained only when the mind and intelligence become free from all their assailments. What more is needed for the seeker to have the right focus, in his search and pursuit?