Questioner: How can we help each other towards liberation?
Acharya Prashant: This question arises first of all because one perceives a difference, a separation, a dividing line between oneself and the other.
So, you are asking, “How can we help each other towards liberation?”
Liberation is liberation from this dividing line. Liberation is liberation from this divisive sense of the self. What else is there to be liberated from? One sees how fundamentally you and me and him and her, and those of the past and those yet to come, are all one. One sees that though we may appear different in myriad ways, yet our fundamental demand, our basic urge, our deepest love and our longing, are just one. And that is liberation. Now you know what is there to be junked; now you know what is good for you. And you also see that you and the other are not different, so obviously you know that what is good for you is also good for the other. Now you don’t have to work out how to help the other; now just your being is good for the other. Now you don’t have to devise ways or methods to be of use to the other; now one’s own liberation is the liberation of the entire mankind.
And one sees that one’s personal liberation is a myth; it’s either all together or nobody at all, because anyway the dividing line was false. When we say the ego does not exist, that the ego is a myth, that’s what it really means: the dividing line, the little boundary of the petty self—that is a myth. Because if I believe that my self-interest is different from your self-interest, then there is bound to be conflict, then there can be no alignment or harmony, and that’s a basic misconception. One thinks that one can develop or progress or be joyful at the cost of others. One feels as if it is a zero-sum game. One feels almost as if even liberation is competitive politics: only one would race to the throne and have the thing. It’s not that way.
