What causes bondage?
How have you come into bondage? Is it through actions? Is it because of a woman? Do you not have to investigate this? It is only upon investigation that you will be able to find a way to become free. You are bound only because of your ignorance of the Self and so how can you become free by performing external rituals? Can your wife free you? If your wife frees you, can you be freed by your home? And would you be freed by destroying attachment to worldly things? ‘The one bound through ignorance of the Self can only be freed through Gnan, the knowledge of the Self’.  As long as, ‘my mind’ exists you are the owner of the mind  (parigrahi) and when you become the knower and seer of the mind then you are not the owner of the mind (aparigrahi). ‘We’ are apragrahi in the ocean of parigraha.
Are you bound through attachment and abhorrence (raag and dwesh )? No. You are only bound through ignorance of the Self (agnan). That ignorance is the root cause. The Vedanta says, “Get rid of mud, vikshep and agnan and the Jains say get rid of, raag, dwesh and agnan.” Ignorance is common to both and it is the root cause. Raag, dwesh, mud and vikshep are the secondary causes. When you get rid of the root cause, the rest of the causes will fall away automatically. When the root cause is destroyed, when ignorance leaves, the seeds for the next life will cease to be sown. As long as there is ignorance, there will be bondage. It is not a problem if one life is wasted but the problem is that it creates bondage for a hundred more lives.
Who likes bondage? This path of evolution (samsaran marg) is like a prison. From the beginning till the end, it is like a prison and when a person becomes aware, ‘I am free’, then he is freed from that prison. A person can become free when the illusion (mithya darshan) goes away and he attains enlightenment (samyak darshan). Only a Gnani Purush can make one have the awareness, ‘I am free’. The Gnani Purush never becomes one with his body.
All these instruments have bound you; electricity, elevators etc., all the instruments of comfort that were created have now imprisoned you. You have become dependent on them. Each person should have his circumstances and instrument such that they promote his independence. A human being should not become a slave to his comforts. These instruments which have made one become so dependant on them, will decrease and there is a need for that.
If people who desire freedom do not find the right path, then the very instruments that were meant to give them freedom will become binding. Instruments people seek out for freedom and moksha end up binding them because they are not the right instruments (sat sadhan). A right instrument is the one who is established in sat (the eternal), and such a person is the Gnani Purush. All other instruments (sadhans) will continue artadhyana and raudradhyan, and that is bondage.
Even the animals do not like this bondage.  Today when I was coming here, I saw some men who were trying to put a bull into a truck. The bull obviously understood it was being taken somewhere and so it kept fighting and resisting them. As it continued to fight the men, a crowd of about five hundred people gathered around, as if bliss of freedom was being distributed! There is tremendous suffering in bondage. The fact that we are still here on this earth is a direct proof that we do not have the knowledge of the Self.  Had we realized the Self, would we not already be in moksha?
It is only in the human form that one may attain moksha. From this human form he can go to any one of the four life forms, and moksha too can be attained only from a human birth. A real religion is that which gives you moksha; it gives you liberation. The rest are not real religions.
The Lord has said, “In this era of the current time cycle, moksha is unattainable, but the path to moksha is not; that path is open.” When people were told that liberation is not attainable, they drifted towards the wrong paths. Of what use is a reign of the Lord, which is to prevail twenty one thousand years if the path to moksha were closed? People did not understand this.  Here, people can attain causal-moksha (karan moksha; you do not bind causes for the next life), freedom from creating new causes. There is the final moksha called karya moksha. It is an effect of causal moksha. It is not possible to attain this here. One can reach all the way up to 99,999 but he cannot attain the complete 100,000. There are two kinds of moksha:  karya-moksha and karan-moksha. In this era there is karan-moksha but karya-moksha is closed. After acquiring karan-moksha, one has to go through one more birth. I give you karan-moksha within one hour! Currently, a phenomenal path to moksha is at hand.  ‘We’ are the ornamental decoration of this reign of the Lord.
All religions merge as one at the door of samkit; a state of right vision.  Then comes the gigantic gate to moksha. Samkit is attained only when all divisions due to differences of opinions cease.  The Lord has said samkit will not occur because of divisions. The ascetics have conquered their propensity towards sensual-pleasures (vishay), however these pleasures are not the culprit and are independent. For endless lives, the attachment and insistence (matagraha) they have carried towards their own viewpoint, which is the reason for their wanderings life after life, and this is still very much alive even today. They have become opinionated; they live in their opinions. They are conquering that which does not need to be conquered and they do not conquer that which does. They have all conquered their propensity for worldly pleasures but they have not conquered their attachment to their viewpoints. They have become rigid in their viewpoint to the point of obstinacy.  Obstinacy to a viewpoint supports paap karma in the worldly life. Obstinacy to a viewpoint is always present where the Gnani Purush and his mahatmas are not to be found and where there is obstinacy to viewpoints, the Self can never be found, even if you look for it. The Self itself has been covered up by obstinacy. Obstinacy to any viewpoint will not allow one to be free. The Lord has not regarded sense-pleasures as attachment (moha) but he does consider unrelenting adherence to viewpoint as attachment.