Acharya Prashant explains a verse from the Niralamba Upanishad which states that bondage is the plan to devote oneself exclusively to liberation (moksha). He clarifies that the very pursuit of liberation is bondage, and the liberation that the ego desires is nothing but an extension of the ego itself. The liberation that bondage craves is simply another dimension of bondage. Bondage has no right to ask for liberation; the only honest act permissible to bondage is self-observation. Bondage exists because it does not know itself; ignorance is bondage. Therefore, someone who does not know themself has no business asking for liberation or anything else, as they cannot possibly know what liberation is. The problem with the ego is that it does not know itself, yet it thinks it knows liberation and derives pleasure from discussing, writing about, and conceptualizing it. Further explaining, he cites another verse: "Bondage is what springs exclusively from imagination." Anything that can be imagined, talked about, or experienced is a form of bondage. Truth is not an object to be imagined. Truth is freedom from experience and, more accurately, freedom from the experiencer's urge to gather more and novel experiences. The more fascinated a person is by new or exclusive experiences, the more ignorant they are of their own bondage. It is not about how one feels, but about the distance one has from their feelings. The spiritually evolved person is characterized not by the quality of their feelings, but by the distance they maintain even from their evolved feelings. The speaker distinguishes between the spiritually un-evolved person, who has raw, juvenile thoughts and is stuck to them, and the evolved person, who has wonderful thoughts and feelings but does not identify with them. A true free thinker is one whose thought is free of himself. It is possible to think, feel, and emote from an impersonal center, without the need for self-preservation. The quality of a thought is determined by whether it is free of the self. A high-quality thought is free of oneself, while a low-quality thought has one's personal interests at its center.