In plain words
Freedom must arise from the heart's level. What is the heart? It is not merely this organ made of blood and flesh. The heart does not belong to one place, or one time, or one country. The divine principle that is the same everywhere, at all times, in all countries and in all people: that is the heart. This heart has no form. But what we take to be the heart in man's body is something that comes midway and goes midway. To recognise that divine principle by recognising which one has recognised everything: that is true freedom.
They said, 'Yathā aṇḍāṇḍe tathā brahmāṇḍe'. Aṇḍāṇḍa means the individual; brahmāṇḍa means the form of the whole. The person who has recognised himself can recognise everything. But who is this self? The man of today is trying to know everything in the world. He believes he knows everything. If by chance he does not know, he tries to find out. But man tries to know everything without knowing who he is and what his own nature is. In the Upaniṣad, the great scholar called Uddālaka, for the sake of study, sent his son Śvetaketu to another guru. Over twelve years he grasped all the branches of learning well. But, swelling with pride that he knew everything, he turned foolish, came to his father and said, 'Father! I have learned all the branches of learning.' Then the father questioned him. 'Son! Have you studied that by knowing which everything becomes known?' he said. Śvetaketu came down a little from his pride. More than anything else, the pride of learning runs wild. Then he taught his son Śvetaketu well that Ātmajñāna, Brahmajñāna, is needed more than knowledge of the world. A small example. When we see someone and ask, "Who are you, sir?", if he says, "I do not know who I am", what do we think? In the same way, when you do not know who you are and try to know about other things, are you not a greater madman than that madman? So first of all, one must try to recognise oneself.