Meher Baba made some comments on this topic from time to time. Here are his comments on bondage, the state of any entity prior to enlightenment:
[Y]ou are bound. And you will be bound and you’ll go on getting bound age after age…But once you are liberated completely, then you’ll realize that there was no binding at all. It was just imagination, a dream… (Aw/IV/3/39)
The power that keeps the individual soul bound to the wheel of life and death is its thirst for separate existence, which is a condition for a host of cravings connected with objects and experiences of the world of duality. It is for the fulfillment of cravings that the ego-mind keeps on reincarnating itself.
(D/337)
All persons have to pass through the state of bondage, but this period of bondage is not to be looked upon as a meaningless episode in the evolution of life. One has to experience being caged if one is to appreciate freedom. (D/128)
Every thought, feeling or action that springs from the idea of exclusive or separate existence binds. (D/167)
[G]ood or bad, both [kinds of sanskaras] bind because both have to be experienced; both have to be spent. So it is impossible to be rid of sanskaras by one’s own self, because whatever you do, it binds. You may think the highest thought—it binds. So too does pity, compassion, virtue, gratitude—all these help
to bind…[S]o how to escape these bindings?…The only wanting, the only desiring that binds for freedom is Love. The lover wants Union, but in this Union, the ‘I’ becomes so feeble that the binding, instead of hindering, helps to free. (LAP/189)
Just think of it—God is within all, in every one, and He is infinite. God is all-powerful, God is all-bliss. And yet, though God is in each one, how helpless we feel! We weep, we feel pain, we feel sorrow, although God, who is so infinitely powerful and blissful, is there! Why? It is because of our own bindings. But there is one way to get liberated from these bindings, and that is through love. (Aw/IV/3/39)
Love is a strange binding. It binds and unwinds. The more you bind yourself to the Beloved, the greater the freedom (unwinding) you have. (LAP/154)
You all find me cheerful, happy, but inwardly, within, I am in infinite agony. Why? Because I experience through all of you your own bondage. (Aw/IV/3/40)
Meher Baba also discoursed on the ego, a help at the beginning but a disadvantage as liberation approaches. See the extended Spiritual Explanation on Ego if wishing to delve more deeply:
One has to go a long, long way to achieve the summit of self-realization. While trying to reach that goal, even rishis and munis (sages) are apt to fall through expressions of egoism. (LH/82)
Detachment enters into the picture, in these quotes:
“The Soul”—to realize My infinite, eternal, beyond state, must detach itself from all manifoldness, from everything that is “creaturely,” and from everything that is individual…[O]ne has to completely escape from the clutches of gross, subtle and mental phenomena. (Aw/XVI/1/8)
The kind of detachment which really lasts is due to the understanding of suffering and its causes; it is securely based upon the unshakeable knowledge that all things of this world are momentary and passing and that any clinging to them is bound to be eventually a source of pain. (Aw/III/4/15)
Finally, a critical element of attaining enlightenment is to achieve control:
If you cannot love each other, then learn to give in, one to the other; when you feel resentment and anger surging up within you, begin to dance, or laugh, or go outside for a moment until the mind and emotions are under control. At all costs, these must be controlled. (A/254)
Keep your mind quiet, steady and firm. Do not submit to desires, but try to control them. One who cannot restrain his tongue cannot restrain his mind; one who cannot restrain his mind cannot restrain his action; one who cannot restrain his actions cannot restrain himself; and one who cannot restrain himself cannot
attain his real Infinite Self. (LB/30-31)
If you had control you would be jewels as disciples, but control in all of you is so disastrously lacking that it makes it very difficult for Me to adjust all your other good points, and this lack makes it a farce…I warn you all very seriously, East and West—control. (LAP/277-278)
As long as you do not interpret thoughts into actions you get the opportunity thereby to exercise control. (TMBJ/55)
Don’t worry about thoughts. It is almost impossible to control thoughts. Let them come and go. It is very difficult to control feelings, but actions can be controlled. Don’t let your feelings become actions. You can control actions. (TK/70)
He who gets control over the mind gets everything under control. (TMBJ/170)
The control of self is more difficult than walking on fire or glass. (M-M/2/42
When your love for Me drives away your lust for the things of the senses, then you will realize Me. (D/405)