> In inner-directed meditation there is such an
> absolute identity between the subject (the meditating self) and the
> object (the self to which the meditation is directed).
I don't think so. I'm with Marvin Minsky here -- who, I believed, quoted somebody else saying something like this: "We cannot think about thinking without thinking about thinking about *something*." That *something* is the objective world. So, a closed-loop self-referential match between subject and object is impossible. Yes, we are a part of the objective world -- in which sense, we share a common foundation, which is why we can reflect it -- but we are also necessarily counter-posed to the rest of the objective world -- in which sense, we are different from, and opposed to it.
> But what in Hades's name is a "free" society?
A communist society. Which -- to paraphrase Silvio Rodriguez -- is a society "as free as it can be" built with the humans that actually exist here and now. So freedom is a relative concept. It's relative to the power that humans have to (1) conform nature to their designs and to (2) shape up their social structures in such a way that people are not pitted against one another, but rather help one another in the pursuit of each one's individual development.
Interesting that we're discussing this when my neighbor is telling me this is the end of modern civilization. :)