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For many traditions whose aim is liberation, the self on behalf of whom we desire freedom is the very cage that confines us. To seek freedom for this self is to pursue a delusion. Various Vedic schools and Buddhist and Jain sects agree on this point yet diverge on what constitutes “liberation.” It has been described as the blissful absorption of consciousness disassociated from materiality, the enlightened insight that sees past the mirage of individuated existence, the loving relationship between a devotee and a deity, or (in the case of Buddhism in particular) an indescribable attainment subject to neither perception nor non-perception. Although none of these senses of liberation resemble “freedom” as we typically understand it, I want to resist the impression that such “spiritual” trajectories are thereby depoliticized. This presentation tracks how notions such as agency and autonomy shift within a liberational framework that views the self itself as the source of unfreedom.