प्रश्न / Question 17

What Is Freedom?

स्वतंत्रता क्या है? 

उत्तर / Answer :

The word "freedom" (free-dom) is cognate / सज्ञात / सजात / अपभ्रंश of the Sanskrit word  -- संस्कृत शब्द "प्रियतम" meaning the most beloved.

This could be the first, and the introductory step in understanding what is "freedom"?

To some, though, this answer may or may not appeal. Let it be so. Now let us proceed further. The challenges in living the life are of three kinds :

The Need, the Desire and the Compulsion.

The Need and the desire are the situations that arise and change all the time and from moment to moment. Again, this may be true according to the physical, the mental levels. In addition, also subject to the three states of the mind : waking, dream and the sleep.

The physical body could not be said to go through any of these three above-said states. Even the idea of self or oneself too remains the same through all these states. It is verily the mind only, that is ever so inconspicuous and at the same time conspicuous also, that is said to "experience" these three states.

The state of "experiencing" obviously implies suffering, enjoying or just being in a state of the relaxed awareness of the self. No need at all to explain, to justify it any more. But at the moment this very simple, spontaneous and normal state of "just being" is violated or disturbed, a need, a desire or compulsion emerges in the form of feeling of uneasiness, and restlessness. In response to the same, the mind that hitherto was in this state of the relaxed awareness, becomes a subject to the division of "the I am" and " the "Other, What I am not". Then only there is this question : "how I could be free from the other". This question is a subject-oriented question while "the other, What I am not" is the objective, the object-oriented status of the same mind,  - they are the same, yet two aspects only.

With this apparent division of the subjective and the objective mind / consciousness, the self becomes a battlefield between the two. The experience and the one who claims to have the experience, are constantly in a war. A war though takes place every moment and there is no continuity to it, the unwary mind never knows this root cause of unhappiness.

This very mind, feeling this unhappiness, as something really there tries to remove it in whatsoever possible way. In that sense, this is a war unending only. Always seeking how to win this war the mind gets even more and more tired, restless and confused. There is no end to its misery.

This condition of the mind is an example of : इतरेतर अध्यास / इतरेतर आभास / अन्योन्याश्रित आलंबन,  between two non-existing objects.

The most referred to analogy is of the rope and the serpent deception / illusion.

There is the memory of the serpent that was seen in the past. There is the thought that the rope is the serpent. The two form a couple of two non-existent interdependent objects.

This is how the "ignorance" of the self and the "distraction" take place together. 

Only in the watchful silent attention to this whole phenomenon there could be the peace and the freedom that ends in the awareness of the true state of "just being only", without a trace of the subjective, the subject-oriented or the objective, the object-oriented kind of approach to this Question of Freedom.

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