Page 8 - NAMAH Oct 2015

Namah Vol. 23, Issue 3, 15th October 2015

Editorial

The Metaphysical basis for Integral Health — liberation and freedom

Traditionally, ‘liberation’ from a world of freedom for in the social matrix, we are
suffering, evil, darkness, ignorance, falsehood bound with certain social variables at the
and death has been a cherished destiny of cost of others. One cannot find a cue in
the individual in the Indian psyche. Psycho- psychological freedom too as the personality
logically, the concept of ‘liberation’ arises has the compulsion to revolve around the
from a yearning for ‘freedom’. Freedom is the ego, traits and predispositions, unless one
magic word that beckons man inspite of his can simultaneously identify with the
bondage. We are bound to our ‘fate’ and even dimension of impersonality. This freedom
those who do not believe in the machinations in a true sense could only be found in the
of fate have to concede that we are nevertheless experience of the Spirit that is always free
bound to circumstances, social obligations, and one with the Divine. In other words, an
hereditary influences, ‘biological’ as well as ‘Absolute’ freedom could only be found in the
‘cultural’ genes, ecological discrepancies, experience of Reality in the ‘Transcendental’
illnesses of all sorts, family ties, dependency poise — an experience of Reality as ‘Absolute’,
needs, our own desires, the upsurges from ‘Infinite’, ’Unitary’, or ‘One’, in contrast to the
our subconscious, collective suggestions and experience of the multiplicity, the finite, the
what-not! It is a chimera to think we are free. imperfect. The experiential realisation of the
Are we free from our genes, from our heredity, ‘Transcendent’ is beyond the constructs of
from our culture, from our personality traits, unity and multiplicity, beyond the infinite
from our environment, from pollutants, from and the finite, beyond the ‘universal’ and the
our political system? We clamour for freedom ‘individual’, beyond the ‘Absolute’ and the
but truly speaking, we are in love with our ‘Relative’, beyond the ego-centred personality
chains. Yet, as Sri Aurobindo mentions in and the ego-surpassing impersonality. It is a
the very first paragraph of the first chapter in poise of perfect freedom, true liberty. That
The Life Divine, ‘Freedom’ is one of those key does not mean that the ‘liberated’ individual
guiding lights that return after all attempts who has experienced the ‘Transcendental’
at effacement, — it calls, motivates, inspires poise of Reality becomes insensitive to the
and rejuvenates us. plight of his fellow-brethren. In fact, liberty
gives one the right to even transgress liberty
Since freedom in a world of bondage is with a poise of detachment. Thus was born
dependent on many variables and virtually the concept of the Jivanmukta — one who was
impossible in outer life, seers and mystics liberated even while operating in the field of
yearned for an inner freedom independent of life. Sri Aurobindo speaks of this poise of
all variables.One cannot find a cue in social liberty:

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