Page 8 - NAMAH-Oct-2016
P. 8
Editorial
Freedom — different denouements
We all agree that freedom is the most cherished of selected aspirants as his yoga strives for
thing in life though paradoxically, we are all transformation of life and not liberation from
bound in some way or other, willingly or life. Transformation can bring freedom in
unwillingly to some object or circumstance, different denouements; it would not be a
even to some value or ideal. In a way we are mere freedom of liberation but a freedom of
not even born free, the new born is not a fulfilment.
tabula rasa, there are genetic endowments
and temperamental characteristics which The first freedom that is required is liberation
later will be joined by family traditions and from the ego and not from life. In Sri Aurobindo’s
cultural roots and will be worked upon by scheme of things, the ego supports the surface
ecological variables and social factors. personality or outer being. Freedom from the
ego liberates the inner being with enormous
Rationalists consider themselves to be free potentialities. Thus, the mind can be free
though they are free only from certain irrational from the restraints of reason without being
beliefs that satisfy themselves (or rather their irrational and be capable of supra-rational
egos), but they are trapped by their own and creative faculties like intuition in a more
logic which can construct brilliant theses comprehensive way. The life-energy which
and equally brilliant antitheses. Moreover at the outer being is trapped by the body and
they are never free from their own desires mind becomes free to align with the cosmic
and passions, their illnesses and maladaptive energy and can facilitate the flow of universal
traits, as well as from cultural idiosyncrasies healing energies for self-rejuvenation and
and unconscious conflicts. self-healing.
Traditional spiritual practitioners in India The physical mind can become free of the
believed freedom lay in liberation from the cycle usual trivial ruminations and repetitive,
of freedom and death, in the Transcendental recurring thoughts that plague our minds
Absolute or in the void of Nirvana. This was an and waste golden moments of life.
overwhelming experience but had no solution
for the fellow-brethren of the spiritual The individual will can align itself with the
aspirants who were as if doomed to be in Divine Will, this will herald real freedom.
everlasting bondage. “If we surrender our conscious will and allow
it to be made one with the will of the Eternal,
Sri Aurobindo had to consider the plight of then and then only shall we attain to a true
humanity as a whole and not merely that freedom; living in the divine liberty, we shall no
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