August 15, Independence Day, a day to remember those who fought and those who sacrificed and gave their lives for us; to them we stand and salute. The Nation will always be deeply grateful to the Freedom Fighters who gifted us a Free India. Yet today, more than seventy years on, the battle goes on, many freedoms yet to be conquered.
Our Survival Instinct
All that our Human species possesses is the capacity to fight for survival, the ability to procreate and when it’s time to discard this mortal coil, we die. The Laws of Existence, the chemistry and physics prescribed for this Planet spinning furiously in the Cosmos, are cast in stone, cannot, will not, be altered. However, those Laws apply only to the physical aspect of our being, our body, the portion of earth we borrow and must return to Mother Nature on departure. Our spiritual nature is free to live and expand infinitely.
The Brits, and other “conquerors” before them, came to plunder the vast riches of an ancient civilization; it was a matter of their survival! However, after they all departed, there are freedoms we still need to achieve: freedom from poverty and want, pain and disease, tyranny and injustice, mindless greed and corruption, hate and degradation.
Total, Unimpeded Freedom is Indeed Our Birthright
It is our inherent nature to endeavor to continuously advance in knowledge, to seek the freedom to be whatever we want to be. Human bondage pertains only to the physical, but what is indeed our true Self is an evasive spiritual reality, that which defines us as Human Beings. The confines of the Body are defined, while the Spirit is boundless, spread out and beyond the Cosmos. We are always looking to expand, to be more that what we already are. To be satisfied with any moment of our current situation is considered a failure. We are in a constant mode of trying to achieve that impossible dream. We incessantly strive to attain a steady state of bliss, like the trees swaying in a joyful wind, like headbangers, hands swaying at a rock concert. Its love that makes the wind blow, and it’s the music within us that feeds our moments of love. We are constantly reminded by the wise men from eons long gone, that the nature of the universe is love. Everything is eternal Bliss, eternal Freedom. There is so much love within us, they say, that there is enough to love the whole world, and then all over again.
Earthly Freedom
The American Founding Fathers took it upon themselves to declare “Freedom for All” by embedding the rule of “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Conscience” in their Constitution. That first Freedom has got many a journalist, and the other Freedom, has got many a religious leader into serious trouble. When Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, heard that, he remarked “I’d rather exercise my freedom to practice neither”.
Where did we lose it
Where then can we find this Land of the Free? This Magical Kingdom where one is what one truly wants to be? St. Luke tells us that the Kingdom of God lies within each one of us. Our very own Culture teaches the world that Supreme Consciousness, the Ultimate Divinity, dwells within us, as us. That, they say, is why in India people greet each other with “Namaskar”, or “Namaskaram”, which is “I bow to the One that dwells within you”.
The Search to retrieve our Lost Freedom
The basic rules imply leading a clean and virtuous life. Winston Churchill with his most endearing gift of wit and wisdom made it easy: He said “Don’t worry about giving up all those vices that you so happily nurtured all your life, as you get older, they leave you one by one”. After all, life on earth is an ongoing battle between Vice and Virtue, Good and Evil. But then, if all evil, all vice, are completely eliminated, what is the value of virtue?
The great wise Sages of yore, the Enlightened Beings, have indeed laid down the “rules”, procedures, methods and prescribed practices to attain total Freedom. The Great Yogi Patanjali, in his masterful treatise The Yoga Sutras, (“The Principles of Yoga”) announces in the very first Sutra: “The purpose of Yoga is to still the mind”.
The Mind? That monkey that never lets us relax for a moment? The Mind is truly the thief that robs us of knowing who we truly are. It is simply a factory of ceaseless ideas and thoughts that keep imposing up on desires and dreams that nurture the most useless artifact in the universe, our ego! And yet, the Mind is the most powerful faculty we possess, it is the key to attaining Freedom.
All places of worship, all spiritual practices of all religions, are designed to help us slow down, if not still the mind. (A temple, or Man Dir, in Sanskrit: slow the mind). The ultimate aim is to bring all thought processes to zero. That may seem like the most difficult task for even the most disciplined monk. And yet in truth, is also the easiest.
St. Paul instructs us to set aside the objects we knew as children. He implies that we must attain spiritual maturity by contemplating the very nature of our true being and shun all other trivialities that only cause pain, and pleasure, during our brief existence on earth.
He leaves us free to select either a state of Freedom, which is our real Self, or Bondage, which what we impose up on our own being. We are indeed truly and unconditionally Free, we have been, and always will be Free. No matter what, we are always Free.
Welcome to the Kingdom of the Free, your final home, and then greet yourself thus: Happy Independence Day. Forever.
Jai Hind.
(The author is now a permanent resident of Goa after many years of living in Mumbai, New York and London)
