We can hear from each other, or we say to each other every day: leave me alone, I'll do what I want... If we are believers, we can even claim that God has given us free will. We are free to err or make mistakes, to disobey each other, our superiors, God, and so on. It is worth to cogitate about it whether we are really free, how much are the lot-praised freedoms we have won, how can we live with them? 

Let's look at bodily freedom first! Do we do what we want with our bodies? On the surface, yes, but on closer inspection we are not only bound by moral, social and societal norms, but also by our own biological and physical needs. Let us take a few examples: we have to dress according to social norms, but if we reject them, we are still limited by cold and heat; we eat what we want, but if we are hungry and thirsty, we are prepared to kill for a bite of bread; we are free to decide the fate of our bodies, but we have no control over death, which will come one day and our bodies will be destined for destruction. 

But maybe we are better off with emotional freedom! I want to choose who I love! I want to live with the one I choose! I want to be free in love! I could go on and on with the catchphrases. But in reality: the unresolved karmic relationships of our past lives determine who we love more or less. We are almost helpless when such a relationship "comes into the picture". Someone appears who is unbearable for us, and we don't know why, or vice versa, we meet the great Him/Her and throw aside everything we have built up until then. And if the great Him/Her leaves us, or our love remains unrequited, we are helplessly struggled by emotional attachments, unable to let go of the relationship and move on. This is a familiar situation, whether in partnerships or parent-child relationships. 

But maybe intellectual freedom... It is just working! Creative freedom... I create what I want! Except if society doesn't like it, doesn't give money, opportunity, leeway. Freedom of speech... I am free to express my opinion! I have a legally declared right to do so, but does anyone listen to me or take notice? If we look at it more closely, freedom of expression is barely functioning even at family level. We do not listen to our children, our spouse, our mother-in-law, even though they too have the right to freedom of expression. It is no better at the workplace and at the level of society as a whole. Oh, yes, in the pub it might be feasible. There, indeed, everyone can say what they like until the owner throws them out! 

But the freedom of thought... Well, that has really got! I can think what I want, no one can influence my thinking! Of course - you think naively - who could do that? Take parents first. They brainwash us from the moment we are born. Then comes school, the workplace, and on top of that the media, books... We may consciously resist these influences, but our subconscious records everything and unconsciously influences us by what we have seen, heard and experienced. Added to this are the experiences of our previous lives, most of which we have no idea about. Most of our thinking is stereotypical and schematic. Even if we reject our parents' ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour, we instinctively repeat them, and try as we might, we cannot break out of them. 

So, what is the solution? What can we do if we don't want to live our lives as pre-programmed robots? First, let's find out why we are in this situation? According to Vedic wisdom our lack of freedom is due to the fact that we are chained to the material world by binding forces. 

The first binding force is ignorance. Here, we do not have to consider proficiency in the secular sciences! A Nobel Prize winner can be completely ignorant of the purpose and meaning of human life. Knowledge is the awareness that we are eternal, indestructible souls from God, and that the only meaning of our life is to recognize our original identity, ourselves as part of God, and that we must live and act in unity with Him and with all beings - as with the great organism - at all times and in all circumstances. 

The second binding force is passion. The soul is bound to the physical body by passion because it wants to enjoy. It wants to enjoy eating, drinking, sexuality, but it also enjoys wanting to control, to subdue the forces of nature, in short, to play God. The renunciation of pleasure removes the binding force of passion, but this renunciation can never be achieved by force. It is useless to renounce something if you desire it! A completely desire-free state is never attainable. Driven by your desires, you are a suffering lover, angry, or envious. Desire also creates fears. In reality, it can only be achieved by taking desires to a higher and higher level, by replacing material desires with desires of an emotional, mental nature, and transforming these into spiritual desires. But this still does not mean the achievement of a desire-free state, and therefore creates an attachment for us to the pleasure or its object. Letting go of spiritual desires is only possible through a sincere, devotional commitment to God. Then, according to the principle of "let go and you shall have", what we desire can truly be fulfilled, if it is what we really need for our service, and what could not be fulfilled before, motivated by desire. It is enough to say: I don't ask God for more than what is assigned to me, but in return I take on everything that is my duty here and now in this life. In this case, we are given everything we need to grow in our spiritual life, we just have to believe that He will take care of us because we are His children and why should He not, He is the owner of everything. 

The third binding force is goodness. At first glance, it may seem surprising that goodness is included among the binding forces. "Good" people are those who always want to do good to everyone. They set up animal shelters, distribute food, heal the sick, in short, they want to make the world a better place. "Why is that wrong?" we might ask, motivated by illusion. It is not wrong, but we must know that the world cannot be redeemed, duality cannot be eliminated, evil cannot be eradicated, because it is all God's will, for the development of souls who have not submitted to God. The desire to do good to all at all costs only results in a miserable effort, by which only energy and money are dissipated, an illusory activity which serves only to soothe the conscience. Real good will is rather a state of active standby status. To help in case of necessity, if one clings to us. Indeed, we cannot ignore goodness as a binding force while we are active here on the material plane. But we need to know that the real good action is the redemption of living beings bound to the material world, that is, to make them realize the ultimate purpose of human life, to live and act in God-consciousness, to lead them out of the material world, back to the original source, God. This is the real help, because as long as they are in a state of material bondage they will always suffer.

Everyone suffers from these attachments, the rich, the poor, the beautiful, the ugly, the clever and the stupid. The rich are afraid of losing their wealth, the beautiful their beauty, the clever that they will be followed by even cleverer ones. And those who have no special gifts suffer from their lack and envy others. But no one among us is in an enviable position. If we can recognise this, we can now consider the question of how we can rise above these binding forces.

Different idealistic philosophies and religious systems offer many solutions. We are free to search among them, choosing the one that suits us best. I will now highlight some of them:

- regular prayer, whether it be according to any religious system, by chanting God's names, meditating on His Person, or praying to Him,

- regular reading of the scriptures, because they present instructive life situations, the understanding of these gives insight into the problem we are trying to solve and has a cleansing effect,

- seeking and accepting an authentic spiritual master, because God makes sure that every system has a TRUE teacher,

- regular meditation with a spiritual guide (guardian angel), because angels are ordained by God to help us find our way back to Him; meditation with them is itself purifying and can give us advice on how to solve a problem in life,

- regular meditation with the inner guide (perfect spirit, Atma, upper soul), through a relationship with him we can be sure that we will always be guided in the best direction for us. 

Only a man free from binding forces can say that he/she has attained the highest level of human freedom (spiritual freedom). He/she is a self-realised person who no longer wants anything but to act according to God's will. For him/her the difference between right and wrong disappears. He/she participates in the activities of the material world, but they have no effect on him/her. He/she is aware that this world is only a reflection of reality (like the image of a tree on the shore reflected in the water) kept alive by a collective illusion, which is necessary in order to the unevolved souls imagining independent themselves gain limited enjoyment of it. For the self-realized person, this pleasure is no longer important, yet he/she participates in it motivated by love for others. For him/her, however, the real enjoyment is in serving God, in participating in God's pleasures. For him/her, the real source of joy is experiencing God's presence in himself/herself every moment. He/she sees the events around him/her - with their inner coherences and driving forces - as a theatrical performance, but he/she is always ready to enter the stage when called upon, and there he/she acts according to God's will, independently from human labelling of good and evil. His/her freedom is fulfilled, and he/she ultimately becomes a godman, and thus a true servant, by acting dissolved in the will of God, knowing that God alone (the Supreme Person) is full of all knowledge, power, glory, riches and beauty. The path to godman is open to all, and it is up to us whether or not we choose to step on it. We have the freedom not to step on this path, but then we must know that we will always suffer from the binding forces of nature, because the limits of our freedom are in ourselves.

Margaret Rhasoda-Varga
UCCM head-master
(Dimensiongate, excerpt)