Swami Krishnananda Shashtyabdapurti Mahotsava Commemoration Volume
A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 60th Birthday
The Road to Freedom
by Sivananda-Valentina
Life is a school—study in it well! Do not take life as indulgence or entertainment. Do not expect unearned privileges, for if you do, you will never be free. Life is a school—learn every moment. Understand every aspect of human nature and learn the language of the heart. When understanding and feeling are balanced, we start our evolution, for it is only through balance that our sentiments become deep and our intelligence broad. One who locks his heart to man, locks it also to God. Even so, one whose reason is weak is enslaved by skepticism, doubt and cynicism. Neither the stupid heart nor the stupid mind can lead us to Freedom! So gratefully, solemnly and simply we are bowing to the Call of the Spirit. Hear, those who have the ears!
The flute of the Lord Krishna is calling you to what? To Truth and Freedom. When we hear the Call, we entertain simultaneously the longing for the true values and the freedom from sin, disease and death. Indeed, freedom when contemplated and meditated upon by a sage is one concept, when contemplated by an honest but unspiritual man is quite a bit another concept, and when thought carelessly by carnal man is an abused concept! Laissez-faire is taken for freedom, and the abuse of freedom is tragic; it results in very evil Karma. Everything is "freedom" for the fool who justifies his foolishness, arrogance and laissez-faire. The Road to Freedom is only through Wisdom and Love.
Everyone asserts his authority; few can submit to authority. Gurudev Sivananda said it so well! "The ignorant man thinks it is beneath his dignity and against his freedom to submit to somebody's command. This is a great blunder" he said. Unless you went through intense disciplines and had sincere Guru Bhakti in some periods of your "spiritual career”, how can you ever build any real character, humility or knowledge? How can you liberate yourself from arrogance and mean attitudes? Continues Gurudev: “If you reflect carefully, you will see that your individual freedom is in reality absolutely abject slavery to your own ego, your own vanity. It is the vagaries of sensual mind. He who attains victory over the mind and the ego is the hero. It is to attain this victory that man submits to the higher spiritualised personality of the Guru. By this submission he vanquishes his lower ego and realises the bliss of Infinite Consciousness".
The freedom of conscious will is the freedom of the wise! Although the fool's freedom is often attributed to the "free will" too, at close investigation it is more than evident that there is not a trace of the real will or, for that matter, a conscious choice; there is desire to be expressed only. Wilfulness, arrogance, possessiveness and a dictatorship often parade as "free will”. The sage smiles at such "will". There is freedom of will only for the prudent man, the reasoning man and the loving man.
True, there is great "determinism" in Nature and it is difficult to say where free will ends or where it begins. Nevertheless, there is definitely a turn towards choice, towards the ability to discriminate for a man who is somewhat above the mentality of an orangutan! The freedom to do wrong is even below the orangutan.
The sage contemplates freedom as the Supreme Power—the One Eternal who is above all, who, when realised, changes the life of man, gives him true freedom through union with Itself. That happens only when one frees himself, really frees himself, from slavery to lower nature. Nature actually is that which you make out of it. The sage uses nature; the savages used by nature, and the “civilised man” is not very much superior to the savage. Even the scholar “shames us by his bifold life”.
What the Bhagavata Gita calls deluded or ignorant or unspiritual, constitutes the usual mentality of practically the whole mankind. This mentality does not perceive the Divine either within or outside regardless of how many books are red or how many lectures heard. Does it mean that it is totally impossible for the materialistic man to turn to God? No, it is not totally impossible, but there must be at least some respect to the ideas and ideals of the best and the noblest human minds. People who do not have a natural affinity with the life spiritual at least have to see that it is real and intense for others. For the man of inner life, it is not just the idle talk, the idle curiosity, the idle competition or the idle imagination. It is real and very serious endeavor. If the worldly man at least has sufficient respect to the values which he does not yet understand, he starts the deepening of his mentality, he takes his first step to freedom.
The Bible tells us that there are seven deadly sins which take us away from Freedom. The most paramount of all sins is considered, by the way, pride. It is always put as the most potent of all the Cardinal sins. Pride. “He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his glass, his trumpet, his conical, and whatever praises itself by the deed devours itself by self-praise.”
The second one is covetousness, which is similar to acquisitiveness or avariciousness or greed; it has also many connotations. It is considered a deadly sin.
Then, of course, well-known to everybody—the all-devouring lust. So long as lust (for whatever!) smells good in our nostrils, we smell bad for the Divine! Lust is the cardinal sin which one should fear most. Lust deprives the senses and makes man a beggar. Lust is the greatest enemy of the Divine Law. Envy, too, that green monster, the snake, which devours your vitality, your well-being, your peace and your sense of justice—is a deadly sin.
Another deadly sin is gluttony—very objectionable indeed. And gluttony is not only physically loading yourself with drink and food, but one can be a glutton psychologically too.
And the sixth one is sloth; laziness; inability to D.I.N., or do it now; inability to fulfil things, to be alert, to be concentrated; Tamasic procrastination has many angles.
The seventh deadly sin is anger—an "impotent passion"! Anger begins in folly and ends in repentance according to ancient wisdom. And Emerson: "Man makes his inferiors his superiors through his anger!"
Think about the danger of these "deadly" sins seriously and humbly, and quickly eliminate the poison. One has to get rid of these deadly sins first, before one can hope to be able to meditate sincerely and lead an intensely heightened life. Without such inwardness, it is impossible to tread the Road to Freedom.
Unless you are deeply disappointed, deeply hurt by life in ignorance, unless you start to rebel against the terrible slavery to the evil forces within you, you are in the rut, in the never-ending Samsara. Usually we make the turn towards divinisation of our life when we are shaken by the humiliation of meaningless worldly life or are inspired by something which surpasses it, surpasses infinitely. In both cases we turn to Truth and our life is changed dramatically. Not that great effort is not involved, but the very effort becomes the song.
A new attitude of mind is required, a completely new attitude of mind. It requires protracted Sadhana, protracted meditation upon God as the only Power which can neutralise all the lesser powers—the powers of the Cause and Effect included. It is not at all easy to change your mentality. It is not at all easy to start meditating day after day and night after night upon the Supreme who is above the dualities, above the good and the evil. But when you are all the time appealing that ONE, you pronounce everything else the lesser power, the half-truth, and you establish the new Will, the one concentrated Force within yourself. It is very difficult, but this is the only way to Freedom.