Inner Freedom is Real Freedom

By Remez Sasson

Freedom from the compulsion of constant and endless thinking is real freedom. Your
mind thinks from the moment you wake up in the morning until you fall asleep at night. It
gives you no moment of rest. It creates thoughts and also receives thoughts from the world
around you. This habit is so strong and deeply embedded that nobody even thinks of
overcoming it.

In this state you are not free. You may live in a free country and you may have financial
independence, yet the mind keeps chaining you to a contant flow of thoughts and mental
images, many of which are useless and futile.

The mind is a creator and receiver of thoughts, and it also constantly produces mental movies.
We act like spectators with eyes fixed on a screen, watching pictures moving on the screen of
the mind. These moving pictures are so real that we never question their validity or whether
we need them. Our life, habits, actions and reactions are all strongly affected by what goes
inside our mind. It is only by silencing the hectic of the mind that we are able to enjoy true
peace and true freedom.

If you were able to watch the activity going on in the minds of people, you would have seen a
very interesting spectacle. You would have seen that each and every person is living in a kind
of imaginary mental world created by his/her thoughts. You would have seen thoughts created
by different minds floating through space and being picked up by other people, who think
these are their own thoughts. All these thoughts are constantly programming the mind of the
person thinking them, and causing the affected person to behave, act and talk in accordance
with them. So where is freedom?

You may live in a free country, yet in your inner life you may not be free. You enjoy real
freedom when you are able to accept or reject thoughts in accordance with your will,
and being able to impose silence on your mind, when there is nothing to think
about. This is of course mastery of the mind.

Only when you are free from the compulsion of constant thinking you become
free. You switch off the engine of your car when you arrive to your destination, because there
is no necessity for it to keep on running. Why not do the same with your mind? Why let the
mind keep thinking uselss, futile or negative thoughts, at times when you don't need to plan,
solve problems, study or work? When there is nothing special that you need to think about,
why not enjoy inner silence - inner freedom?

Imagine your mind being calm, like a calm lake with no waves or ripples, free from the
compulsion of involuntary thinking. In this state of calmness and quietude you become
conscious of your inner self, which is usually hidden by the constant flow of thoughts and
mental images. In this state you are aware of your inner being - spiritual self, and happiness
and bliss emerge from within you.

How can one gain inner freedom? Through concentration and meditation, being calm, and
developing detachment and the ability to filter and sift thoughts, without getting involved and
swept by them.

Make your mind quiet and you will enjoy real freedom.
The Fish In The Bowl
Freedom is vast while slavery is small. A short Sufi story reveals the truth.

A man once gifted a lovely golden bowl with a beautiful fish in it to a Sufi mystic.

The mystic felt sorry for the fish and released it into a lake to enjoy limitless freedom and
space.

He then threw the golden bowl also into the lake as it was of no use to him who revelled in
nothingness!

The next morning when the mystic walked up to the lake, to his surprise he found the fish
back into the bowl that was floating.

The fish had chosen its way back to the bowl. It was her home and she was habituated to
dwell there much in contrast to the mystic who thinks it to be a prison.

Osho says that freedom is vast and wild. It is unmanageable. One precipitates in the
vastness of it.

Whereas one always wishes to thrive on a conditioned plane where one chisels his way to
becoming somebody as everyone wants to become 'someone'

One is habituated to a confined way of conditioned life. One seeks comfort in conditioning
which is slavery.

Slavery is small but which solidifies one to render the feeling of 'being big' in the limited
confinement.

Osho says but in the vast freedom, one is just 'nothing'. Nobody wants to be a 'nothing'

The master thus points out that the most important requirement to attain freedom is the
courage to dissolve in its 'nothingness'

Only then can one traverse the conditioned plane and breathe the air of true freedom!

எண்ணகளின் விடுதைலேய உண்ைம சுதந்திரம்.