Why should we follow rules and give up our freedom?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, when youngsters, they say I want to be free to do this, free to do that. So, how can we explain to them if they do not have a spiritual background? Yes, freedom is a natural desire of the heart.
At the same time, we need to recognize that there are two kinds of freedom. There is freedom for and there is freedom from. For example, so freedom for means I want to eat this, I want to eat that, I want to eat that.
I want to be free to eat whatever I want, whenever I want. That is freedom for. But there is another kind of freedom that is freedom from.
So, for example, if I focus only as, if I define freedom only in terms of freedom for, I want to eat whatever I want, whenever I want. Quite often the result of this is I get addicted to certain kinds of food. And then if I am addicted to say unhealthy foods, then every time, every few minutes, my mind goes back to food, my mind goes back to food.
And then that is actually not freedom. That is bondage. So, when we get, Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita in 16.11, आशा पाश शताईड बद्धा काम अक्रोध कराएणा He says, Asha, desire is like a bond.
Desire can become a bond which drags us in a particular direction, like a noose. So, when we focus on freedom only in terms of freedom for, I want to eat this, I want to do that, I want to enjoy this, I want to go there, then often those indulgences become like ropes. And then they drag us towards those indulgences again and again and again.
So, for example, say if this is the home, this is the hostel of a student and this is a school and say in between there is a bar where the student can go and say maybe take some alcohol. Now, what happens if there are two students? One has never drunk alcohol and decided that my parents have told, my elders have told, I have seen what all happens. I am not going to drink alcohol.
That person just passes by there and doesn’t even think about the alcohol. But the other person, every time the second person passes by that alcohol bar, maybe I can go and drink. Maybe I can take a drink.
And then, initially when they see the alcohol bar, then the desire comes, I can drink. But after some time, if they keep drinking, then as soon as they come out of the house, at that time immediately the desire is there. Hey, maybe I can go and drink.
Sometimes, not only that, some alcoholics are so much bound that as soon as they wake up, the first thing that they think is, oh, I have to drink. So, I am currently writing a book on addiction and de-addiction and bhakti. So, I was reading about how people become addicted.
So, there was this one young man in America and he, at one night, one early morning, he slept at around 12 o’clock, 1 o’clock and 3 o’clock he woke up. And he felt a strong urge to drink. He went to his fridge and he found there was no alcohol over there.
He said, I will go to the nearest bar. And he was going towards the bar and while he was going in his car, his car broke down. It was cold night, North America, you know, Detroit, that part in the winter is freezing.
So, he went there, he walked through the cold night and as soon as he came to the bar, he found a particular brand he wanted to drink that was not there. He got exasperated. He had to walk almost like several blocks to another place where there was a bar.
Finally, he went there and finally, he got the bar and the craving was so un-understandable, he opened the bottle and drank it. He says, no, I drank a little bit, I am done. He thought, no, I spent so much, I will drink this very peacefully and joyfully.
I will enjoy this. So, he closed it and started walking along. As he was walking along, he slipped and fell.
And he had not closed the lid. So, there is an Abhishek of alcohol for him. And as he was lying on the ground, and suddenly he looked at all the buildings, all of the skyscraper buildings with all their houses, you know, everybody was dark, everybody was asleep.
And then suddenly it struck him, what am I doing? I could have been peacefully sleeping in my bed. Here am I at night in cold, you know, lying on this ground, injured with alcohol all over my body. That time he said, I am a slave.
So, that time he realized, I am a slave. So, when we start indulging, we may think that I am enjoying, but every time I enjoy, the desire becomes stronger and stronger born for me. And then I cannot get rid of the desire.
So, if we think of freedom only in terms of freedom for, then we become bound. And if we can realize that we are bound, that also is a fortune. But our freedom is lost most when we have the illusion of freedom.
Now, when I think I am free, but actually I have an illusion of freedom. So, when I have an illusion of freedom, then, so today most of the things that we think in terms of freedom, you know, what are those things? Okay, I want to eat this, I want to go here, I want to watch this movie, I want to do this, I want to do that. But often if we think about these desires, these are not really the desires that come from our heart.
The desire that are induced within us by the corporate control media. So, I know this is something which is quite insidious. In the 1920s, 1929 roughly, the cigarette industry, they found that their market had reached more or less saturation in America.
Because they found that, you know, all the young people, all the young men who could smoke, who had money enough to buy cigarettes, they were already buying cigarettes. And at that time, the harmful effects of smoking had not yet come out. So, they thought, how do we expand our markets? And they got, their marketing team got a brainwave.
They said, 50% of the population does not smoke. Because at that time, women were not smoking. So, then in the American Independence Day parade, they had some of the leading female icons of America, Bollywood stars and other prominent female icons, they had custom-made cigarettes for them.
And at the most visible points in that parade, they had all of them flip out a cigarette, a special customized, you know, female, thin, long cigarette, which is females. And they all started smoking it. It was said, they reported to the media, just, what are you doing? And they marketed that cigarette as, oh, we are lighting the torch of freedom.
Now, because that was a time when the suffragette movement was gaining power, and the idea was that women had been exploited and restricted for long, said, oh, we all want to light the torch of freedom. And within just a few years, millions of women started smoking. And it was only later that the harmful effects of smoking for women, especially for women in their pregnancy, all that started coming up.
But by that time, it was too late. So, when the hysteria that was created, oh, torches of freedom, nobody asked at that time, how does lighting a cigarette lead to freedom? The perception is so strong, when the media wants to create a particular perception or to exploit us, they define freedom in particular ways. So, we have to honestly and intelligently think, is what I think that I want to do, this is what I want to do, and I am restricted.
There is freedom, what we think of as freedom for, quite often, that is defined by the corporate control media for us. So, we should also think of freedom in terms of freedom from. If I have freedom from certain desires, that itself is a great relief.
So, I was telling the example of that person, the student, who has never drunk alcohol, he has no intention of drinking alcohol. They just pass by the bar without any temptation at all. Their mind and mental energy is not agitated at all.
So, freedom from is actually a very empowering form of freedom. So, if every time I think, every time I pass by a hotel, I want to eat something, every time I go here, I want to eat something, then that is not freedom. That is actually a sickening form of bondage, where I just cannot think about higher things, because I am constantly thinking of eating, I am thinking of this, I am thinking of that.
So, we have to not let the world and the culture define what is freedom for us. When we look inwards, when we look upward, upward means towards the scripture, towards spirituality, and we really understand what our values are, what is truly important for us, and then focus on that. Then we will be acting for, see freedom is itself not the ultimate goal.
Freedom is meant to be a tool for happiness. Freedom alone, we want freedom so that we can pursue happiness. But an alcoholic who has freedom, their freedom is hurting them.
Many times when people become addicts, they go into rehabilitation clinics. And one of the fundamental characters of a rehabilitation clinic is, if somebody is going for a rehabilitation from alcoholism, then they are put in an environment where they have no alcohol over there. They voluntarily put themselves over there because they recognize that the freedom to drink will mean destruction for you, will mean bondage for you.
So, just as they voluntarily put themselves in a situation of regulation. So, similarly, we need to recognize that freedom does not come simply by doing what we want to do, where we want to do, when we want to do. But freedom comes by understanding what is truly important for us.
And then developing the focus to do those things. So, the person who thinks I want to be free to drink whenever I want, that person will not be able to act in constructive ways for developing their higher talents, for pursuing their higher purposes. So, rather than letting the corporate control media define freedom and freedom in terms of only for, freedom to do this, freedom to do that, we can actually have an expanded definition of freedom, where freedom from certain drives and cravings is also empowering, so that we have freedom for doing higher and nobler things in our life.
So, the rules do not necessarily bind us. Rules often free us to do higher things. Rules, they free us from lower cravings so that we can do higher things in our life.
So, freedom is not simply uninhibited, no, see freedom is not simply indiscriminate self-expression. Freedom and whatever I want to do, I will do it, that is not freedom. Freedom is the facility to bring out the best within us.
Suppose there is a music competition and people say that I want to be free to play whatever I want to play. And somebody never does any practice and just goes in the studio and is free to play what they want to play. Well, they will be expressing themselves, but often that expression will be not the best of themselves, it will be the worst of themselves.
So, if we want to express ourselves, we want to express the best of ourselves, then that requires that the musicians practice, they practice systematically, those who are aspiring music artists, they practice and then they bring out the best. So, we should not see, define freedom in a simplistic way as doing whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do. We need to see freedom as some that facility, which brings out the best in us.
And that freedom comes by practicing spirituality, which involves certain rules, which frees us from our lower drives, so that our higher aspirations can be expressed. Does it answer your question? Yes.