Religion and Social Values : 27.

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3: The Reason for Birth and Death-6.



This is not the freedom that we are expecting in this world. The freedom we want is not only to be totally free from every kind of shackle imposed upon us. We want to be free not merely from the presence of other people around, but even from the presence of anything around us. The very presence of anything outside us is a limitation upon us. There is always a need felt by us to adjust ourselves to the presence of something outside us. Thus, we are not entirely and wholly natural in our thinking, in our speech and in our behaviour when we are in the presence of other people. To some extent, we have to make an adjustment and concession, and live a sort of artificial life in the presence of others. While in the presence of others, we cannot think whatever we want to think, say whatever we want to say and behave in any way we like. This is a limitation.


Beyond this, there is the limitation of space and time which constricts our existence to this little body which is only six foot long and two and a half feet wide, and we cannot go outside this. Such little freedom is given to us. To move within the little ambit of our body is our freedom, and we have no liberty to touch anything outside us. The moment we attempt to interfere with anything that is outside this body, we require a government to control us; and social relationships and rules and regulations of every type begin to be felt as necessities in life on account of the artificiality in which one is compelled to live, in an atmosphere over which man has no control, which does not belong to him, and with which he is not really related.


Hence, while political bondage is bad, social and communal bondage is equally bad, and the compulsions of the instincts and the urges of the body and the mind are also very undesirable, the greatest bondage is the limitation to space and time. It is due to this that we are born and we die. Birth and death are not caused by the presence of other people around us. We are not born and we do not die because of our possession or non-possession of things. The final stroke of a physical annihilation of our personality is not brought about by our connections with our family members or the society of people, but with our connection to space and time.


To  be  continued   ....



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