Ananda Sangha of Portland--Inner Freedom by Swami Kriyananda

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Inner Freedom
Chapter Seven of the book Eastern Thoughts--Western Thoughts, published by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) in the late 1960s for the young adults of that era. As the book is no longer in print, we're pleased to offer this chapter in its entirety.

Part I | Part II | Part III

(continued from Part I)

Where, except in ourselves, shall we find true freedom? Political freedom by itself is a dead end.

Has it ever puzzled you why so many supposed liberals in our society favor communism? I don’t mean communism as a humanitarian ideal—"the greatest good for the greatest number"—but as it is actually being practiced in modern Russia and elsewhere. The suppression of liberty that one reads about is a fact. Can’t our liberals see the fairly obvious contradiction between liberty and suppression?

The justification for this inconsistency is that communism does promise freedom of a sort: freedom from hunger, from degrading poverty, from abandonment by society in times of illness or old age. We may presume that, to the starving masses of the world, these freedoms seem far more attractive than the freedom to speak one’s mind, or to move about and behave more or less as he chooses. At any rate, it is easy to see why our Western brand of freedom has not yet become a rallying point for the world’s underprivileged. Free enterprise, for them, has always meant someone robbing them of what little they already possess.

But the contradiction remains. How can even such freedoms as Russia offers be freedoms, really, when they are imposed on their supposed beneficiaries? This is the "freedom" of cattle, of pet dogs. Intelligent liberals must sense this fatal flaw. That they still at least keep an open mind to the potentials of communism can only arise from the fact that freedom here in the West has not proved so perfect either. It has given people the freedom to be bad, as well as good. (I doubt that Russia can "boast" a counterpart to our Mafia.) Plagued by countless conflicting interests, democracies are notoriously slow to enact even urgent business, and worthwhile reforms are often swamped under waves of selfish lobbying.

The point is, systems cannot ever be perfected. Certainly democracy is better than modern communism (though I suspect that we owe some of the help we extend to our own poor to the influence of communism). But political freedoms are empty if the heart is still in bondage to those greatest of slave drivers: Attachment and Desire.

* * * * *

I wonder if you’ve ever had an experience similar to this one:

In 1963 I was staying on a ranch in Sedona, Arizona, meditating and working on my book, Crises in Modern Thought. As I awoke one morning I thought, "Where am I?" But all I could come up with for an answer was, "I’m not at Mt. Washington" (the monastery in Los Angeles where I had lived for ten years).

"Well then, if not Mt. Washington, where am I?" The answer again: Not in California. "Where then?" Arizona. "Okay, where in Arizona?" Sedona. "Very well. Now, where in Sedona?" On Crescent Moon Ranch. My mind was certainly being chary with its answers! It was as if I actually had to find my body before I could open my eyes. It wasn’t even enough to locate the ranch. I had to remember that I was staying in the guest house, the location of the bedroom in the guest house, and exactly where the bed was positioned in the bedroom, before I could relate once again to that daily life which, in my mundane existence, I took for granted as normal.

The point is, this world isn’t quite so real to any of us as we, in our waking state, assure ourselves that it is. It represents not the bedrock reality in terms of which all our insights must be judged, but a short of shadow land that must be constantly affirmed for its realities to be held clearly before us. (Can you recall exactly what thoughts we in your mind five minutes ago?)

Don’t imagine, then, that those conditions which may now hold you in bondage—whether outwardly or inwardly—cannot be changed. Escapist dreams and wishful thinking won’t alter anything (except perhaps for the worse). By strong will power, however, everything can be accomplished.

Above all, realize that you are not your personality. Consider how, over the years, your outlook has changed, but never your sense of selfhood; your interests, your habits, your mental tendencies have changed, but never your sense of selfhood. What else is your personality but this changing scene on the periphery of your own self-awareness? Be identified with this inner Self. From that calm center work to change whatever personality traits conspire to hold you in bondage. They are not YOU. Command them to be what you will!

* * * * *

One night when I was a college student I had a strange dream. I and everyone I knew were living in a torture chamber. Being tortured was, quite simply, our way of life. We had been born into it. Our parents had been born into it. As far as we knew, there simply was no other place for a person to live than right here in this torture chamber, and no way for him to live except to be tortured.

Knowing nothing else, we didn’t really mind our lot, and counted as pleasures those times when we were being rather less tortured than usual. Rebellion and escape were unthinkable; they were not even considered heresies. It was not that we were cowards, but only that the possibility of another kind of life never seemed to occur to anyone.

But in time a few of us began to dream the impossible. Surreptitiously voiced suspicions led gradually to a conspiracy. One day a group of us rose up, slew our torturers, and escaped from the torture chamber.

We discovered that we had been living on the top floor of a large building. Descending the stairs cautiously, lest we encounter more of the enemy, we were surprised to find the rest of the building quite empty. We emerged onto a vast, flat plain that stretched out in all directions to the horizon. Imagine our amazement! What had seemed to us the whole world was only the top floor of an empty building, set in the midst of a plain so vast that we couldn’t even see its boundaries!

We looked up at our old "home." To our astonishment, the torturers, whom we thought we had killed, were calmly going about their business of torturing other people. How could they still be alive? we gazed at one another in bewilderment.

Then I turned to an escapee beside me and said, "Don’t you see? It is ourselves we have conquered, not the torturers!" Just then I awoke.

The top floor in an empty building, I now realized, symbolized the mind. Once our mental torturers of attachment, fear, desire, and the like have been overcome in ourselves, there remain no battles to be fought! Everything from then on flows smoothly in our lives.

It is this inner mental freedom alone which constitutes true freedom.

Continued in Part III