In three situations, you do not have freedom: the discharge of duties (karthavyam), actions done under compulsion (nirbandham) and obligatory actions arising out of certain relationships (sambandham). If a poor man, unable to get food, resorts to stealing, he cannot claim that he is exercising his freedom to appease his hunger. Even if, for his own selfish reasons, he may try to justify the stealing, his conscience will tell him that he is committing wrong. Any action performed against one's conscience is not an act of freedom. True freedom happens only when one is free from the impulses of the mind. Freedom (Swechcha) is made up of the words: Swa + ichcha. 'Swa' means Atma. Only when the will of the Atma prevails can there be real freedom. God and you are not separate. This oneness should not be a mere intellectual concept. It should be a living reality. Then you will experience true freedom - the freedom of the Spirit.
Baba (thought for the day)
If we think love alone does it, what we have to look at here in those words? What can we get in the meaning if we do think it over? Baba mentions three different situations and actions in those situations. We have no freedom if we have to discharge duties. So how do I see that in my own life to get a feeling for it or to understand it?
I have a job and work contract and that is a commitment to be there and to do it, if I like it or not, that is not the question. I signed the contract and now it is my duty. That is the first type of duty.
If I am lucky I like my job and it will be much easier, but I have to do it anyhow.
The next action is done under compulsion. Let's try to see it in our own life.
"The payment was made under compulsion"
Synonyme: obligation, constraint, coercion, duress, pressure, intimidation
An irresistible urge to behave in a certain way, esp. against one's conscious wishes.
"He felt a compulsion to babble on about what had happened"
Synonyme: Urge impulse, need, desire, drive, obsession, fixation, addiction, temptation.
If English is not our language, thinking it over help also to get a feeling for it and to understand it right. When my father threw me out of the house and I didn't know really what I had done, I was let down by them.
It was due to my father that the family was in that situation. He had been in prison and not everybody was friendly in our neighborhood. Some seemed friendly but they were not really friends and made us feel it another way and that was the case with a neighbor.
They went in and out our house and it was my father who had invited the scouts in our house because they did handicrafts in our basement and sold them afterwards for a new scouting home. It was probably intended for harm reparation in that village, they went in and out our house and especially the neighbors, because the brothers were also in the scouts and in the age of my brothers and the older lived just in the neighborhood and we began to date.
That made an all different impression and it didn't work as my father thought is should probably because that guy went on and he promised a lot and it turned into manipulation only.
For me in that age it felt like something was wrong, but I didn't know what it was and when I tried to talk about it, there was no response from the side of the parents. My mother said that 'I should not', but it was no answer. My father screamed around and threw me out of the house, because I asked questions. It felt like not allowed asking any question; if only I opened the mouth already he began to scream. In no time my life was upside down and my parent's house was gone, they were still at the same place, but it didn't feel like home anymore and I didn't know why, but I knew that I couldn't organize my life like that. Some years before I began to write diary and by writing it had the feeling of self-realization and that felt good, so I was looking for that lost feeling and couldn't find it and the question was there, where had it gone? That is how I began to search for truth and only with Baba during the time he left the body in the insight was that I had been let down by the family. That means all that search for truth was because I had been let down by them and when I went to Singapore avoiding to go back to my country, because I didn't want to get into that again. With Baba it felt okay and after some time in the ashram my life felt okay again and normal and I didn't want to go back into that, whatever it was.
On the way to Singapore I had that neighbor in my dream who said he would come back and get married. In fact, he was already married and I was not too glad to have him in my dream. It was strange and by that the manipulation came up, he was letting me in the trust that he would come back later, what he really never did, he left it all open and went on with manipulation. He got married with another woman and later came always closer and finally he sat all his life in front of my parent's house, but it was never really to talk about it, he avoided it and it came up in the 'insight' that it was 'manipulation only'. Baba said that he is the 'insight' and the following step. That is how I can see it in my own life and that was an action under compulsion.
It was not what I wanted, but let down by the family and thrown out of the house three times, my life felt such that I couldn't find my feeling at him anymore. I went home; I often went for a visit because I knew it should be there. I met my mother and my father and I tried to feel okay and always I left with that strange feeling. With Baba all that came up and also the reason and the background father and why manipulation only, it was all in the air again.
And after I had that dream and I didn't understand it and didn't know how to understand it, because there was no contact and I didn't know how to address it, when coming back from getting a new visa, we had interview with Baba. I had to translate for another devotee and she spoke French only and he asked her, who I was and to whom I belonged and what our relationship was and I was the translator. That felt real strange to me that I had to translate about myself.
After that interview she began to mother me and that felt also kind of strange and only a few weeks later we went to Kodai and on the way Baba's car stopped and he got out of the car and in his hand in Darshan there was a small uprooted tree. As I saw that tree, I had to get to the conclusion that it was me I saw and that I was somehow uprooted, but I had no idea how to get to that answer, I felt totally lost, because there were lots of questions also with TM and they were also not clear and I didn't know where to begin with.
Now in the meantime I know what it means to be let down by the family and why I was looking for truth and what is compulsion.
If a poor man, unable to get food, resorts to stealing, he cannot claim that he is exercising his freedom to appease his hunger. Even if, for his own selfish reasons, he may try to justify the stealing, his conscience will tell him that he is committing wrong. Any action performed against one's conscience is not an act of freedom. True freedom happens only when one is free from the impulses of the mind.
After the years passing by I had the feeling that I was wrong and I didn't understand it anymore, but the neighbor came always closer and he was always present in the background also of my family and the result of it that they thought it was not okay to talk about it until he died. So the manipulation went on all my life and after he died in 04 it was in the insight as 'harm set, harm get'. So he was the one finally who got the harm he had set.
But the family relationships have never been the same again. It was mostly my mother who couldn't take it as it seems and it said in the insight, if a mother falls, all children fall with her. She was the one who told me that he had died and she mentioned it in the air was a precipice and that is also an insight and the insight is Baba, so he gives the answer or he enlightens us about it. If we listen to his words, we see that he tells us that 'desire is a storm, avalanche is attachment, precipice is pride, volcano is ego and the whirlpool is greed'.
All those insights do not make sense if we do not understand it in the light of Baba's words and we have to listen and to think it over to be able to absorb. It is not only enough to read it because it begins to only make sense if we have an insight of a whirlpool when we get aware that it is greed and if it is a precipice we get aware that we cannot bridge it and that it is because of pride and we can guess what influence it had on the family and try to understand the background. After such an insight the situation in the family looks all different and after all we know why we felt never home again. But it means also that my family will never be okay, whatever, as it was the mother who fell, all children fall with her and they always expect something else and not the present reality and we have to live with it. If we expect a family to be okay, we will always get deceived again, because it is never okay. We will always again make the experience that is not so, because of that disturbed background. My mother avoided to see it as it really was.
After her death in the dream was an avalanche and it came down and covered everything. You know how scary that looks if everything is covered by ice and snow, but it had passed by me just by little. I guess the others are all in the avalanche, but it missed me, but it can only miss me if I don't expect miracles of the others. So spirituality and Baba has taken care of it that it could heal as he said not long ago, only he spiritual path can make it okay again.
Naxalites (terrorists) are not merely the people who hold guns and pistols. Anyone who hurts others in thoughts, words and deeds is a naxalite. Three important things that all of you must pay attention to are your thoughts, words and deeds. When there is a thought, the word follows and then the body acts. In the arena of thoughts, never think evil of others. Next is word. Never use harsh words, do not humiliate others and never try to deceive others with your words. If one is killed with a knife or a pistol, they die immediately. But if you hurt a person with words, he or she will be pained till their death. Medicines exist for all external injuries, however no medicine or doctor can heal the wound or injury inflicted through words. Therefore the harm done by words is more dangerous and takes a long time to heal. Spiritual ways alone can alter the harm done by thoughts, words and deeds.
In that light my father's reaction after the neighbor began with manipulation was that of a terrorist. That is how we can see it in our own life, but also the neighbor was a naxalite (terrorist) because he planned to harm others.
So the two terrorist cause the harm and my mother was attached. It was pried what made her avoid it. She didn't want to see it as it was and I never understood it because she herself went through that in the past.
A few months before she died I went with her for the last time for a drive with the car and we sat in a restaurant on the way and drank something and I told her without mentioning names that this place reminds me at my father because we could see that there was someone who did lots of handy work and he had parrots and in my childhood my father also had birds and parrots and she agreed and I just mentioned that the neighborhood was a problem, but without using names and that some were not all just nice and in that moment she agreed.
It was like she got a glimpse of it and even if she consciously didn't get it and she didn't realize what had been done with her avoiding it for so long, in that very moment it was understood and present. The log in front of her eye next day was for me a spiritual sign. It didn't go away anymore and she couldn't see very well on that eye and it was a few months only before her death.
She had such a long time avoided it and it was not possible to expect more, but it was like the log in front of her eye had manifested.
Baba tells us we should not look for the speck in the eye of the other and ignore the log in front of our own eye.
It doesn't make it okay what had been ignored for so many years and it doesn't change the way the family looks at it because of her avoiding it, but it tells me why it was like that.
And for us it is about truth.
Spiritual ways alone can alter the harm done by thoughts, words and deeds.
I guess that is the message of Baba behind it making us aware that with the spiritual way the harm done by thoughts, words and deeds was altered.
Any action performed against one's conscience is not an act of freedom. True freedom happens only when one is free from the impulses of the mind.
What it tells us is that none of those action were an act of freedom. The reason behind it was that I had been let down by the family and that created a situation of compulsion and that is how we have to discriminate and by seeing it in our own life and thinking it over we begin to understand it, otherwise, we just read the words and forget about it again.
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