We are trapped, conditioned, bound, and not free

It is one of the fallacious concepts that man is free. Of course, man is free to choose, but when he chooses he is already in confusion. When you see something very clearly, then you do not choose. Please look at this fact in yourselves. When you see something very clearly, where is the necessity of choice? There is no choice. It is only a confused mind that chooses, that says, 'This is right, this is wrong, I must do this because it is right,' and so on...

We know what others have done and do, we repeat what others have said – the Buddha, Christ, and all the others – we theorize. That is not intellectual freedom, which is freedom from thought. We are bound by thought, and thought is always old, it is never new; so intellectually there is no freedom in the deep sense of that word, because thought can never bring about that freedom. Intellectually we are bound and emotionally we are shoddy, ugly, sentimental, false, hypocritical.” J. Krishnamurti

Freedom is the ability to accept difficult consequences

'Choice' is all the rage these days, but it does not mean what it used to mean....When the word still had some shape and consistency, a difficult choice meant to accept difficult consequences in the form of suffering, disapproval of others, ostracism, punishment and guilt. Without this, choice was believed to have no significance.


According to Pico della Mirandola, "man must be free—not in the sense of ancient philosophy, according to which a free man is one who participates in a regime where he rules as well as is ruled; nor in the sense of Hobbes and Locke, according to whom a free man is one who can follow his reason without having to obey God or man—but free in a much grander sense, that of legislating to himself and to nature, hence without guidance from nature."
"It is to prevent or cure this peculiar democratic blindness that the university may be said to exist in a democracy, not for the sake of establishing an aristocracy but for the sake of democracy and for the sake of preserving the freedom of the mind—certainly one of the most important freedoms—for some individuals within it."
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Inner freedom is spiritual ecstasy, being beyond all interests

Inner freedom is a miracle of the soul. How could such a miracle be achieved? It is the dedication of the heart and mind to the fact of our being present at a concern of God, the knowledge of being a part of an eternal spiritual movement that conjures power out of a weary conscience, that, striking the bottom out of conceit, tears selfishness to shreds…



There is no other way to feel one with every man, with the leper or with the slave, except in feeling one with him in a higher unity: in the one concern of God for all men.

There are two sides to freedom: We are both free and enslaved

Every man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can at any moment perform or not perform this or that action; but, so soon as he has done it, that action accomplished at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

There are two sides to the life of every man: there is his individual existence which is free in proportion as his interests are abstract; and his elemental life as a unit in the human swarm, in which he must inevitably obey the laws laid down for him. Man lives consciously for himself but unconsciously he serves as an instrument for the accomplishment of historical and social ends.
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace



"A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free to refrain from moving the cart. If he does not move forward the cart will knock him down and go on dragging him with it, whether he will or not. But the horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be dragged with it. And so it is with man. Whether this is a great or small degree of freedom in comparison with the fantastic liberty we should like to have, it is the only freedom that really exists, and in it consists the only happiness attainable by man."
Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You. Section around page 355.

Freedom is within, not without

I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff. And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.