Freedom is invaluable, it is who you are, and you won’t get any kind of rest or peace without freedom. If you are not free, something within you would keep bleeding, wailing, crying for liberation. It’s just that once you agree to pay the price, you discover that the thing that you are paying for freedom actually carries very little value, even negative value. Your bondages is the price that you pay; your bondages are the things that you renounce to be free.
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Questioner: What is the price of freedom? What is it that convinces someone to pay that price? What is the reason for someone wanting freedom in the first place?
Acharya Prashant: Certain things do not even require a reason to validate them, because they are. What is, need not be backed by a reason.
Let me elaborate please. Now that we are conversating, when you say something, you want a response. When I say something, I too want a response. And when we say something to each other, we want the other to listen and to be attentive. Now, why is that so? We may ascribe a reason but actually it is because of our nature, svabhāva, rather than reason. That’s the way we are; that’s the essence of consciousness.
Freedom is the very nature of consciousness. We do not want bondages. And that’s why when you want to punish someone, you throw him into a jail. And that’s the reason why bondages have to be pushed aside whatever be the cost. In that context I have said that one has to be ready to pay the price, because freedom is invaluable, it is who you are, and you won’t get any kind of rest or peace without freedom. If you are not free, nothing in the world is going to assuage you; something within you would keep bleeding, wailing, crying for liberation.
