FREEDOM WITHIN OR BONDAGE WITHOUT?

We are free and not subject to any assumptions of faith. Our will is free of any arbitrary control of an imaginary higher being who simply does not exist after all and is born and dies in our own mental conception. Man makes these gods of his fancy and even the so-called highest God who is supposedly the arbiter of the universe, its creator, preserver and destroyer, for, to all intents and purposes, these conceptions are primitive mental constructs without basis in empirical evidence or scientific justification whatsoever. This writer is, however, not advocating atheism or materialism thereby but is merely stating that the theism of the primitive mind is, after all, of not much worth and will eventually be washed away by the tide of higher learning. Humankind, caught in the grip of cultural cross-currents, transmission of superstitions and fears by the dialogic process through unnumbered generations and held perforce by primeval irrationality to subscribing to archaic beliefs and systems of faith having no rational bearing whatsoever, continues to suffer at the hands of an omnipotent God who has been vested with all the powers of domination over man by man himself, the creator of this God. The creator (man) suffers at the hands of the created (God) and this is the sad spectacle of life. Imagination rules reality, man dictates terms to brother man under the pretext of being prophetically endowed, superstition sullies truth and the free spirit of man is held down by the forces of fascism masquerading as messianic. Billions are held hostage to horrendous articles of faith of tribal cults by force and by submission through indoctrination, and freedom is merely a myth whose hour seemingly has not yet arrived.

This then is the present predicament of humankind as it battles to overcome tribal tyranny and blasphemes in its wake, yet persists on to overthrow the yoke of oppression that has stifled its growth for ages. Man, long subject to material subjugation in the name of religion, seeks at last to assert himself in the sunshine of freedom of thought and expression. Now is the hour to revolt against all forms of arbitrary assumptions, take charge of ourselves and lead the chariot of evolution along the direction of self-realisation rather than submission to a fictitious entity. Many such beliefs have come and gone with the advance of civilisation and many more have replaced them to fill up the void thus created, for, apparently, so it is argued by protagonists of these dualistic faiths, man cannot live in the absence of theistic dependence. Without going in to the theological complexities of dualism, let us try to depend on ourselves for once, on our highest Self as the Vedanta prescribes and find out whether we can arrive at real spirituality without going through the roundabout diversions of the path. Godspeed to all!