Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
It is a natural tendency of every human being to be free. Freedom is not luxury, it is a necessity. Not just human beings, even animals want freedom. Babies want freedom. If you tie a scarf on the neck of a baby it just wants to remove it. You put a chain on a baby’s neck and the baby wants to pull it out. It is the adults who put jewelry around their neck but children want freedom, they don’t want any restriction. That is why they throw their hands up and down; free! Wanting freedom is innate to human beings as well as animals. Every life wants freedom and moksha is nothing but freedom. You take a deep breath in and you can’t hold it there, you want to breathe out. Only when you breathe out there is freedom. When you breathe out you want to take a breath in and that is freedom.
Freedom is a natural desire in every human being but when the mind gets so muddled up in unnecessary day to day things, it forgets that it wants freedom. It is as good as someone who wants to sleep but has forgotten how to sleep. So every life or human being craves for freedom. It is impossible to not want freedom. Freedom is not running away from situations and circumstances. Sometimes the situation is stifling or unpleasant and we run away from it and think this is freedom, but that is not so. Freedom means being unfazed by circumstances, situations and the people around you; freedom from your own emotional garbage; freedom from the jungle of your thoughts that bother you; freedom from all the entanglement that you harbor in your head and freedom from fear and anxiety.
Anything that stifles you makes you small and you want to be free from that and that is moksha. Freedom (mukti) comes first and then bhakti. Only when you are free does love well up in you and bhakti comes. If you think you are bonded labor you cannot be grateful. If someone has brought you freedom you feel grateful, ‘oh I am so free. I feel happy!’ Only one who is happy and one who is centered can have gratitude or be in the space of love. Now, is love not binding? This is the next question. Yes, it is but it is a different type of bondage. Love binds but love binds with the infinity. The bondage of love is the last one and that gets eased with knowledge and with wisdom. Our tendency is to get bound somewhere. The tendencies of emotions are to get attached somewhere. So from small things that attachment goes towards something bigger and then it dissolves.
In the Vedanta they give an example of Alum. To clean water you put a piece of alum. The alum cleans the water and then dissolves itself. So that is why God is also called Mohana. The Divine takes your attention from little attractions to himself. The passion of stillness and of meditation is so attractive that it relieves you from all other small things. If you are attached to liquor then meditation has to be much more charming than liquor, otherwise you can’t get over liquor. If drugs are giving you joy then inner peace must give you greater joy than drugs. That is how people are able to get out of drugs and get into the spiritual practices (sadhana). So the Divine is considered the most attractive.
Do you know the meaning of the word Krishna? One who attracts everybody and everything towards him is Krishna. Krishna means most attractive. Irresistible attraction that one cannot resist at all, that much attraction! The whole Bhagavatam is about how Krishna was so attractive and mesmerizing. When he would go in the chariot and when he would pass by, people would just stand like statues staring at him. Even after his chariot would go away people would just keep their eyes open and keep staring. Someone would come and ask, ‘what are you staring at?’ The gopi says, ‘no doubt he went but he also took my sight with him. My attention also has gone with him.’ That is the seer, the scenery and the scene; everything becomes one. There are many stories in the Srimad Bhagavatam. One gopi was doing her makeup and she did her makeup on one eye and then she heard he was coming and she just left everything and ran out to the street to have a glimpse of him. There are so many stories to indicate that the Divine is extremely attractive. This is so that the little attractions that the mind hankers onto are freed and that is why he is called Mohana. Mohana means one who appeals to the heart, enchanting and endearing. So the bondage of love with knowledge is different than the bondage that hankers for pleasure. Hankering for pleasure creates a certain type of bondage which results in a lot of pain. But the taste of love hooks you on to the infinity, to the Divinity and intoxicates you. That knowledge brings stability in life. Life without emotion is so dry; emotion is needed. The emotion is either for the temporal or ephemeral or for the permanent; the permanent joy and the permanent bliss.
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