Inner Freedom – A Joyful Way of Doing
The last six days I was on a seminar and celebration of 25 Years World Teacher Trust-Global, with our spiritual teacher, Dr. Kumar. About 170 people from different countries of Europe, the USA and India had come for the meeting in Engelberg, a beautiful village surrounded by high mountains in the center of Switzerland.
It was a very intense time with a lot of exchanges and networking – and of course the seminar. It was again excellent, with very subtle topics, though partly too complex to give here in the blog an adequate understanding.
The theme of the seminar was “Service and the Law of Liberation”. Here is short extract from my notes of a talk of Sri Kumar, from a caption on inner and outer freedom, with the example of Sri Aurobindo. The text is a bit adapted for the blog:
“Freedom outside is political freedom without freedom. The freedom has to come from within. That is why there is not much demonstration on the roads by those who are working for inner freedom. Sri Aurobindo is a good example for someone first working for the political freedom and later working for the freedom of personality. Sri Aurobindo was working for political freedom, then he was thrown into prison. There he prayed to the divine, “When I was working for the freedom, why have you imprisoned me?” The divine said, “I have built an outer prison, so that you continue to work with the inner freedom.”
Before he was imprisoned he received a message in which he was warned that it would be better for him to fight inside for inner freedom than to fight outside for political freedom. He saw a beautiful form appearing to him, while he was constructing a bomb against the British. He received a dream in which Master KH appeared and said, “This is not the freedom to work out. The inner freedom is more important.”
But he did not listen and was imprisoned by the British. In prison he prayed, then again he saw and he heard: “You are forewarned to work for inner freedom, not for outer freedom, it is more important. We have organized the imprisonment for you to protect you.”
And then Sri Aurobindo continued his contemplation while in prison, and he reached the state of consciousness, where he could see within and without the same consciousness. He could join Krishna consciousness, divine consciousness, Christ consciousness, naming is not the problem.
We put so many labels everywhere. Somehow the labels are of more interest to us than the content. He could see the One Divine within. When he saw the guardian of the prison as Krishna, his attitude changed so much. There are so many barriers that the personality builds inside, to such an extend that one gets distasteful of the divine energy. That means the sickness is complete, the imprisonment is complete. Something has to happen.
In many cases a strong event has to happen to solve the imprisonment. Service is the solution. If you start service, gradually the inner freedom comes and the outer shackles go. You feel so free. That is why all great workers for political freedom, when they gained inner freedom, they also gave the knowledge to others freedom workers…. You see the simplicity of Mahatma Gandhi, highly respected for his knowledge, of high qualification. This simplicity comes through service…
Be joyful while you serve. For this reason many times I say, the old way of saying is, I have to do this. The new way is, I like to do it, I love to do it. If you turn the “I have” to the “I love to do it”, you are much more in tune with the doing. A joyful way of doing.”
Lake Truebsee near Engelberg – photo of a friend
September 1st, 2008 at 9:29 am
Hi,
Interesting satsang about Sri Aurobindo. However, I have never read in any biography that he was visited in a dream by master KH. In fact, Sri Aurobindo was somewhat critical about the theosophical movement and its claims.
Love,
Dirk Gysels