The Naked Sky Of Freedom — A book review
Freedom — probably the most misunderstood concept, is also something that all of humanity yearns for. Many seekers have often asked — “How do I achieve absolute Freedom?” And if you counter-question them — “What do you mean by Freedom?”, they fall short of words. They would start with their need for freedom in very limited areas like — the freedom to pursue a career or the freedom to choose a partner. They end up asking instead — “Acharya Ji, what is Freedom after all?”
I remember, many years ago I felt the gripping clutch of an invisible force, and out of that emerged a poem Humm of Freedom. The poem was so raw, any effort in making it technically attractive or captivating was absent. It was a pure and raw expression of what I felt. After reading the book The Naked Sky Of Freedom by Acharya Prashant I began to understand where I was coming from, and where I had to go.
The book deals with this question at the core. Around it, there is a web of illusions and dilemmas which trap us. We are spent fighting this web and making a mess around us that makes the core — Freedom, murkier.
The author in his book offers the path of negation, Neti-Neti. He says — “forget about Freedom, first know what slavery is”. It is crucial to guide the readers through this problem in a definitive layer-by-layer approach. Else we run the risk of further bewilderment regarding what place freedom has in our lives. Hence, Acharya Prashant approaches the problem by insisting on the readers to identify, first, the enemies of freedom. He explains how Freedom cannot be achieved externally, but revealed internally.
The journey and the stages
Acharya Prashant offers keen insights into human psychology. He pulls the readers inward so that they recall those glimpses of freedom they must have experienced in their moments of flow, with music, with sports, or while meditating. These glimpses make us crave more. We strive to somehow elongate the duration of such experiences. And the really aspiring ones aim for everlasting uninterrupted freedom. Acharya Prashant puts forward the concept of Conditional Freedom and Unconditional Freedom. The path of the journey becomes discernible now.
The author has beautifully described the stages in the journey towards unconditional freedom. The first stage is where one seeks “freedom from” something. That ‘something’ could take different forms, that typically make up the mind-stuff — obligations, personal limitations, complexes, fear, and imposed conformity.
In the next stage, one cherishes the “freedom of” doing something — expressing oneself, exploring, making mistakes, decision making, so on and so forth.
Gradually maturing with each of the two stages mentioned above, one settles in that ‘freedom’ which is our default setting. Unlike the above two stages, there is no goal, no object attached to the quality of freedom. One is just free. Absolute Freedom.
The ultimate challenge
The book is a treasure chest of wisdom. The reader gets a chance to understand Freedom as a concept, and as a palpable entity of their existence. Ultimately everyone seeks freedom from the ‘I’. ‘I’ is made up of mind-stuff, mind-stuff — a product of thoughts, thoughts — an abstraction of sensory experiences. Most of us are entangled in our thoughts — cyclical, stale, redundant. Our aim should be to attain a still consciousness where nothing at all is happening. Acharya Prashant implores us to leave pettiness aside and take up the biggest challenge — Freedom from the object. This belongs to the realm of classic Advaita.
A truly free person must be free of his own subjectivity and thereby becomes objective. Acharya Prashant says -
“Real objectivity is the disappearance of the subject, and hence freedom from the object. Can I look at the world, while not being ‘of’ the world?”
For Acharya Prashant, Advait is the way of life. Advait is at the core of Upanishadic principles. This is where the solution lies hidden in plain sight. Acharya Prashant draws from this very ocean of wisdom and unravels the solution for our petty to weighty issues in simple and sometimes ruthless ways.
