From bondage to freedom
Freedom is a process and a struggle, and the original, existential choice of man invariably comes in conflict with the commandments and prohibitions on which society is founded. All social institutions, previously born of freedom, subsequently turn into "burdensome legal bonds", contends Y.P. Dhawan

A free action alone gives man the assurance of selfhood, while an unfree action turns him into an object. The crux of freedom is to choose, because in true decision man no longer decides about things, but himself; he and his choice cannot be separated, because he becomes his (free) choice.

The question of choice is central to human dignity and at the root of it is the phenomenon of freedom which no man, whether he is a philosopher or shoemaker, can escape. In the very impossibility of escaping from the human situation "lies my will to be myself, because I can have no other will. Here alone lies the truth of the ‘I am’ that makes it impossible to be myself once again, as it were, to be myself in some other way, or in many ways". (Karl Jaspers). What I search is myself in the confusing din of rival ideologies and different paths to wisdom. But there is a limitation on my search. "Time is pressing".

How shall I look for myself? By understanding that no man can act if he waits long enough to visualise all premises and possibilities. Man is a contingent, not an omniscent being, and he has to find his freedom in time, not eternity. He has to act on such knowledge as he has, which can never be perfect. An action completed on the basis of full information or perfected insight is not a true action. It gives man the benefit of omniscience or total understanding, while his essence as a human being can only unfold in the human situation.

The element of risk is crucial in every human choice. In a true choice man commits himself decisively to action and courageously awaits consequences. He accepts his destiny. Malraux risked his life two or three times, because any other action would have given him a different conception of himself. An action doesn’t necessarily have to exceed the margin of safety, but it has to be grounded in original freedom which is choice.

To decide truly is to assume responsibility for oneself; to regress to a condition of endless vacillation is merely to acknowledge that decision is difficult; it is also to act on the assumption that I have "(an) other I behind what I am as myself". There is no hidden ‘I’ in the ‘I’ in which a man recognises himself as himself — that is all he is. Man can meet himself as himself only if he is not afraid of looking upon himself as his own freedom.

Failure and success are not decisive categories in existential resolution — "the crux of the choice is that I choose". Those who fail are not necessarily less gifted than those who succeed. The true position where the selfbeing of man is concerned is this. "For the ultimate criterion of truth in resolution is not success, but what remains true in failure". (Karl Jaspers).

Man can only know freedom in the temporal process, not eternity. Whether it is original sin or avidya, man can only become guilty if he is free to incur guilt on himself. Starting with the supreme Christian example (the point has been made before) we are compelled to reflect that Adam’s punishment was not in proportion to his crime. What did he do after all? In a situation when choice became essential he preferred Eve to God. In a comparable situation any man of sensibility will do the same.

If he doesn’t he hasn’t been seriously challenged and tried, and his freedom has no meaning.

What use is man’s freedom if he cannot go against the commandments and prohibitions? This point has been made by Thomas Mann in his masterly way and this was exactly what Blake meant when he said that all poets are of the devil’s party. Indeed they are, because the true efflorescence of imagination is achieved in protest and rebellion not acquiescence and obedience.

Milton officially concerned with justifying the ways of God to men (Paradise lost) couldn’t help taking that inner, self-creating step which puts man in opposition to reality. Man, it must be remembered, is a great transformer of reality, because his will essentially comes in conflict with what-ever is given.

One is not saying that man is not bound by normative principles, nor is one suggesting that there is lawless anarchy in his being — all. What one is saying is that freedom "is an antithetical process". "With-out an antithesis freedom becomes empty". In a completed and perfected process like moksha or nirvana freedom escapes from the human sphere and becomes transcendent. Eventually man gets tired of the agonising contradictions in his thought and experience, and chooses the safe shelter of Platonic forms or Buddhist nirvana or Hindu moksha. Perhaps rightly so.

But then the question of freedom undergoes a metamorphosis and even pales into insignificance. Freedom can only be known by man in the human state, because it manifests itself as choice in the temporal process. Whenever it becomes more, it becomes truth or salvation.

Freedom is a process and a struggle and the original, existential choice of man invariably comes in conflict with commandments and prohibitions on which society is founded. All social institutions, previously born of freedom, subsequently turn into "burdensome legal bonds". "To create new forms of validity, it (freedom) must prevail over the ossified demands". (Karl Jaspers.)

Conflicts with institutions arise because ways of seeing and registering experience change. New forms of sensibility arise and patterns of human relationships change. Also "a new born freedom sees itself faced with a necessity, previously born of freedom". Freud, as a master physician of our times, tried all his life to make men free —free against cant, hypocrisy, prejudice, shame and fear. But man’s fear of man is so great that he prefers to become ill than give up his lurid ghosts which are no better and no worse than anyone else’s.

In the present day authoritarian, bourgeois culture freedom can only exist as insight, as rebellion or sado-masochistic fantasy. The touchstone of freedom is not insight, but action. Harbert Marcuse is substantially right in asserting that "happiness, as the fulfilment of all potentialities of the individual, presupposes freedom ... at root. It is freedom". As this freedom (chiefly sexual freedom) is absent in bourgeois culture, repressed instinctual life in most people exists as frustration, unhappiness or gratuitous, motiveless aggression. "The intensifying rift between the inner and the outer world is characteristic of bourgeois culture", says Alasdair MacIntrye, and goes on to tell us that whatever doesn’t find place in external social life exists as a feeling of "lack" or insufficiency in the consciousness of the victimised individual.

If Freud is right in maintaining that pleasure cannot be renounced cheerfully, that it erupts as neurosis or mal-adjustment in the individual whose defences are undermined, then the question of individual freedom and social repression becomes a life-and-death issue and the future of mankind may depend on its effective solution. Freedom, as choice, can only take care of the inner life of man; it cannot cure his impotence in respect of his external environment.

The war of freedom, where human institutions are concerned, is essentially between father and sons. It is a war no one can wholly afford to win or lose. Constraints and taboos spring from the human mind itself; repression also has its roots in the deeper layers of the human personality. It cannot be got rid of once and for all, because like a cancerous cell it will always jeopardise the health of the human organism. Philosophically speaking, freedom will always remain a transformation of man’s inner life. It will always have to be discovered as existential resolution, as the spark of self-being in man himself.