What is it to be free? Freedom is from something - freedom from our own misery, from our own troubles and problems, free to have an economic society that is providing for all human beings, a society that is not too corrupt and so on. Freedom from our own bondage, from our own peculiar tendencies, opinions and judgements in which most of us are entangled. Opinion, judgement, conclusion, is so strong with each one of us, and that prevents perception, seeing clearing what is going on in the world both externally, outwardly, and much more so inwardly, the whole psychological complexity of one’s own life.
So what is it to be free – not freedom from something which then becomes a reaction? Freedom from capitalism has lead to totalitarianism, with all its misery and brutality. And freedom from our own particular fears is still in the area of a reaction - ‘Oh, if one had freedom from some peculiar urge’ - or tendency - ‘one could be so great’ and so on. Whereas to be free is something entirely different. The word ‘free’ comes from - though etymologically it is not very clearly established - free, to be free, implies in that word love, amongst other meanings. Because we do not really comprehend in our own life what it is to love. And if love is the opposite of hate, if love is the opposite of jealousy, or if love is the opposite of attachment, every opposite has its roots in its own opposite. Are we understanding this? If one is greedy, as most of us are, and the urge not to be greedy, that contradiction is born out of one’s own greed.
The word ‘free’, to be free, has many meanings, but mostly free means to be a friend, to love. And love is not something that thought can evolve, put together, or can be cultivated. You can cultivate a garden, you can cultivate anything, to plough, to cultivate, to grow. But love is not something that thought can cultivate. So it is very, very important to understand altogether very deeply the nature of thought, thinking. If we really could understand that fundamentally then we shall be able to resolve most of our problems. Because we have dozens of problems - of relationship, economic problems, social problems, problems of every kind, human beings are burdened with them.
So not only to understand the nature of freedom from something, and to be free, completely free, not from something. And is that possible at all when thought is operating all the time? You understand my question? So it is important, isn’t it, to understand not only verbally, or through explanations the whole movement of thought, because we live by thought, every action is based on thought, in every area, in every sector, in every field of our life both outwardly and inwardly thought is operating. We have given thought tremendous importance. And until we unravel the whole structure and nature, the movement of thought, merely trying to be free, which is to cultivate freedom, becomes impossible.