The yearning for freedom presupposes opposition.
The longed for condition of freedom is always desired or imagined
in relation to and in protest against the feeling that one is bound
or stopped in one's process of growth.
Real freedom consists in the full ability a person has to change his allegiance.
It is the ability to choose that to which one feels the need to commit oneself.
There is no life without some kind of allegiance or commitment;
only, for most people, the nature of this allegiance
and what they give allegiance to are unconscious,
taken for granted and compulsive or automatic factors.
One can indeed truly state that when a man hesitates
between two courses of action which he is free to take,
and tabulates in his mind the pros and cons of each possibility,
he is not truly free'.
He is only free when the whole of himself spontaneously acts
in a particular way because his whole being
cannot take any other course of action.
He is so irrevocably committed to one mode and quality
of being, thinking, feeling and behaving - his dharma -
that he cannot make any choice that does not fit in with his commitment,
his total allegiance.
The essential point, however, is that this commitment is conscious,
it is made as an individual.
-Directives for New Life
