Revision of The First Liberation - Freedom from like and dislike: Excerpts from Fri, 2014-01-10 13:14

Like and Dislike

No Other Freedom is Possible Until…
It is true to say that no other freedom is possible until one has gained this freedom. So long as we are slaves to our likes and dislikes we cannot get any further.

A New Attitude Toward Life:
The first thing to realize and understand about the study of like and dislike is that it does represent a way of life and an attitude towards life that is virtually absent from the modem world. At times this has been taught as a normal thing for man, let us say by the Buddha, by the stoic philosophers. It is taught in the Bhagavad Gita that a normal man must not be a slave to his likes and dislikes. On the contrary, he must know how to make use of the energies of likes and dislikes. and not allow them to make use of him.

Our Polar or Dyadic Nature:
We have in us a very necessary mechanism which is established partly for the purpose of the transformation of energies and partly to overcome the natural inertia that there is in animals. In the animal, only the instinctive urges for the most part – food, sex, and curiosity - produce responses. When man is just governed by these mechanisms, he has no freedom of his own. We are so complicated in our construction and there are so many possible outcomes to our responses to different things, that we get the illusion that we have freedom, and that we are somehow directing the course of the activity of our behavior. One of the first and most necessary things in self-study is to free oneself from this illusion.

The mechanism about which I speak is that of polarity. It exists in all our centers. In our moving centers we have the polarity of active and passive states of the body, activity and repose, the diurnal cycle, and the cycles in all our actions of tension and relaxation. We have in our instinctive center the reaction of pleasure and pain, pleasant and unpleasant sensations, and because the moving and instinctive centers are so closely linked to one another, there is an alternation of activity and repose in the instinctive center that is hardly distinguishable from the other. We have in our feeling centers the polarity of like and dislike, attraction and repulsion. We have in our intellectual processes assent and dissent, affirmation and denial. This is the crudest mechanism introduced by nature in order to produce fields of force. It is the primary distinction that is introduced into the existing world.

We, like everything else that exists, are subject to this action of polar forces. We have in us, as I said before, a certain mechanism that is, by its nature, polar. That is what we call the reactional self, reacting simply by desire and aversion, by attraction and repulsion in all the different parts of us. This forms a kind of self in us that enters into action as soon as we are stimulated in some way. As long as we are not stimulated, we simply remain on a mechanical automatic level of existence, just governed by our own habits and by the immediate environmental actions. This is what we call sleep, or mechanical state of existence, automatism, in which we pass a greater part of our lives than we realize. There is no harm in this. Without automatism we could not exist. It is impossible to live. It would be totally uneconomic. In fact, literally it can be said to be impossible, because it would not be possible to concentrate enough energy to do everything consciously. This is not necessary because the greater part of our lives can be lived automatically equally well.

But the transition to this polar state occurs when something [attracts]our attention, stimulates us, or we dislike something, or we have a feeling of pain or pleasure, or our curiosity or intellectual activity is stimulated. This mechanism is really provided for the purpose of generating force. It is by keeping the poles of our polar nature apart that we maintain in ourselves a force. When these poles meet this force is dissipated.

Nothing is Gained by Avoidance:
One can never emphasize too strongly that nothing is gained by avoidance. Only by exposing oneself can one arrive at anything. If I dislike some situation and I avoid exposing myself to it, I am no longer free and I even throwaway the chance of freedom.

This is the key to freedom : to learn to set ourselves to disregard one's likes and dislikes…

Inner Freedom:
I have seen people work for years and years and acquire a great deal of strength. Yet they did not gain this inner freedom in relation to their likes and dislikes and were completely caught by this. It is a real tragedy to see that happen. As I look back on my life and all the people I have known in the last fifty years or more since I became interested in this Work, I see that the ones who appreciated it and knew that inner freedom was the most important thing, now have something, so that they can really deserve the name of man.

Do Not Believe What I Tell You:
You may think that what I am talking about now is a matter of faith, that I am asking you to believe something. That is not much good.  You cannot get very far believing what other people tell you, and I do not ask you to believe what I tell you.  You must learn to see for yourself.

Something in Us Does Not Wish to Be Free:
When we really come near this question of freedom, something in us revolts entirely against it. I remember very well when I had been doing work which did bring me to the point where I knew and saw that I had the power. I saw that I knew exactly how to do it, so that I could feel exactly what I chose to feel. If I could do that, then I would be responsible for my life. I could no longer blame anything outside myself, because what was outside me could not touch me. Therefore, I had to be the answer. If I was in a bad state, I was able to change it, and if I did not change it, I could not blame anyone else. But I wanted to be able to blame people. I wanted to say that it was not possible, that it could have been different. So I think that anyone who comes to have a real taste of what it is like to be free then also understands how strongly something  else in us does not wish for it.

The Kernel of your Own “I”:
In general this theme of like and dislike can provide you with very good material for straightforward work, and if you want to acquire the kernel of your own “I”, you must do it.

Slavery is Slavery:
Remember that all kinds of emotional reactions are the same. They are reactions. There is no good or bad in slavery. Slavery is slavery.

Freedom Must Be Paid For:
…this freedom is something that has to be bought.  It just will not come by us wanting it, by saying, “Yes, I want this freedom.” You have to make this kind of sacrifice.  And when it is a genuine thing, it does not make the like or dislike, or the working of the two opposites disappear at all.

Triadic Laws:
This kind of thing that you describe is the way in which one forms in oneself something which is able to be free.  This is something which we must understand. What can be free is that which can occupy a position between like and dislike, so that instead of there being two states of like and dislike, there are three states, like, dislike and freedom.  These form a triangle, or triad. When you really understand what it is that I am talking about, you understand a great deal that can be achieved with this Work.

Non-Desires:
When they [people who make progress in this Work] have these kinds or strong forces working on them, the third force, the force of their own "I" where they can be free, also can be strong. It is very far from being a question of suppressing these things. They have to play in us. They have to produce this tension in us. We have to do this particular trick which is described in the chapter on The Organization of Man's Existence by Ashiata Shiemash [All and Everything], that you have to consciously strengthen the force of non-desires. This is the way to become free. Otherwise one is entirely a slave to one's desires.

Desires in Essence:
There are also some things that belong to essence. They are much more serious. They are not really properly called likes and dislikes because they really enter into our character. They require a quite different study, and what has to be done when they are an obstacle to our transformation is a different kind of thing from this.

Sensing:
[In response to an observation] You will find that it is possible to deal much more simply without this turmoil if you put your attention on sensing. You can continue to look at what attracts you, but if part of your attention is on your sensation, then the energy that comes from this attraction that you are resisting will be blended. As you learn this, more and more you will see how much it can help you, how much you can use this energy that comes from some attraction that you are resisting, especially of the kind you describe here.