Bondage and Freedom

Author(s): Chitrabhanu
Publisher: Divine Knowledge Society

Page 13

thinking that makes you feel a free man or a prisoner. To my mind, everyone of us here is a prisoner, everyone of us is in fetters, everyone of us has lost his liberty; and it is with this assumption that I ask you to listen to my speech.
This speech is not meant for only those who are serving a sentence in this, jail; it is for prisoners of all kinds. I consider myself, too, to be a prisoner.
But a prisoner in what sense : :
It is in the sense in which saints have used the word 'prisoner.' These saints point out to us that the soul is imprisoned within the body, and in this state of captivity it undergoes a great deal of suffering. We are going to reflect today on some questions that have puzzled many. What is Man: How did he become a prisoner? What does his imprisonment signify? How is he going to regain liberty?
Man is constituted of three parts - Body, Mind and Soul. Each one of us has these three constituents. The nourishment, the nature and the intrinsic quality of each is peculiar to it. But we do not succeed in separating the three. We allow them to adulterate each other, with the result that this adulteration leads to physical, mental and spiritual sickness. If we can separate the needs of the soul from those of the mind and the body, we would realize which one of the three is in need of nourishment at a particular time, and feed it accordingly.