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FOREWORD
Happiness is the immediate and ultimate aim of human life and exertion. Perfect freedom is another name of happiness. Man seeks freedom of every kind, political, social, economical, intellectual and personal-emotional freedom. All these forms of freedom have one end in view and that end is the complete, perfect and lasting state of happiness. This is the one ultimate goal of the whole of human culture in its broad sense which subsumes all areas of human activity from agriculture, industry, food, clothing, music, and love making to selfsacrificing religious piety, stern monastic asceticism, ecstatic devotion to God or gods, subtle philosophical speculation and intense meditation; from education, poetry, painting, book writing to engineering, warlike activities, and suicidal techniques. We do not know of any human being in the long history of man's restlessness who refused to seek freedom and bappiness. This indeed, is the one indisputable and self-evident fact which declares the fundamental equality of all human and non-human beings : they all desire and seek to procure the freedom that knows no suffering. All beings, human and sub-human, in all ages and places have been seeking happiness; this perhaps is one of the universal and continuously uniform truths known to the whole history of human race from the age of prehistoric barbarism to that of supersonic jets and interplanetary communications of our own age. The quest of freedom in happiness runs through the entire course of human cultures and civilizations like the golden string running across the multi-faceted gems of diverse kinds and colours forming a single garland of humanity. In the classical religious terminology of India the supreme form of freedom in happiness has been called nirvāņa, mokşa, kaivalya and visuddhi. To refer to it in English by the term Liberation or Release is a good workable device of linguistic communication.
The doctrine of Ultimate Release or Supreme Liberation may be said to represent the climax of the development of Indian religiousness and spiritual awareness. All religious systems of Indian origin have unanimously upheld the supremacy and ultimacy of Liberation. Often the same figures of thought and speech have been employed in some
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