The author here discusses why liberation from the material world and/or the spiritual world is not an objective or consideration even as relevant to the Vedanta.
Firstly, it is stated that the whole idea of Vishista Advaita Vedanta is to immerse oneself in Creation, not seek a way out of this samsara, so the question of moksha or mukti is irrelevant spiritually. Materially the question is relevant however because one needs to have full awareness of one's circumstantial realities at the imminent, durable and permanent levels for being able to live to a natural life with as much freedom of actions and expressions of one's thought as the need felt to expose the truth, that is part of the method employed for truth-accommodation. So is liberty myth or real? the question needs to be asked.
The Hindus through thousands of years have looked for mukti, call that moksha or liberty, or freedom. Is it a fool’s paradise? Never in a million years. It is a proven fact that one can get material and spiritual liberty from pursuing truth accommodation in its finest level of comprehension.
When on is totally materialistic, one is worried about whether one lives or dies, when one is totally spiritualistic one does not worry about whether one lives or dies, whether one gets cancer or Covid-19. In both cases one is apprehensive about ones actions and what it might lead to materially or spiritually, respectively.
True liberation is attained when one has the outlook that the ideal religion is not ideal in the sense that no-one else is going to accept it so that one is a lonestar, marginalised by society for ideal-truth hurts: the materialist on the one hand for it points out their frailties of the stresses they are under because of their lifestyle, and on the other hand, the spiritualist for believing that they are performing some kind of Sanatan dharma in living to God’s wishes.
When one is a lover of Creation and does not do anything disharmonious to it, be that in form of killing an insect or even a mosquito or coronavirus, but not being attached to such convictions so that when the time comes and society dictates that one does that kind of job such as killing laboratory animals, chickens and pigs etc for human food needs, one does those acts as that is what the State requires one to do. One is therefore truth-accommodating, not Truth Accommodating for no one has ever asked Truth (God as Om for Vishista Advaita Vedantists like me) whether this Supermind Entity that we experience is restricting us in our activities here on Earth to makes pious human beings or to save the planet from degradation and catastrophe to the biodiversity. We cannot assume that this is a legitimate objective for which we should have a self-missioned plan of action, or even less likely, a God-suggested of God-directed activism to work to those ends.
This is the essential and vital point. We are potentially free to live our lives just the way we wish to, no matter what repercussions that have on ourselves materially or spiritually in the short and the long term, or for the future of the Planet, which is therefore furthest away from our considerations. We Vishista Advaitists live only for the present moment, the moment that we can guarantee that we are still living on this Earth. The rest of the past and the future is irrelevant to us.
This is Libertarian-mukti/moksha and total freedom to be always acting nonchalantly, spontaneously and unpremeditatedly going through the motions of time to keep ourselves busy so long as we live on towards our conception of the pre-destiny that we believe in, in stating that everything in the universe is preordained and pre-orchestrated and yet having the necessary means to still go about our work as if nothing is important in that regard as to its spiritual connotations.
Never say never, I have taken the coronavirus vaccination last week in preparation for our forthcoming holidays when the travel restrictions end, and I take my anti-psychotic, anti-depressant and mood-stabilising medications as imposed on me by the State of the United Kingdom, and my wife too, until I am told that I do not require them, for I know I am unusual in what I do rightly or wrongly; it is truth-accommodating to do accept that reality that I constantly assess, and is the truth that I serve. Doing so gives me intense spiritual liberty, not full-spiritual liberty yet which I assume only a sanyassi can find in the seclusion of an ashram like residing in the Friars in Aylesford, and I am not going sacrifice the comforts of home life to leave my family to seek spiritual liberty, at the cost of material liberty. So I have to have my mental ups and downs of mood and do get agitated when I hear my wife and daughter quarrelling in the background so I lose my temper at them and ask them to shut up with vile words for disturbing he peace of the home.
The essential point is from my trials and tribulations, I am in pleasant mood as I write for I have disposed off all the annoying intrusions into my privacy to live in the Community at home where I have been helping my wife assemble a new computer chair for her and replacing the toilet seat cover, because I feel liberated enough materially to get on with these necessary aspects of our life to keep ourselves in material comfort whilst also enjoying the spiritual liberty that I am experiencing now that I do not seem to have any enemies left who had targeted me for who I was and perhaps still harbour animosity towards me; who know what the next moment will bring but for this moment they have been silenced by truth into inactivity to sit in their cubby holes and read my websites for whatever they make of them. For if they do transgress again as trespassers into my life, I will once again have to return to Medway Magistrates Court next week to evade those intrusions once more that have tried to deflect me away from my search for mukti/moksha/liberty/freedom/independence of thought and actions.
I am talking about material and spiritual liberty, which is more important, can material liberty ever be achieved? It is quite clear that this is not possible for all States are dictatorial and require their populations under slavery to use and dispose to suit the political agenda. So, one is left with only spiritual liberty or mukti/moksha/the independence of freethought/free assessment and free contemplation to live by. Freedom of expression is highly curtailed by the State; all States without exception. This is clearly evident from the fact that my Wordpress Blog https://shantanup.wordpress.com has been suspended from public view for 2 years and no amount of legal action has restored it. The same seems to have happened to my Shantnau’s Humanology Blog that took over from the earlier one at https://shanpanigrahi.co.uk although this has now been restored as it was a paid Blog unlike the Wordpress Blog that was a Free Blog.Very severe constraints were also placed upon me to revitalise the contents of the Wordpress Blog in my Wix.com Blogs that I started: https://theconservativelibertariansociety.com and https://theallurementofrealityinreview.com and the future of all these Blogs hangs still in the balance based on what the Court decides next week. One therefore needs to be very careful on what one writes and utters in public. One has to take anti-psychotic, anti-depressant and mood-stabilising medications as the State restricts a person of his freedom of employment and freedom of movement, let alone stronger activism such as protesting in the streets, social-distancing regulations, etc. Mukti is therefore only possible in the seclusion in one's House of Shelter. This is not just a House of bricks and mortar. It is the spiritual House of Shelter where one develops such a degree of awareness of what is going on in the material world to deprive one of one's material liberty, that one judiciously takes steps to protect what little one does have through legal and medical channels of the judicial processes within the State: in a masterly practice of escapology that I fought hard for. For spiritual liberty one needs to keep one’s mind perfectly pure free of desires, aims, karma, missions, duties, objectives, dharma, expectations, hopes, wishes, schemes tactics all of which belong to the material sphere of reality.
In the end however, the quest for both spiritual and material liberty was just not viable if one wished to live in society within a communal spirit of symbiosis, as my finances have now dwindled such that I need to go and earn a living aagain if I am to survive for the basic things in life for I do not wish to be a burden on my wife again after the 15 years from 1999 that I had been. So, while I worked on the idea that moving at the centre of the sphere of reality in the rajasic conception of guna-consciousness as distinct from the sattvic and tamasic conceptions in the Hindu Trimurti of Brahma-Nature would lead me towards both material and spiritual liberty, as things stand right now it was a delusional quest for liberty and was pie in the sky of living in cloud cuckoo land of having one’s cake and eating it. It is just not possible.
Hence spiritual and material liberty is only possible for a sanyassi, one who has renounced the world in Vairagaya. It is not for me clearly as a householder with duties to keep the home together.