Page 281 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

it is not forgotten at all, but is used against him later on. Once a thief always a thief: once a liar always a liar: a leopard does not change its spots-such are the character certificates given to juvenile delinquents-despite all the houses of correction and social rehabilitation. One can be socially rehabilitated, but hardly ever morally rehabilitated. Religions have tried to achieve this clearing of the past though confessions and so on, but unless one changed one's name and place, and renounced all the past, this did not happen-even then this was difficult. How much more considerate is the phenomenon of death, which is sought to be imitated by these religious techniques of renunciation. We know how tragic are the consequences of forgetting one's own past thought repression, drink and other remedies for worry, fear and a sense of guilt, which our present-day schools of psycho- analysis are trying to prevent. Psycho-analysis will utterly fail when this forgetting becomes a major need for men. This is the ulterior basis of the death-instinct of Freud. Thus the problems of life and death are wedded to the more basic necessity of freedom. Death, as freedom, is as true as the other concept of life in freedom.
The psychology of the normal man has to be considered in the context of this need for freedom, but that itself is a concept of limited value, for it is for the purpose of a fuller realization of something held feasible through freedom. Freedom itself does not become the goal of man, though this has been affirmed by most. Liberation from bonds gives the sense of freedom, whereas freedom itself means the unlimitedness or non-restraint to attaining some of those things, which are necessary for the experience of fullness or existence. Thus the sense of existence or fulfillment is the nisus or goal of freedom itself, and its prior attainment of liberation from bonds.
There may be a sense in which we are all seeking freedom from bonds, that is liberation, in order to attain perfection, or gain freedom to attain self- fulfillment in the context of our world. It is however possible also to hold that the realization of ourselves in this world of man and animals is not feasible, though this may be the purpose of evolution, as some great thinkers hold (especially Sri Aurobindo). In that case the gaining of a type of body, or organic existence different from our own, would be necessary in order to exist elsewhere in other worlds, if there are any. It is asserted, however, by many scientists that thought there are other worlds they are not