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Main Index
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the whole humanity.
Freedom is your individual affair.
It is totally subjective.
If you have thrown out all the rubbish of the past and all the desires and ambitions for the future, this very moment you are free -- just like a bird on the wing, the whole sky is yours. Perhaps even the sky is not the limit.
Why is the orator, not a slave, asking him? It would have been far more relevant had a slave asked, speak to us of freedom. The orator is asking about freedom so that he can start speaking on freedom with more efficiency and with more articulateness.
He is not interested in being free. His interest is to become a great orator about freedom -- because everybody is in chains of different kinds, and enslaved by religions, by politicians, by parents, by society. The orator is simply asking to decorate his speeches. It is not an authentic question. But the answer is far more authentic. Almustafa answered:
AT THE CITY GATE AND BY YOUR FIRESIDE I HAVE SEEN YOU PROSTRATE YOURSELF AND WORSHIP YOUR OWN FREEDOM.
What do you do when you go to a Hindu temple, or a Mohammedan mosque, or a Christian church, or a synagogue? -- you are worshiping things which you yourself have created. And that shows man's utter stupidity: first you carve a statue of God and then you prostrate yourself before it. This is your religion. Why don't you start touching your own feet? There is no difference.
Mohammedans have been in difficulty, because Mohammed, fourteen centuries ago, found that the people of Arabia were worshiping three hundred and sixty-five statues. Kaaba was their temple, and for every day one statue was worshiped. And even
Mohammed, uneducated, could see the foolishness of it -- you make the statues, and then you worship them -- so he destroyed all those three hundred and sixty-five statues.
I am not in favor of his destruction. Instead... the same thing started again. He himself started it, because he found man is so much in love with his own misery that he cannot understand the idea of freedom -- because to be free is to be free of misery.
The same Kaaba where three hundred and sixty-five statues used
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