Freedom

He said, “I have only one desire––to be remembered as a singer of songs, as a dancer, as a poet who has offered all his potential, all his flowers of being, to the unknown divineness of existence. I don’t want to be worshiped; I consider it a humiliation . . . ugly, inhuman, and removed from the world completely. Every man contains God; every cloud, every tree, every ocean is full of godliness, so who is to worship whom?”

Rabindranath never went to any temple, never worshiped any God, was never, in a traditional way, a saint. But to me he is one of the greatest saints the world has known. His saintliness is expressed in each of his words.

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed.

He is saying something not only about himself, but about all human consciousness. Such people don’t speak about themselves; they speak about the very heart of all mankind. 

Obstinate are the trammels. . . . The hindrances are great. The chains that prevent my freedom . . . I have become too attached to them. They are no longer chains to me; they have become my ornaments. They are made of gold; they are very precious. But my heart aches, because on the one hand I want freedom and on the other hand I cannot break the chains that prevent me from being free. Those chains, those attachments, those relationships have become my life. I cannot conceive of myself without my beloved, without my friends. I cannot conceive of myself absolutely alone, in deep silence. My songs have also become my fetters, so my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want.

This is the situation of every human being. It is difficult to find a man whose heart does not want to fly like a bird in the sky, who would not like to reach to the faraway stars, but who also knows his deep attachment with the earth. His roots are deep in the earth. His split is that he is attached to his imprisonment, and his deepest longing is for freedom. He is divided against himself.

OSHO