“You must be able, if you are ready to follow the Divine order, to take up whatever work you are given, even a stupendous work, and leave it the next day with the same quietness with which you took it up and not feel that the responsibility is yours. There should be no attachment—to any object or any mode of life. You must be absolutely free.” [Questions and Answers 1929, 14 April]
I would like someone to tell me what he understands by “be absolutely free”, for it is a very important question. I shall tell you why.
Most people confuse liberty with licence. For the ordinary mind, to be free is to have the chance of committing every stupidity that one likes, without anybody intervening. I say one must be “absolutely free”, but it is a very dangerous advice unless one understands the meaning of the words. Free from what?—free from attachments, evidently. It is exactly that. It is the story of the Buddha1 who answers the young man expert in all the arts, “I am an expert in the art of self-control. If men congratulate me or praise me, it leaves me tranquil and indifferent. If they blame me, that leaves me equally tranquil and indifferent.”
[The Mother: CWM 4]
