Fear in Freedom

Freedom is one of the necessary preconditions for creativity. A society can be creative, only if it enjoys freedom; same is the case with individuals too. A free person and a free society should be able to actualise whatever remains in potential form. So, the best form of management is exploring the creativity of one and all in that organisation. Here, both the organisation and all the members of that organisation should be free. An organisation consisting of free members alone is a free organisation; only such an organisation turns creative in management, in political affairs, in social affairs and even in industrial development. A developed society in its real form is a society that enjoys freedom, in the sense that it is able to exercise self-regulation. A self-regulated society alone will be able to effect changes in a creative form in the context in which it exists. Take for example the case of management: we want to get the best product, the best result etc. but the best can be produced only if all the members of that organisation, right from the last grade to the Managing Director are exercising their free will. The exercise of free will means that a person in that organisation must be able to concentrate, must be able to organise and focus his attention on the goals directed by that organisation. Then only an individual can be creative and only a creative individual is able to contribute something effective and valuable to that organisation. What happens now days is that we are fixing targets to be achieved. In the process of achieving a target, the individual is bound by issues other than the target because if he is not able to achieve the target, he will be thrown away from that organisation. This naturally generates fear. A person who is overpowered by fear can never be a free man. Man must necessarily be free from all sorts of fears including fear of God. The very concept of fear of God has been the contribution of the Jewish tradition. When Jesus introduced His Gospel, He really changed this position and He identified with those persons, who were then treated inferior. Such an identification give those persons, a sense of freedom because they get rid of the fear that has already been created by a philosophical position which says that God is something different from man and man cannot attain the position of God. Jesus has made it clear that if a person is able to experience God he should also be able to establish His kingdom on earth. Jesus explains that when one experiences heaven on earth he gets freedom from all the fears that have been created by distinct forces. This philosophy is never different from right management principles. A management expert must be able to guide others to exercise their free will in tune with the objectives of the organisation. When an individual gets tuned to this style, he really turns a contribution to the whole organisation. This is what effective management means. But now-a-days what happens is that we are separating the management tactics from the employees; such a separation creates fear in the minds of employees. A person who is afraid of his superiors may not be able to extract the good aspects of his own potentiality. So, in every sense, the management has to make everyone in that organisation, free. If a teacher can make a student free from fear of a subject, quite sure that such student must be able to produce the maximum to the subject as well as to the society. Freedom and Creativity If you want to actualise the potentialities present in an individual, you must necessarily make him free and if a teacher can make a student free from fear of a subject, quite sure that such a student must be able to produce the maximum in the subject as well as in the society. Because of the fact that there is an element of fear in our students, usually they are not creative in their activities; they are afraid of language, they are afraid of mathematics, they are afraid of science and they are afraid of almost every subject. The duty of an ideal teacher is to remove fear of a subject from the mindset of the students and removal of fear is exactly the work of a teacher. A person who is able to remove fear from the minds of the people is a real leader. But, on the contrary what happens now is that here in the political organisations the supreme leaders are creating more of it. Because of this fear any follower always imitates the leader, and imitation cannot bring out anything creative. So, especially in the case of India, we have to free our youth, free our students free our management and our employees from that fear which has already been created by the so called superiors. The removal of fear is an essential precondition in exploring the potentialities in a human individual. Advaita aims at removal of fear and the moment we admit that ‘I and you’ is identical, we also indirectly admit that there is no difference between ‘I and you. If there are identical elements in ‘I and you’ there is no question of lack of communication. Lack of communication always ends up in creation of fear. No society can be progressive without expression of freedom by every member. A developed and progressive society means a society which actualises the potentialities in every individual. All such actualisations should have the ability to exercise freedom of each person. Freedom is something that is not given; it has to be taken by the person concerned. The one who exercises freedom has to remember that a free person has to regulate himself too. The self-regulated exercise of freedom by every member of a society alone ensures progress and development. The present day market economy believes in unfettered freedom. An unfettered freedom is dangerous to a healthy society. A society needs regulation and that regulation must be self-regulation. This aspect has been forgotten by the Western philosophical systems of thought. Now-a-days the world moves towards polarisation of power, wealth etc. This is highly dangerous. It is not freedom that is dangerous but self-regulated freedom.