Moksa: Liberation of Life with Supreme Person

“Is moksa or liberation life with the Supreme Person whom we love and worship in this life? Is it personal immortality with absolute likeness to God in the world of Brahma? Is it an impersonal absorption in the Divine Transcendent? All these views are to be found in the Upanishads. There are four aspects of release distinguished as samipya or intimacy with the divine, sarupya or sadharmya, similarity of nature with the divine, reflecting his glory, salokya or conscious co-existence with the divine in the same world, and sayujya or communion with the divine bordering on identity.

There are certain general characteristics of the state of moksa or freedom. It is conceived as freedom from subjection to time. As birth and death are the symbols of time, life eternal or moksa is liberation from births and deaths. It is the fourth state of consciousness beyond the three worlds, what the Bhagavadgita calls paramam brahma or brahma-nirvana. It is freedom from subjection to the law of karma. The deeds, good or bad, of the release cease to have any effect on him. Even as a horse shakes its mane, the liberated soul shakes off his sin; even as the moon comes out entire after having suffered an eclipse from Rahu so does the liberated individual free himself from mortal bondage. His works consume themselves like a reed stalk in the fire. As water does not stop on the lotus leaf, works do not cling to him. Works have only a meaning for a self-centered individual. Liberation is the destruction of bondage, which is the product of ignorance. Ignorance is destroyed by knowledge and not by works. Freedom is not a created entity; it is the result of recognition.

Knowledge takes us to the place where desire is at rest, a-kama, where all desires are fulfilled, apta-kama, where the self is the only desire, atma-kama. He who knows himself to be all can have no desire. When the Supreme is seen, the knots of the heart are cut asunder, the doubts of the intellect are dispelled and the effects of our actions are destroyed. There can be no sorrow or pain or fear when there is no other. The freed soul is like a free man who has gained his sight, a sick man made whole. He cannot have any doubt for he is full and abiding knowledge. He attains the highest bliss for which a feeble analogy is married happiness. He can attain any world he may seek.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion, and Culture,
(edited by Robert A. McDermott, New York: Dutton, 1970.)


 

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