The Need for Freedom to Nature
Markendeya Yeddanapudi
The Guilt Merchants
A Non-Cartesian, Holistic Expression
Before thought divides the world, there is participation.
In the breathing forest, in the flowing river, in the wingbeat of a bird, life moves without the burden of guilt. No tree apologizes for growing. No deer carries shame for running. No river regrets its flood or its drought. Life responds, adjusts, renews. It does not stand outside itself to judge itself.
Only the human mind steps back and says, “This is the world, and I am separate from it.”
This separation is the beginning of fragmentation.
Nature does not function as isolated objects interacting mechanically. It unfolds as communion. The soil is not beneath the tree; it is within it. The air is not around the lung; it becomes the lung. The ocean is not separate from the cloud; it rises as the cloud. Each being is a gesture of the whole. Each organism is not merely in nature—it is nature in a particular form.
The biosphere breathes as a single, immeasurable body. Every species participates in a living holarchy: wholes within wholes, movements within movements. Nothing exists alone. Nothing is merely an object.
When perception is whole, there is no need to conquer, dissect, or dominate. Knowledge arises through intimacy, not distance. Understanding comes through resonance, not control.
The Cartesian habit of mind—placing the observer outside the observed—creates the illusion that life can be cut into parts without consequence. It trains us to divide endlessly: matter into particles, knowledge into disciplines, society into competing interests, the self into mind and body. In division without reunion, strength dissolves.
But life does not grow by division alone. It grows by participation. The universe expands not as a heap of fragments, but as a deepening interweaving. Stars are born from shared gravity. Ecosystems flourish through reciprocity. Cells cooperate to become bodies. Wholeness is the deeper movement.
To educate a child as if they are a limb of Earth would transform learning. Biology would not be about specimens but about kinship. Physics would not be about detached forces but about the dance of relation. Economics would not measure extraction, but circulation. Knowledge would not accumulate as data stored outside the self; it would ripen as sensitivity within the self.
When we add the world to ourselves—not by possession but by communion—our identity expands. The more we feel, the more we belong. The more we belong, the less we harm.
Technology, when unconscious, can thicken the illusion of separation. A machine may extend the hand, yet numb the sensing of the hand. When tools replace participation rather than deepen it, we lose the subtle conversation between body and world. But tools guided by awareness can also serve life. The question is not machine versus nature; it is whether the machine participates in the rhythm of the whole or accelerates fragmentation.
Universities today often sanctify analysis and call it knowledge. Yet analysis without synthesis becomes dismemberment. What if learning began in silence, in forests left untamed, in rivers not engineered? What if students first learned to listen—to wind, to soil, to their own breathing—before they learned to measure? Sensory awakening would precede conceptual abstraction. Meditation would stand beside mathematics. Participation would balance precision.
Freedom for nature is not a political slogan. It is a shift in perception.
When we cease to stand outside life as judges and engineers, when we dissolve the rigid boundary between observer and observed, guilt loses its grip. The “guilt merchants” thrive where separation reigns—where humans feel alien to the living world and must be morally coerced into responsibility. But when one experiences directly that harming the Earth is self-harm, regulation becomes reverence. Law becomes love.
Nature does not require our management as much as it requires our reunion.
To free nature is to free perception from fragmentation.
To free perception is to remember that we are not spectators of the Earth.
We are a movement within it.
And in that remembering, exploitation gives way to participation,
control gives way to communion,
and guilt gives way to belonging.
If you would like, I can next:
Deepen this into a spiritual–ecological manifesto
Connect it explicitly to contemporary ecological crises
Or refine it into a publishable journal essay with philosophical references
Rajaram Krishnamurthy
NATURE IS NATURALLY FREE OR WE GIVE IT FREEDOM
The question of whether nature is free by itself or if freedom is a concept bestowed upon it by humanity touches on profound philosophical, ecological, and ethical debates. At its core, this question asks us to distinguish between nature as an independent, self-regulating entity ("wildness") and nature as a concept defined within human consciousness. While humans often "give" nature a symbolic or legal freedom by protecting it, nature possesses an intrinsic, functional freedom that existed long before humanity and operates independently of it.
Nature's Intrinsic Freedom (Self-Ordering)
Nature is inherently free in that it acts according to its own laws, creating, destroying, and regenerating without external authorization. It is a self-regulating system—from forests regenerating after fire to ecosystems managing nutrient cycles. This "wildness" is the ultimate form of freedom: unhindered, chaotic, and creative, operating at its own pace.
Philosophically, this can be viewed as "nature's freedom," a dynamic, unconscious productivity that exists for itself. Before human intervention, nature was not "under-regulated"; it was governed by the laws of physics and biology. Even when humans are gone, nature continues its, often chaotic, path.
The Human Perspective: Assigning Freedom
Humans tend to define freedom through the lens of agency and choice. When we "give" nature freedom, we are usually talking about:
Protection: Creating national parks, conservation areas, or "rewilding" areas.
Legal Rights: Assigning legal personhood to rivers or forests, as seen in some indigenous and legal systems.
In this context, freedom is a human construct—a restriction placed on our own behavior (development, logging, pollution) to allow nature to follow its own path. This is not creating freedom for nature, but removing our inhibition of its existing freedom.
The Conflict of Freedoms
The issue arises when human freedom (the desire for development, energy, and consumption) clashes with nature’s freedom (its right to exist and evolve). Modern civilization often treats nature as a resource to be used, effectively enslaving it. However, the "freedom" we take for ourselves—such as expanding cities—destroys the freedom of ecosystems to thrive.
Many, particularly in the environmental movement, argue that nature has "intrinsic value"—the right to exist, regardless of its usefulness to humans. In this sense, true freedom is a recognition of this intrinsic value rather than an act of human generosity.
Nature is fundamentally free by itself, operating through its own, often harsh, laws. However, in our modern world, we often "give" nature a recognized freedom, which is really just an acknowledgment of its right to exist, and a conscious withdrawal of our encroachment. Ultimately, nature does not need human permission to be free; it is the ultimate expression of freedom, whereas human freedom is often a struggle to define itself within the limitations that nature sets.
THEN WHY ALL THE HUBBUB? WHAT CAN WE DO TO NATURE?
Philosophers often account for the difference between human beings and other animals in terms of a difference between norm-governed behavior and instinct-determined behavior. As human beings, we are socialized into a normative understanding of who to be–e.g., man or woman, black or white, working class or aristocrat–and we act in light of those social norms. In contrast, the behavior of all other animals is supposedly hardwired by their natural instincts. This way of describing the difference, however, is misleading for at least two reasons. First, an instinct is already expressive of a norm, since it specifies something that the animal ought to do and that it can fail to do (e.g., the seagull instinctually understands that it ought to eat fish and it can fail to find any fish to eat). Second, many animals can be socialized into forms of behavior that are not hardwired by their natural instincts. For example, there are cats that behave like dogs because they have been raised by huskies, and there are huskies that behave like cats because they have been raised by cats. Such behavior is clearly not hardwired by the nature of cats or dogs but acquired through a specific way in which they are raised.
The difference between human beings and other animals, then, cannot simply be explained by the difference between instincts and norms. Rather, the decisive difference is the difference between natural and spiritual freedom. Even when a cat behaves like a husky, she does not call into question the husky way of life but treats it as the given framework for her actions. She is able to learn the husky norms but not able to understand them as norms that could be otherwise. The cat cannot understand her norms as something for which she is answerable and which can be challenged by others, since she cannot hold herself responsible for the principles that govern her actions. The cat is responsive to success and failure in her pursuits, but whether the norms that govern her pursuits are valid–whether she ought to behave like a cat or a husky–is not at issue for her.
For human beings, by contrast, the validity of norms is always implicitly and potentially explicitly at issue. We act in light of a normative understanding of ourselves–of who we should be and what we should do–but we can also challenge and change our self-understanding. We are not merely governed by norms but answerable to one another for what we do and why we do it. Even when we are socialized into an identity as though it were a natural necessity–as when we are taken to belong naturally to a certain gender, race, or class–there remains the possibility of transforming, contesting, or critically overturning our understanding of who we are. Who we can be–as well as what we can do–is inseparable from how we acknowledge and treat one another. How we can change our self-understanding therefore depends on the social practices and institutions that shape the ability to lead our lives. Moreover, any ability to lead our lives can be impaired or lost by damages to our physical and psychological constitution. Yet as long as we have a self-relation–as long as we lead our lives in any way at all–the question of who we ought to be is alive for us, since it is at work in all our activities. In engaging the question “What should I do?” we are also engaging the question “Who should I be?”–and there is no final answer to that question. This is our spiritual freedom.
The difference between natural and spiritual freedom is not a matter of metaphysical substance but a difference in the practical self-relation exhibited by human beings and other animals. Many kinds of animals exhibit forms of mourning, play, courage, deliberation, suffering, and joy. They may even in some cases (as studies of primates have shown) be able to experience a conflict of choice when certain instincts or loyalties are at odds with one another. Yet no other species we have encountered is capable of transforming its understanding of what it means to be that species. Changes in the environment can cause animal species–or certain members of species–to change patterns in their behavior, but the principles in light of which they act remain the same for as long as the species exist.
In contrast, the understanding of what it means to be human–as manifested in the actual behavior of human beings–varies dramatically across history and across the world at any given moment of history. The difference between a monk who renounces filial bonds for an ascetic life in a monastery and a father who devotes his life to taking care of his children is not merely an individual difference in behavior. Rather, the two forms of life express radically different understandings of what it means to be human. The two men may not only have different degrees of courage, but what counts as courage for them is radically different. They may not only experience different degrees of grief and joy, but what counts as grief and joy for them is radically different. Even the experience of suffering is never merely a brute fact for us as human beings but an experience we understand and respond to in light of what matters to us. Such mattering is not reducible to our biological-physiological constitution; it depends on our commitments. We are certainly subject to biological constraints–and we cannot even in principle transcend all such constraints–but we can (and do) change our relation to these constraints. There is no natural way for us to be and no species requirements that can exhaustively determine the principles in light of which we act. Rather, what we do and who we take ourselves to be are inseparable from a historical-normative framework that must be upheld by us and may be transformed by us.
Let me be clear about the status of my argument. I am not asserting that only human beings are spiritually free. It is possible that we may discover other species that are spiritually free or that we may create artificial forms of life that are capable of spiritual freedom. That is an empirical question, which I do not seek to answer. My aim is not to decide which species are spiritually free, but to clarify the conditions of spiritual freedom. Whether certain other animals are spiritually free–or whether we can come to engineer living beings who are spiritually free–is a separate and subordinate question, which in itself presupposes an answer to the question of what it means to be a free, spiritual being.
Two clarifications are here in order. First, the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom is not a hierarchical distinction. That we are spiritually free does not make us inherently better than other animals, but it does mean that we are free in a qualitatively different sense. Because we can call into question the purposes of our own actions, we can hold ourselves to principles of justice, but we can also engage in forms of cruelty that go far beyond anything observed in other species. Second, the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom does not legitimize the exploitation of other animals. Many contemporary thinkers are critical of any distinction between humans and other animals since they fear that such a distinction will serve to justify sexism or racism, as well as buttress the mistreatment of other species and the willful extraction of natural resources. Yet such “post-humanism” rests on a conflation of historical facts and philosophical arguments. As a matter of historical fact, it is true that a human/animal distinction often has been employed to classify certain genders or races as “subhuman” and to legitimize ruthless exploitation of the nonhuman world. The critique of such politics is well taken, as is the reminder that we too are animals and dependent on the fate of our environment. However, it does not follow from these facts that any distinction between humans and other animals is illegitimate or politically pernicious. On the contrary, the pathos of post-humanist politics itself tacitly relies on a distinction between natural and spiritual freedom. When post-humanist thinkers take us to task for being sexist, racist, or too centered on our own species, they must assume that we are capable of calling into question the guiding principles of our actions. Otherwise it would make no sense to criticize our principles and enjoin us to adopt different ideals. Likewise, it is clear that no post-humanist thinker seriously believes that other animals are spiritually free. If they were, we should criticize not only humans but also other animals for being sexist and too centered on the well-being of their own species.
To deny the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom is therefore an act of bad faith. Any political struggle for a better treatment of other animals–or for a more respectful relation to the natural environment–requires spiritual freedom. We have to be able to renounce our prior commitments and hold ourselves to a new ideal. No one is inclined to place the same demands on other animals because we implicitly understand the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom. It would be absurd to reproach the seagull for eating fish, but it can make sense for me to stop eating other animals, since I am capable of transforming my relation to the norms that structure my world. For a naturally free being like the seagull, there is a normative “ought” that guides its actions (e.g., to eat fish in order to survive), but it cannot call into question the norm–the ought–itself. Natural freedom has a single ought structure, since the agent cannot question its guiding principles and ask itself what it should do. Spiritual freedom, by contrast, is characterized by a double ought structure. As a spiritually free being, I can ask myself what I should do, since I am answerable not only for my actions but also for the normative principles that guide my actions. There are not only demands concerning what I ought to do; there is also the question if I ought to do what I supposedly ought to do. [yale review]
Sita Upanishad Translated by Dr. A. G. Krishna Warrier
Published by The Theosophical Publishing House, Chennai It is in Atharva veda where the nature spoken in Rig veda and Upanishads are treated as GODs and worshipped; this is required since bhakti alone can get along with the exiting freedom of the nature.
Om! Gods! With ears let us hear what is good;
Adorable ones! With eyes let us see what is good.
With steady limbs, with bodies, praising,
Let us enjoy the life allotted by the gods.
May Indra, of wide renown, grant us well-being;
May Pusan, and all-gods, grant us well-being.
May Tarksya, of unhampered movement, grant us well-being.
May Brihaspati grant us well-being.
Om! Peace! Peace! Peace!
1. The gods, indeed, said to Prajapati: who is Sita? What is Her form? Then Prajapati replied: She is Sita:
2. Being the first cause Sita is known as
Prakriti; of Pranava, too, She is cause
And so is named Prakriti.
3. Maya in very essence,
Is Sita, of three letters formed.
Called Vishnu, the world-seed,
And Maya, too, is the letter i.
4. The letter sa denotes truth immortal;
Achievement; Siva with his consort.
Ta denotes the Queen of Speech
United with Brahman, the Deliverer.
5. The Goddess who is the great Illusion, whose form is un-manifest, and who is denoted by ‘i’ becomes manifest, beauteous as the moon, faultless of limb, decked with ornamental garlands, pearls and other adornments.
6. At first, at the time of Vedic studies, She is essentially the clear Vedic speech. Secondly, on earth, at the tip of the plough She springs up, who, as the bliss of Brahman-realization, is ever present. Thirdly, as denoted by ‘i’ She becomes un-manifest. So is She Sita. Thus they explain in the text of the Saunakas.
7. By Srirama’s (light of total liberation) presence enabled
The universe She sustains;
All embodied beings
She brings forth, sustains and withdraws.
8. Sita must be known;
She is the first cause;
As Om is She that cause,
Declare the Brahman-knowers.
9. Now, therefore, inquiry into Brahman.
10. She here is all the Vedas; all the gods; all the worlds; all renown; all virtue; all ground, effect and cause; the great Beauty of the Lord of gods. She has a form which is different and yet the same. She is the essence of the intelligent and the inert. She is all, from Brahma to stocks and stones. She is embodied, owing to distinctions of attributes and activities. She assumes the forms of gods, sages, men and Gandharvas; of demons, fiends, spirits, ghosts, goblins, etc.; and of the elements, sense-organs, mind and the vital breaths.
11. That divine Being is threefold through Her power, namely the power of desire, the power of action, and the power of knowledge.
12. The power of desire is threefold: Sri, Bhumi and Nila. Auspiciousness is the form (of Sri); the power (of holiness) is the form (of Bhumi); the sun, the moon, and the fire are the forms (of Nila).
13. As the moon (She) is the mistress of the herbs; She is the tree of plenty, flowers, fruits, creepers and bowers; the mistress of medicinal plants and physicians; She is the divine drought of immortality, yielding the fruit of massive splendour. She satisfies the gods with ambrosia and the animals with grass on which, respectively, the gods and the animals live.
14. She illumines all worlds, day and night, in the garb of the sun, etc. As determinations of time, such as the smallest moment, hour, day with its eight divisions, day of the week, and night, as also the fortnight, month, season, six months, and year and as the prescriber of the term of human life as a hundred years, She manifests herself and is known as Delay and Speed. Thus wheel-like, She revolves as the wheel of Time, the wheel of Universe, etc.; comprising (all dimensions of time) from the moment up to fifty years of Brahma’s life. All the luminous temporal divisions are the specific determinations of this very Time, the container of all.
15. As fire is the food and drink of living beings, their hunger and thirst. As regards the gods, She has the form of sacrifice. As regards the herbs in the forest, She is the coolness and the warmth. Both inside and outside the fuel She dwells, eternal and fleeting.
16. The Goddess Sri assumes a threefold form in conformity with the Lord’s will for the protection of the world. That She is styled Sri and Lakshmi is known.
17. The Goddess Bhu is the Earth comprising the seven islands and the seas; the container and the contents of the fourteen worlds such as bhu, etc.; and her essence is Pranava.
18. Nila is festooned with lightning. To nourish all herbs and living beings, She assumes all forms.
19. At the root of all the worlds, She assumes the form of Water, being known as ‘consisting of frogs’ and supporting the worlds.
20. The real form of the power of action (is as follows): From Hari’s mouth (proceeds) sound; from this sound ‘the drop’; thence, the syllable Om; from this syllable, distinctively proceeds the mount Rama, the abode of the Vaikhanasas. On that mount flourish manifold branches representing action and knowledge.
21. The primal science of
Vedas three, reveals all sense;
They are the ‘three’, comprising
Ric, Yajus and Saman.
22. Based on a fact, fourfold, they are called
The Ric, Yajus, Saman, Atharvan.
23. The ‘three’ are so famed as they
Concern the four priests, form texts
Of triple sense, lingas, and much else.
The Atharvan is, in essence,
Ric, Yajus and Saman, too.
24. Yet separated it is, being
In the main, of magic sense.
The Rig-Veda does flourish
In branches twenty-one.
25. The Yajus is well known
In nine and hundred various schools.
Saman has a thousand branches;
The Atharvan but forty.
26. The Vaikhanasa philosophy
With intuition is concerned;
With Vaikhanasa it is that
Sages ever engage themselves.
27. Rituals, Grammar, Phonetics, Etymology, Astronomy and Metre are the six limbs.
28. The minor limbs are Vedanta
And Mimamsa, the treatise on
Nyaya and Puranas upheld
By the knowers of the Law; so also
Of meditation (upasana) the chapters;
29. Ethics, of the Vedic lore all branches,
Tradition, Law upheld by Rishis great;
History and legend – these the Upangas.
30. The five minor Vedas are
Architecture and Archery,
Music, Medicine and Occult Thought (daivika).
31. The Discipline, the Rites, the Gloss, the Lore,
Conquest supreme of breath – these twenty-one
Are renowned as self-evident.
32. The word of Vishnu at first sprang forth
From Vaikhanasa as the Vedas three.
33. As of old from sage Vaikhanasa
The ‘three’ sprang forth –
Hear all from me.
The eternal Brahmic form is power to act.
34. The manifest power is but the memory of the Lord; its essence is manifestation and evolution, restriction and promotion, subsidence and up flaring. It is the cause of the patent and the latent, possessing all feet, limbs, faces, colors. It is at once different and non-different (from the Lord); the unfailing consort of the Lord, perpetually dependent on Him. She becomes patent and latent, and is called the manifest power because She is competent to bring about, through the (mere) closing and opening (of Her eye) creation, sustenance and retraction, suppression and promotion.
35. The power of desire is threefold. At the time of retraction, for the sake of rest, when She rests on the right side of the Lord’s chest, in the shape of Srivatsa, She is the power of Yoga.
36. The form of the Power of enjoyment is enjoyment. Associated with the Tree of Plenty, the wish-granting Cow, the wish-fulfilling Gem, and the nine Treasures such as the (precious) Conch and Lotus, She is impelled by the devotion of the worshipper, whether sought or unsought (to yield enjoyments) as a result of rites, compulsory or optional, like the Agnihotra; or as a result of (the eight ‘limbs’ of Yoga practice, namely) restraint, discipline, posture, control of breath, withdrawal, attention, meditation and contemplation; or as a result of worship of the Lord’s image in pinnacled temples; or as a result of ceremonial baths, etc.; or of the worship of manes, etc.; or as a result of giving food, drink, etc., for pleasing the Lord. (All this) is done (through the Power of enjoyment).
37. Now the Power of heroism, four-armed, (is described). She indicates by her gestures fearlessness and (the granting of) boons; She bears the lotus; crowned and bedecked, She is surrounded by all the gods; is bathed, at the foot of the Tree of Plenty, by four elephants, in ambrosial waters from jeweled pots. All divinities, Brahma and others, render obeisance to Her. She is vested with the eight miraculous powers such as becoming atomic in proportion; She is lauded by the wish-granting cow who is before Her; she is extolled by the Vedas, the Shastras, etc. Celestial nymphs like Jaya wait upon Her. The luminaries – the sun and the moon – shed splendour on Her. Tumburu, Narada and others sing of Her glory. The full moon and new moon days hold an umbrella over Her; two delightful beings hold the whisks. Svaha and Svadha fan Her. Bhrigu and other supernatural beings adore Her. The Goddess Lakshmi is seated on a divine Lion-Throne in the lotus posture, effectuating all causes and effects. The steady (image of) the Lord’s idea of differentiation, She beautifies. With tranquil eyes, adored by all the gods, She is known as the Beauty of Heroism. This is the Secret.
Om! Gods! With ears let us hear what is good;
Adorable ones! With eyes let us see what is good.
With steady limbs, with bodies, praising,
Let us enjoy the life allotted by the gods.
May Indra, of wide renown, grant us well-being;
May Pusan, and all-gods, grant us well-being.
May Tarksya, of unhampered movement, grant us well-being.
May Brihaspati grant us well-being.
Om! Peace! Peace! Peace!
Here ends the Sita Upanishad, included in the Atharva-Veda.
K Rajaram IRS 27226
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