In today’s world, almost anything gets accepted if it is portrayed as a right to freedom. Especially in the sensual arena, much obscenity is legitimized, even glamorized, by calling it free love.

However, when indiscriminate sensuality is rationalized in the name of freedom, people become shackled by their lower desires. How? With each indulgence, their attachments become stronger and stronger till they become enslaved to wantonness. And these shackles can drag them down lower still to depravity, even criminality.

In fact, the more people glamorize free love and actualize it through promiscuity, the more they find that very love becoming elusive. In cultures championing free love, committed long-term relationships are scarce. More and more families fall apart, if at all they were formed in the first place. The resulting emotional scars afflict not just the estranged couples but also their traumatized children.

Unfortunately, those who highlight these consequences and disapprove of licentiousness are silenced with labels such as prudes, spoilsports and moral police. If the self-styled champions of freedom truly respect freedom, they should respect the freedom of expression of those who highlight the wounds caused by undisciplined, excessive and selfish freedom. Those who become courageous enough, free enough, to hear about these wounds will realize that such “freedom” is the pathway to slavery and misery.

Additionally, spiritual teachers who recommend regulation as a counter-balance to freedom don’t deprive us of pleasure – they help us along the way to enduring pleasure. Gita wisdom urges us to direct our search for happiness spiritually by practicing bhakti-yoga. The Bhagavad-gita (02.64) states that when we regulate ourselves based on scriptural wisdom, we attain purity, mercy and liberty. Therein, we can relish lasting fulfillment in our pure spiritual identity as eternal parts of the all-attractive supreme, Krishna, the reservoir of all happiness.

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