In plain words
In such actions, in compulsion, relation and duty, in these three, man has no freedom.
We change our conduct according to the state of society. So for us, freedom means the level of the Ātma; that alone is freedom. Keep the feeling of the Ātma as your goal and do any work at all; you will surely be free. There are not two separate things, individual freedom on one side and spiritual freedom on the other. Spirituality is freedom. Freedom is spirituality. These two cannot be separate. How are they? One and the same substance has taken many different forms. There is milk. We made curd. We churned the curd. Butter came. Buttermilk remained. What was milk took all these forms: becoming curd, becoming butter, becoming buttermilk. But the milk in all these forms is one. In the same way sālokya, sārūpya, sāmīpya and sāyujya, these four too have taken different forms, but the four together are one. But each is a step to the next. Sālokya: we think of God; thinking and thinking of God, what does it become? Sāmīpya. Thinking of Swami, the longing arises to go near Swami. After sāmīpya, you long to become one with Swami, to be like Swami. After longing to attain this sārūpya, you long for sāyujya. All these are different forms of one thing; they are not separate. So, if man says he has freedom in this physical world, one can only call it a mad freedom. One can call it the freedom of Ahaṅkāra. One can call it the freedom of attachment. Thinking, "I have freedom over my child", I may beat and scold. Thinking, "I have freedom over my wife", I may beat her and scold her. This is only your delusion; you have no such authority. You may tell what is good. You may teach what is good. To think that beating and scolding is my freedom is only foolishness; if one who is truly a man wants to live as a man, he raises himself as a man only when he gives up such acts of Ahaṅkāra. If you truly think, "I have freedom", then as much freedom as your liking is to you, so much freedom is her liking to her, is it not? To trample down the freedom of others and want to increase what is yours is your selfishness, is it not!