Can freedom co-exist with one’s roles and responsibilities?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: In this materialistic life, we realize the importance of Freedom that you are speaking of. Then what should we do?

Acharya Prashant: Here the questionnaire is essentially asking, “I am already engaged materially. I work somewhere, I have commitments there; I have a family, I have responsibilities there. And everything was going alright. And then suddenly you barged in. The party was on — and then there was a gate-crash. And now you are talking of all these abstract things: Freedom, Absolute Love, Emancipation. Now, what do we do? We are already booked!”

You are seeing this as an either-or game. It is not an either-or situation.

If it is an either-or situation, it is actually a neither-nor situation.

Either-or does not mean that you will have one of the two; either-or means that you have none of the two.

But you pose your question to me as if you have something, and if you listen to me, then that something would be lost. Is that not the simple and direct assumption?

“We have our material world. And now this man with the shabby beard has come, and he’s saying that there is another world. And not only…