the philosophers, who try to achieve final liberation from all cyclical oc-
currences from rebirth and repeated existence (punarjanma, punarb-
hava), from samsÓ ̄arain general.^88Exploring the relation of liberation and identity in Advaita Ved ̄anta,
Halbfass quotes Ía ̇nkara’s commentator Sure ́svara:
From medical treatment, the natural state (svasthya) ̄ results for one who
is afflicted by disease; likewise isolation (kaivalya, i.e., final liberation)
results once the misconception of the self has been destroyed through
knowledge.^89Deutsch writes that the possibility of freedom is limited to the extent
that self-deception interferes with one’s achievement of identity as an
integrated person. Self-deception “touches almost everyone in funda-
mental ways and makes for the spiritual atrophy that so often resides in
our being.”^90 Realization of identity is a corollary of freedom in the
contexts of medical and religious well-being, and to a great extent, iden-
tity and freedom embody the meaning of health—both psychophysical
and spiritual.
Freedom
Freedom in the domain of physical health refers to freedom from impair-
ments resulting from illness or injury, freedom from accompanying pain
and suffering, and freedom from susceptibility. Engelhardt identifies free-
dom as the essence of health, and concludes that treating medical prob-
lems is a matter of granting freedom:
If health is a state of freedom from the compulsion of psychological
and physiological forces, there is a common leitmotif in the treatment
of either schizophrenia or congestive heart failure—namely the focus
on securing the autonomy of the individual from a particular class of
restrictions.^91Freedom is a determinant of health because it is a condition for a person
to act for survival and the achievement of goals. Psychological freedom
concerns a person’s inner powers, and the constraints emergent from
one’s personality and circumstances. Aspects of the personality unac-
cepted by the self, and submerged in the unconscious, can restrict free-
dom by interfering with creativity, intimacy, and other articulations of
personhood. Non-integrated forces may demand a channeling of effort
toward repressing and/or maladaptively engaging those aspects of per-
sonality in outer experience. Freedom in the context of psychological
meanings of health in ̄ayurveda 77