A chat with a friend

Sunil:

Tell me one thing. Sometimes it is said that man has no free will. “patta bhi bhagwaan ki icchha se hi hilta hai” . And sometimes it is said that man has free will to choose what he wants to do. How are these two consistent?

Uday:

there is a concept called Scientific circumstances evidences. When a person says I have free will to do what I want, he is saying that his mind/chitta has found some work to be noble (or due to any other motivation) to do it. He is free to put effort in it. But whether the work output will be according to his wish is not decided based on his effort only. There are so many other factors involved in it.

if everything goes according to his wish he declares it as the result of his free will and if not he declares – it is “Hari Icchhaa”.

Scientific circumstances evidence is the sum of all the other factors involved in deciding fruits of any Karma. God's will is a simpler name for it.

Sunil:

Let’s approach it from another angle.

When we see misery in the world, it is said that though we all are god's creations, he does not force our hand, he has given us free will to decide what we would do. this free will then is a self-causal phenomenon, wherein what we do keeps on modifying what our free will is, in this interpretation free will is nothing but manas(mind) doing work according to its vacillations which in turn causes pain.

At the same time to explain the net effect of karma, it is said that the outcome is not in your control. There is God's will at play. How do the two fit?

Uday:

These two fit in perfectly. Our freedom is in putting effort. By thoughts, we get motivation to do Karma. This thought pattern is governed by our Sanskara. These Sanskara is accumulated mind impressions of various births. So finally it all comes to mind. where else did we get motivation for doing any Karma ?

You are free to put efforts in the Karma (work) of your choice. but you don't have control on the fruits of that action.

Sunil:

You are active and inactive at the same time. What you are doing in essence is just affecting you. The feeling that it affects the world is illusory. Herein lies the dynamism. That is why things are always in transit, in motion because the whole process is self-causal. You do actions based on mind; the mind gets modified in the process, changing the very trigger which causes action effect modifies the cause.

Uday:

Yes, this feedback mechanism brings good aspect with it. Mind impressions can get changed due to proper feedback. Pure, unattached work can eventually burn unripe seeds of mind impressions.

Dada Bhagwan has given extensive discourse on Karma. Here are few excerpts from book “Aptavani”.

“human beings act according to their innate nature (prakruti) but merely claim, ‘I am the doer’ and thus exercise their ego. What exactly does one do in all this? What people refer to, as purusharth in this world is really a language of illusion. Things occur and materialize because of your past karmas coming into effect, and to claim ‘I did it’ is subtle pride (gaarva) and egoism. The real purusharth, the true purusharth begins only after one becomes the Purush (Selfrealised). It is only then your belief of ‘I am the doer’ is destroyed. It is the state of absolute ‘non-doer ship’. All that is relative is prakruti and the Purush (the Self) is real. What then is real purusharth? Real purusharth is when You (the Self) remain the knower (gnata) and the seer (drashta) when someone is cutting your hand. Gnankriya (knowing) and darshankriya (seeing) are the only activities of the Self. The Soul does not have any other activities. True purusharth is when the Self remains in the state of the knower and the seer.

You cannot just sit around claiming that everything is destined (prarabdha). If you do, then you become completely idle. The mind will become restless with such a dependency. If this dependency on destiny is correct, then you should not have any worries, but in fact you are the factory of worries. Therefore even that dependency is lame. It is not real. It is not scientific. People in India are miserable and suffer because they have been given the support of such a dependency. That is why their progress is obstructed. My search, over a million life times, has brought me to the scientific fact that both destiny and independent effort are lame supports. The only real support is vyavasthit. What is vyavasthit? It is that which happens only through scientific circumstantial evidences. That is called vyavasthit. The knowledge of vyavasthit renders total satisfaction in every situation. I will give you a simple example. If this glass in your hand begins to slip out of your hand and you make every effort to save it and it still breaks. Who broke the glass? You had no intention of breaking it; on the contrary you made all efforts to save it. Then, did the glass wish to break? No, that cannot be so. No one else was present to break it either, so who broke it? It was Vyavasthit; vyavasthit works under exact principles of natural laws.

The mind is like a rhizome. It is made up of many tubers and is very subtle. When any situation arises, it expresses attachment or abhorrence towards that situation and it remains absorbed in that situation. Because of this, a new causal-mind is created, the effect of which is brought into fruition by vyavasthit (scientific circumstantial evidences), and this effect manifests as ‘effective-mind’. Everyone’s mind is different because his or her causal-mind is different.

Dada bhagwan foundation Link