CHAPTER THREE
DESTINY AND FREE WILL
1. "Can destiny (karma) ever come to an end?"
Bhagavan: "Karmas carry in themselves the seeds of their own destruction."
Talk 11
Note: Karma is the destiny created for oneself by one's free actions. In actions are included thoughts and sensations, motives, good or bad emotions, etc. While working out an old destiny one is bound to create a new one by the manner in which one reacts to its operation. Here then comes the place of free-will. We are not free to alter the trend of an old karma, for example, in the choice of our parents, country, the circumstances of our birth and environments; of our physical and mental fitness and abilities. These are forced on us: we cannot change them. What we can change is the manner in which we receive and work them out. We are all agreed that there are many things in which the decision lies in our hands: the decision is ours, the action is ours, the motive behind the action is ours, the mental attitude with which we do the action is ours too. This then is the field in which we are allowed freedom of will, and it contains the seeds of our future destiny. We can shape that destiny as we will, and if, like most people, we are not aware of this truth, we allow ourselves to be carried away by our impulses and eventually land in worse trouble than we are in already. Most often the new karma does not follow on the heel of the one
which is being worked out now, so that we drag the chain of our slavery through several lives.
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Here the salutary precepts of the Scriptures come to our rescue to make us rectify our views on life and our attitude towards others. These and the persistent knocks of destiny gradually soften our impulses, modify our outlooks, sharpen our intellect, and slowly but surely turn us into seekers; then into yogis; and finally into full-fledged Jnanis, when karma ceases. Jnana [?] totally annihilates it. Let us not forget that all these improved changes or evolution — take place not in the man himself, but in the faculties which are superimposed on him, that is, in his views and actions.
Jnana [?] is thus brought about by a good karma, generated
by a good free-will, which is the result of persistent suffering from a bad karma, generated by a bad free-will. Karma is like an inanimate machine, which yields up what you put into it. That is why the Master begins his Upadesa Saram with the statement that karma is jada, insentient, unintelligent.
What makes it move and act as stern destiny is the energy generated by the exercise of our free will.
It may be asked that if a persistently bad free-will caused by the embitterment resulting from a persistently bad karma brings about a worse karma, which drags us down and down, where is the chance of our ever coming up to the surface again? We must not forget the saving
Grace of suffering and the inherent purity of our nature, which will not permit us to remain forever insensible to degradation and misery: we cannot forever remain sunk in bottomless ignorance and never attempt to climb up to freedom. Suffering and the intense urge to return to ourselves act as floats and buoy us up from the depths of this vast ocean of samsara. Thus the action of karma through suffering gives the impetus to jnana which destroys karma.
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This is what Bhagavan means by "karma carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction."
It goes without saying that karma takes effect only in a physical body; for a debt incurred in a physical body has to be paid also in such a body, either in this very body or in a future one. The Vedanta does not believe in an after-death payment; hence rebirth is necessary.
2. "Even without any initial desires there are some strange experiences for us. Wherefrom do they arise?"
Bhagavan: "The desires may not be there now. But they were once there. Though forgotten they are now bearing fruit. That is how the Jnani [?] is said to have prarabdha. Of course this is so from the point of view of others who observe the Jnani [?]."
Talk 115
Note: The questioner seems to think that people are always conscious of their moral delinquencies, of their sins of omission and commission, of the effect of their actions upon others, as well as of their own desires. They are not: excessive greed and lack of consideration for the feeling and interest of others, are, unfortunately, a common malady, as witness politics, competition in business, and a hundred-and-one other deliberate and otherwise daily lapses in their conduct towards their neighbours. So to play the injured innocent for the troubles they get, cannot cheat Providence. Unconsciousness or oblivion of old desires, old sins and actions which affected oneself and others in this life or in previous lives, does not cancel the poetic justice that is necessary to restore the disturbed balance. Even the Jnani [?] brings his destiny from another life, but this works itself out without creating for him a new karma, or a new birth, or causing him anguish, as do the same troubles to others. His mind, having totally sunk in the Self, has become, under all circumstances, as fresh and
cool as summer moonlight. Others, seeing the suffering of his body, imagine the Jnani [?] himself to be suffering.
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3. "As long as you feel yourself the doer of action so long you are bound to enjoy its fruits. But if you find out whose karma it is, you will see that you are not the doer.
Then you will be free. This requires the Grace of God, for which you should pray to Him and meditate on
Him."
Talk 115
Note: Desires lie at the root of destiny. We desire and move to acquire its object. Then we never think of the identity of the actor, our whole attention being centred on the object till we secure it. The question of doership in the light of truth and untruth does not occur to us at the moment.
Enjoyment of the object preoccupies us most, enjoyment which we tacitly accept as the reward for our action, for our endeavour to gain it. This is karma done with a sense of doership, the doer being the empirical `I', even if the sense is not actively in the mind: it is implied in the act itself, and thus binds us.
Now, if we investigate into the cause and motive of the action and into the nature of the actor, we will find that he who has acted with the motive of enjoyment is not the real `I', but an imitator, a false `I', then we shall be automatically released from the responsibility of the action, and thus from the bondage of karma. Although we henceforth act, the sense that it is we who are acting drops from us, and with it also drops the power of karma to grip us; for the empirical `I' will no longer be there to be gripped.
But this discovery or realisation, does not come without the help of God, or Self, Bhagavan asserts, through intense worship and meditation. We shall hear more of this in the following Chapters.
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Bhagavan continues the explanation:
4. "Action without motive does not bind. Even a Jnani [?] acts and there can be no action without effort and without sankalpas — motives. Therefore there are sankalpas for everyone. But these are of two kinds, the binding (bandha-hetu) and the liberating (mukti-hetu). The former must be given up and the latter cultivated."
Talk 115
Note: Here is a way out of the karmic stream. Bhagavan postulates action for all men, and results for all action, yet repudiates the binding residue of action to apply equally to all actors. Action binds only to the extent that its motive element is of the binding type, the bandha-hetu, and never if it is of the liberating type, where the material, selfish motive, is totally absent. Therefore, those who wish to jump out of the stream of bondage into that of liberation have to curb their binding sankalpas and cultivate those of mukti.
The question may now be asked — How are they to distinguish between the two, which is admittedly difficult to do? This text is mainly meant for the sadhaka, who constantly worries whether a certain action of his is consistent with his sadhana or not. Bhagavan dissipates this doubt by admitting action to all men, and a motivated action too.
For example, in olden days Bhagavan himself used to work in the kitchen, and even once built a mud wall to his cave on the hill. He knew then why he did that work, and certainly aimed at the utility element in it, or else he would not have done it. But when Bhagavan worked he was all along aware of his true being as the doer of the action, which is desireless. The motive of this action is thus not of the binding type. Therefore the sadhaka's action should not worry him, so long as it is not of the binding type, having desires in the background.
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5. "Free-will and destiny are ever existent. Destiny is the result of past action; it concerns the body. Let the body act as may suit it: why are you concerned with it? Why do you pay attention to it? Free-will and destiny last as long as the body lasts. But jnana transcends them both."
Talk 193
Note: "Free-will and destiny are ever existent" is a significant statement which belies those who attribute to Bhagavan himself the self-contradictory theory that no free will exists, but only karma which predetermines every action and every experience through which we pass, even the most trifling.
It goes without saying that karma cannot exist without free- will. It is only free action which attracts rewards or punishments, i.e. karma, so that free-will and karma rise and fall together. That karma concerns the body and that we should therefore let the body act as it chooses, requires some explanation.
Karma and free-will are, like the body, insentient, and can affect only the body, and never the intelligent being who operates it and who transcends them both. Therefore, so long as the body-`I' sense prevails, they continue to function and the jiva continues to take one body after another for the working out of karma; but as soon as jnana dawns they cease to bear fruit. Karma will end with the last body (of the Jnani [?]) and free-will will no longer be the will of the jiva (which usually decides on the body-'I' basis) but that of Brahman into which the jiva has now completely merged.
Therefore, Bhagavan advises the seeker to pay no attention to the working of karma on the uphadhis, but to dissociate himself from them, when he will be free from the obligation of taking new bodies, and consequently from bondage.
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6. "So long as there is individuality, one is the enjoyer and doer. But if it is lost, the Divine Will prevails and guides the course of events. "Free-will is implied in the scriptural injunctions to be good. It implies overcoming fate through wisdom. The fire of wisdom consumes all actions and wisdom is acquired through sat sanga — the company of sages and its mental atmosphere."
Talk 209
Note: All the Scriptures recommend good action, admitting by implication the freedom of the will; for if the will is not free, where is the point of asking us to be good? Man would then be like a machine or an animal which is not responsible for its action and thus cannot be punished. The fire of wisdom here means the power of discrimination which the company of the wise stimulates. Discrimination between good and evil, of necessity induces us to choose the good and shun the evil, the ultimate results of which will be the cessation of doership — not the action itself, but the sense of our being its doers, which implies the merging of the individual will in the Divine
Will, as of the individuality itself in the Divine.
Thenceforward "the Divine Will will guide the course of action."
7. "When prarabdha karma gets exhausted, the ego completely dissolves without leaving any trace behind.
This is final Liberation. Until then the ego continues to rise up in its pure form even in the Jivanmukta [?]. I still doubt the statement of maximum duration of twenty- one days."
Talk 286
Note: This is an answer to a statement supposed to have been made by a great saint of the last century that, according to the questioner, "Nirvikalpa samadhi cannot last longer than twenty-one days" or death results. This, on the very face of
it, is inadmissible. What the Sage probably had in mind and, as it often happens, wrongly reported, was the ceaseless stay in samadhi with total unconsciousness to the world for twenty-one days, for it might have been considered impossible for the body to last longer without nourishment.
Even this cannot be right. Total unconsciousness to the world never takes place in the true samadhi (See XIII, 48), for it would cease to be samadhi and would become sushupti (deep sleep). What lasts for long durations and is mistaken for nirvikalpa is a simulation of it, a sort of a cataleptic trance called laya, resembling the profoundest sleep and swoon, where total unconsciousness of the Self as well as of the world takes place, contrary to the experience of nirvikalpa, where the Self as Pure Consciousness reigns supreme and alone. This cataleptic state can be brought about by the practice of kevala kumbhaka.1 We hear of coma-like trances of long durations, which have nothing to do with the true nirvikalpa. The same also happens to some beginners who let themselves go in meditation and unwittingly slip into laya, which they either mistake for samadhi or remain baffled, not knowing what to make of it.
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Moreover, if this statement of twenty-one days were true, there would have remained no one to teach the truth.
All the Rishis of the Upanishads and all the great muktas of whom we have heard, would have been in their graves before anyone had heard of them, and before they had time to instruct anybody. Besides, there would have been nothing for them to instruct — the experience being one of deep sleep, if total unconsciousness to the world is the meaning of the statement. Even the Vedas would not have seen the light of day.
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Bhagavan avers that the body falls out only after the exhaustion of its karma, and not before. We also know that in many cases it lasted forty, fifty, or even more years after the attainment of sahaja nirvikalpa. Bhagavan's own case is a shining example of it. He entered videhamukti, the final disembodied Liberation, after having remained for fifty-four years in unremitting nirvikalpa. Till then, Bhagavan tells us, the ego continues to pop up, even for the jivanmukta, but in its purest form, that is, without causing the Jnani [?] ignorance of the reality and the suffering consequent on this ignorance.
What it may cause him is a temporary, superficial belief in the reality of the world due to the intense impact of the senses, hence it is called ego, though pure.
8. "It is not enough that one thinks of God while doing karma (service, or worship), but one must continually and unceasingly think of Him. Only then will the mind become pure."
Bhagavan's attendant then remarked: "Is it then not enough that I serve Bhagavan physically, but must also remember him constantly?" To which Bhagavan remarked: "`I-am-the-body' idea must vanish through vichara." Talk 337
Note: The attendant is right in interpreting Bhagavan's remark. Seeing the Master physically comes nowhere before the contemplation of him with the mind. Yet service to him has its great utility, in that the very close proximity to his person has tremendous potentialities for the purification of the attendant's vasanas, due to the utter purity of the Master's mind. But that is not sufficient to give mukti. Purificatory processes are only a stage on the path, to make one fall in the line of mental practices — dhyana and vichara, — which alone can prepare the mind to experience Brahman in the last stages of the long journey. "`I-am-the-body' idea must
vanish through vichara," Bhagavan asserts.
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The path of service is the path of surrender, which is not limited to time and space; for it is round the clock and round the equinoxes process. It goes on for years of remembrance — a mental process again — of God, Guru or
Self.
9. "Your idea of will-power is success insured, whereas will- power should be understood as the strength of mind which meets success and failure with equanimity. It is not synonymous with certain success. Why should one's attempts be always attended with success? Success develops arrogance and one's spiritual progress is thereby arrested. Failures on the other hand are beneficial, inasmuch as they open one's eyes to one's limitations and prepare him to surrender himself. Therefore one should try to gain equipoise of mind under all circumstances. That is will-power. Again success and failure are the results of prarabdha and not of will-power.
One man may be doing only good and yet prove a failure.
Another may do otherwise and yet be uniformly successful. This does not mean that the will-power is absent in one and present in the other."
Talk 423
Note: The context is the case of a man, who, because of repeated reverses in business, has lost confidence in himself, and who is now trying to find a way of recovering it. He is confusing confidence with will-power. One may have abundant confidence in oneself, yet the will to work is lacking.
The case of the questioner is the reverse of this, namely, he has the will to work, but is pessimistic about the results of his labour, on account of persistent failures in the past. Bhagavan advises him to develop an equal attitude to both success and failure, which after all depend on one's destiny, at the same time he praises failure as more spiritually fruitful in the long
run than success, in that it kills arrogance and promotes an attitude of vairagya, which hastens one's approach to the supreme goal. Most people live in abysmal ignorance of their glorious destiny; more so of their weak points — of their tamasic and rajasic cravings and behaviour. The rich in particular take the strongest objection to these being pointed out to them in a direct manner. How, then, can God open their eyes and save them from this self-intoxication? He gives them disasters and calamities to shake their airy castles and crack the thick crusts of their arrogance. Pride of wealth, of position, fame, power, learning and, worst of all, of lineage eventually destroys itself, crushing down over the head of its owner to his everlasting good.
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