The fact that we lack free will might seem depressing, but this is only so if we understand ourselves to be people who are chained or controlled by something else. In fact, our lack of free will refers to the fact that we are not people at all. Understood correctly, this lack of free will leads immediately to silence and peace.
On the lack of free will and its abuse
I recently re-read an interesting passage from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi today:
Talk 190:
There is a pet squirrel in the hall which usually retires into its cage before nightfall. Just as Maharshi was telling it to retire for the night a visitor who had announced that he had attained the transcendent consciousness suggested that water might be offered to it, since it was likely to be thirsty on this hot evening. His presumption to understand animals evoked no response. He repeated it. After a few minutes’ silence Maharshi said, “You are probably thirsty after your long meditation in the hot Sun on the hotter rocks and you would like to drink a jug of water.”
D.: Quite so. I have taken water.
M.: The squirrel is not so thirsty. Because you were practising austerities in the heat of the Sun you should feel thirsty. Why prescribe it for the squirrel?
Maharshi added: I noticed him standing on the hot rocks facing the Sun with eyes closed. I stood there for a while but did not want to disturb him and came away. These people do as they please.
D.: What I did, I did not intend beforehand. It was spontaneous.
M.: Oh! I see! Whatever we others do, we do with intention! You seem to have transcended all!
D.: This is not the first time I did so. You yourself inspire me and make me do all these things. Yet you ask me why I did it. How is it?
M.: I see. You are doing actions being controlled by me. Then the fruits also should be considered similarly to be mine and not yours.
D.: So they are undoubtedly. I act not of my free will but inspired by you. I have no will of my own.
M.: Enough of this rubbish! So did Duryodhana of old (in the Mahabharata) say:
janami dharmam nacha me pravrittih,
janamyadharmam nacha me nivrittih.
kenapi devana hridi sthitena
yatha niyuktosmitatha karomi.
[I know what is dharma, yet I cannot get myself to follow it! I know what is adharma, yet I cannot retire from it! O Lord of the senses! You dwelt in my heart and I will do as you impel me to do.]
What is the difference between you two?
D.: I see no difference. But I have no will and act without it.
M.: You have risen high above the common run. We others are acting with personal will.
D.: How, Sir? You have said in one of your works that action can be automatic.
M.: Enough! Enough! You and another visitor behave as transcendental beings! You are both fully learned. You need not learn more. I would not have said all this had you not been coming here frequently. Do as you please. But these eccentricities of the beginner’s stage will become known in their true light after some time.
D.: But I have been in this state for such a long time.
M.: Enough!
What Duryodhana says is highly reminiscent of Romans 7:19 (“For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.”), as well as of the fact that in the Old Testament, Pharaoh often is on the verge of letting the Israelites go, but God hardens his heart… why? So that “my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.” (Exodus 11:9). Wow, what a motive for hardening someone’s heart!
Anyhow, free will — for most things — clearly does not exist… it’s confirmed by the Bhagavad Gita (18:60-61)… human beings are simply pieces on a machine whirled around by God. And Maharshi himself says “If the mind is worried over what befalls us, or what has been committed or omitted by us, it is wise to give up the sense of responsibility and free-will, by regarding ourselves as the ordained instruments of the All-Wise and the All-Powerful, to do and suffer as He pleases” and also, the body “is designed for doing the various things marked out for execution in this life. The whole programme is chalked out. ‘(Not an atom moves except by His Will) expresses the same truth, whether you say” that it “does not move except by His Will” or that it “does not move except by karma.” [i.e. cause and effect]
So what might be the exception? Well, Maharshi says, a seeker is “always free not to identify himself with the body and not to be affected by the pleasures or pains consequent on the body’s activities.” That’s a healthy thing for a seeker to think. Technically, of course, even the desire to escape identification with the body and mind is an act of God’s grace.
And at the same time, in a sense the real truth is not that there is no free will, but that free will and destiny (or God’s will, call it what you will) are two sides of a coin that the Truth is beyond. The real truth is that neither free will nor its absence is true; the real truth is beyond concepts entirely.
Now all that said, there is a matter of contexts. If one talks as if there are people and events, then in that manner of speaking, there is volition. There is no real difference between the spontaneous and intentional. To the one who knows, everything is spontaneous, including intentions.
And there is nothing about regarding everything as spontaneous that makes for a ‘get out of jail free’ card for the results of one’s actions. And if you lack free will, then certainly others lack it too, and in punishing or criticizing you, they too could simply say — “Don’t look at me, I didn’t do this with any free will.”
So given all this, what is Maharshi’s criticism of the visitor really about?
A sage could say that they are driven by the divine will, but a sage wouldn’t say it in this context. This is merely pride or vanity dressing itself up in the spiritual garb. One knows that because of the surrounding actions and attitudes — because of the seeming desire for the person to show how spiritual they are.
Maharshi, for examples, quotes Gandhi as saying in a letter to his friend that he is not thinking, that he is simply acting, and that God’s purpose is being fulfilled this way. But Gandhi says this not as a way of boasting but as a means of expressing humble wonder.
If there were arguments brought up against what Gandhi did, or moral accusations against him, he’d never use the “I wasn’t thinking“ or “I lack free will” excuse. He would recognize that unconscious intentions might be selfish and could have driven him in certain ways, and would have tried to correct those deficiencies. Even if he did things without thinking, he would still take moral responsibility — because the one who would avoid or take moral responsibility is in a sense the doer, equipped with free will! The real surrender, the real understanding of a lack of free will, is that one is not that person, not that that person lacks free will.
A lack of free will is not a lack of will. Free will is a theory about cause and effect; will is simply the instrument by which a human does things consciously.
Nor is a lack of free will is a lack of intentions. And when using a lack of free will to show how one is superior — that’s self-deception and suspect.
In the context here, vanity is at stake. The visitor had announced he had obtained the transcendent consciousness. That, first off, is not something that can be ‘obtained’ and wouldn’t usually be announced in this way. The visitor had stood, very visibly, on the hot rocks in the Sun to show everyone else how spiritual they were. He asked for the water for the squirrel loudly, repeatedly, again to demonstrate his importance and his spiritual insights. And when he was called on these boastful intentions, he retreated — denied his own agency and intentions — and attributed his actions to God/Maharshi, so that he could avoid self-reflection and make himself seem great.
So there’s a self-deceptive vanity at play, which is an obstacle to a seeker, and which Maharshi tried to point out. It’s an abuse of the “lack of free will” concept to protect the idea of the individual self as doer and experiencer. The one who really felt surrendered wouldn’t get caught up in this kind and level of self-deception.
The doors to the train are locked -- so chill
Let me assure you, the doors to the train are locked. You are going precisely where you are going and nowhere else, governed by a combination of desire and circumstances — or, if you prefer, God’s will.
You’re on a track, and that track cannot be deviated from. It can only, as one of its stops, give you the illusion of being able to change its direction. Can’t happen. Doesn’t happen. What will be, will be. What was had to happen the way it did.
Does that mean we don’t try? It means that the trying itself is part of a process that plays out with iron certainty. The drama of figuring things out is all part of the script.
So sit back, and, as Ramana Maharshi says, put your baggage down.
Relax and enjoy the view. Not even that.
Just relax.
Not even that.