Dear Sundari, apologies for taking so long to reply to your last email on the difference between the cause and effect and non-origination teaching.  It is a difficult and subtle teaching, as you point out.  I am still trying to assimilate it.  I ‘get it’ intellectually, but am constantly tripped up by repetitive patterns. Things happen that trigger ‘me’ that I seem to have no control over. This causes so much conflict in my personal relationships, not to mention my state of mind. Could you shed some light on this?

Sundari: It is very difficult being a ‘human’ being, and it is even more difficult to disidentify with being a human being. We tend to think of  preferences, our likes and dislikes, as something we’ve reasoned our way toward over time. Vedanta says the opposite. How and when we respond to outside stimuli is shaped, in predictable and measurable ways, by our dominant motivational drives, our likes and dislikes.

The same could be said of most of our cognitive analyses. Or thinking patterns.  Most of these mental and emotional patterns, especially the ones that cause the most trouble for us, are based in the unconscious mind. Vedanta explains this perfectly in its teaching on our likes and dislikes, vasanas and samskaras, and what gives rise to them—the three gunas, which I know you are familiar with.

The (Four) Major Drives

Evolutionary psychology and behavioral science have long recognized that human motivation organizes around three primary and sequential imperatives. The first is oriented toward security and physical nourishment: safety, comfort, the body protected and at rest. The second is oriented toward social belonging: group membership, collective relationships, and one’s position within a community. The third is oriented toward intensity and deep connection: peak experience, charged aliveness, full engagement with whatever matters most.

Vedanta adds the fourth, and most important drive, which is virtue or spiritual growth, which sometimes, but not always, comes after the first three are taken care of. These are not personality types in the traditional sense but something more primary, even primal. These biological imperatives operate below conscious choice, organizing what each of us pays attention to and finds meaningful. When we have not dealt with the first three motivational impulses, especially security, we are unlikely to be qualified for self-inquiry.

The Cause of Friction and Conflict in Relationship

All of our  conflict/friction dynamics are driven by the unconscious mind(s), which contains our past. Most of who we are as conscious beings is driven by it, whether we like it or not.  Our conditioning and our past weaves its way into our psyche like a parasitic vine that wraps itself around a host tree, changing its shape. And sometimes totally deforming, even killing it.

The mind, whose deeper unconscious content makes up 95% of what propels it, is truly an awesome and potentially terrifying thing. There be angels, but also, dragons there. And they can only be slain when it’s their time. So much potential for freedom, expansion and joy. And for imprisonment, limitation and pain. Amazing and scary, being human. Especially when you are convinced that is all you are.

One has to see it all, understand it, to cut the root of that parasitic invader, to ourselves free of its grip. But because it has no actual substance, you can’t see it until you see it. When you do, it is only knowledge and love that have the power to cut the ties, for good. To burn those ropes so that they no longer have any power to bind. Vedanta gives us that power. Without it, the ‘you’ you think you are is not in charge.

Who Is In Charge?

What or who is in charge sounds like a spiritual or philosophical provocation, and it is that.  Humans have been trying to answer that question since we became aware of time, and starting wondering who we are and why we were here. Most religions are based on this and have their versions of the answer to the question. It is a question at the heart of self-inquiry as well, relating to the investigation of who the person is, what drives them, how they relate to and transact with their environment, and what creates, sustains and destroys the whole creation.

The 5% You

But it is also a scientific question with measured, replicated and findings published in the most rigorous journals in psychology and neuroscience. The consensus is that the conscious mind, the part of you that reads these words, that deliberates and believes it is making decisions, controls approximately 5% of your cognitive and emotional activity. The remaining 95% is conducted by the unconscious mind.

The 95% is the vast, silent, invisible machinery that operates below the threshold of conscious awareness. It generates the thoughts you think are yours, producing the decisions you believe you make, generates the feelings you think are yours, and runs the biological systems that keep you alive. All without ever asking your permission or reporting its activity to your conscious awareness.

In other words, the person you think you are is just the very tip of the iceberg.  The rest is mostly unknown. But not unknowable, if you have the right means of knowledge. Vedanta tells us upfront that reality is not what we think it is – that our sensory perception is vastly limited, and the information coming from it is biased and therefore, flawed. Though we relate to the idea of a conscious and unconscious mind, there is much more to reality than that. A whole level below our own personal conscious and  unconscious, the macrocosmic unconscious or Causal body.

Science has  named the three orders the three orders: 1) the personal conscious, 2) the personal unconscious and 3) the impersonal unconscious—the explicate, implicate and super-implicate orders. In Vedanta this is the triumvirate of jiva (Subtle body/System 3), Isvara (Causal body or System 2), and the knower of both, Pure Consciousness (System 1). We have written extensively on these three systems.

Are You the Candle or the Sun?

The person we take ourselves to be is only aware of a small spectrum of stimuli coming in from the senses at any given time. Whereas the personal and impersonal unconscious, the two levels of the Causal body, is processing millions of bits of information per second. The conscious mind is a candle, and the unconscious mind is the sun. But the candle believes it is illuminating the room. If we had to compare the conscious and unconscious minds to a computer, the conscious mind has a computational ability of 40 bits per second, and the unconscious mind 400 million bits, per second.

This finding is not new.  Freud proposed the existence of the unconscious mind in the 1890s, arguing that the conscious self is the tip of an iceberg, with the vast bulk of mental activity occurring below the waterline, invisible and inaccessible to ordinary awareness. Freud’s metaphor has become so familiar that it has lost its power to shock.

But the shock is deserved, because Freud was not merely proposing that some mental activities are unconscious. He was proposing that most mental/emotional activity is unconscious. That the conscious self is a thin veneer over a deep, powerful, autonomous system that has its own goals, its own logic and its own agenda. That is a scary thought for most. Is it any wonder that freedom from and for the jiva is so difficult?

The unconscious  is vast, powerful—and it is running your life. Modern sciences’ view of the unconscious begins not with Freud, but with Benjamin Libet, whose experiment on free will demonstrates that the brain initiates actions approximately half a second before the conscious mind becomes aware of the decision. The readiness potential or electrical buildup in the motor cortex precedes voluntary movement—it begins before consciousness arrives. The decision  to act is made ‘in the dark’. Without your knowledge.

The conscious mind is notified after the fact.  John Dillon Haines extended on this finding to 7  full seconds of unconscious brain activity, detectable by MRI pattern classifiers, preceding the conscious experience of choosing which button to press. In the investigation into free will, this puts things into very sharp focus.

Is There Free Will?

Who is really doing the choosing? What is weighing alternatives, committing to a course of action before the conscious mind has any awareness that a decision is underway? That something is the unconscious, the micro and macrocosmic causal body. And it is not merely fast and automatic. It is highly sophisticated and intelligent.

The unconscious does not merely decide before you do. It perceives subliminally before ‘you’ do. This framework suggests that our conscious awareness is like a small spotlight, illuminating a tiny fraction of the brain’s activity. While the vast majority of processing occurs in the regions outside the spotlights beam. In the unconscious systems that the (superficial) global workspace cannot reach.

The topic of freeway will investigates the relationship between the conscious and unconscious minds. Libet’s readiness potential, the unconscious initiation of action before conscious awareness, is the unconscious mind generating a neural template. ‘Free will’ is the conscious mind’s ability to veto the stimulus before it morphs into automatic action generated by the unconscious.

Standing Up to Your Vasanas

This is what Vedanta means by ‘standing up to your vasanas’. Start with identifying the low hanging fruit – your likes and dislikes. Track them and that will lead to the deeper samskaras in the uncosncious twhere hey originate from. Knowledge of our likes and dislikes and what drives them, affords us the power to select the  options generated by the unconscious. Mature worldly people without non-dual knowledge and the tools it offers, such as karma yoga and guna yoga, often manage a high degree of self-management and control. But this does not equate to freedom from and for the person.

For this you need Self-knoweldge, and there is nothing to beat it.  Only by applying the nondaul teachings to our lives do we gain the freedom from the person without the pressure to become a different or ‘better’ person.  Though that will happen because when you understand who you are you will never break dharma and cause injury to yourself or others in thought word or deed. 

But becoming a better person is a benefit of Self-knowledge, not the aim.  You are told upfront that there is nothing wrong with you other than ignorance of your true identity as the unborn, unchanging, whole and complete Self.  Knowing that gives you the power to discriminate between the two orders of reality, duality and non-duality. And like David going up against Goliath, the power to slay the dragons in the unconscious.

Self-knowledge is your super power.  Dedication to your sadhana and commitment to clearing up the repetitive patterns with it are the only way forward.  Take it easy, love yourself, and trust that the scripture has your back. You are on the right track.

Much love

Sundari

Sundari: Yes and no. It depends who you are identified with. Jiva or Self? If the former, the answer is complicated – it’s a both/and/neither situation. If it’s the latter, the answer is super simple: who needs free will if you are free (of the jiva) as the Self? Isvara is running the show, anyway. Might as well get with the program!

D: Is any decision made by the jiva?

Sundari: Same answer. Yes and no. The real issue here is that if you think you are a person doing things with your free will and taking responsibility, the karma comes to you – you get the burden of it. Either in the form of failure to get what you want, or success.  And seeing as doers are never satisfied even when they get what they want, you are then pressed to use your ‘free’ will to get the next thing. Whereas if you know you are the Self, you still act appropriately, which means in line with dharma, but karma yoga is automatic. There are no bad results, whether or not you get what you want.

D: Or has every thought, feeling, memory, and action come from Ishwara? 

Sundari: Yes, it does. And no. It’s complicated because the hypnosis of duality fools us all with its clever deceptions! On the one hand it’s all Isvara because our personal vasanas or likes and dislikes are actually not personal but universal.  On the other hand, seeing as we are either bound by our likes and dislikes or not, it is personal and we experience the limitation of desire whether we believe we have free will or not.

So as we only know of our personal experience in every moment of our lives, why settle for limitation? Just do what is right/appropriate and dharmic, meaning in keeping with personal and universal values, and you will be in the clear. Free will is useful when we use it wisely, meaning, with karma yoga. And also, remember that failing to do what is required of you under the guise of surrender or karma yoga is simply self-delusion. You are only fooling yourself.

D: When there is effort to do the right thing, is that God? When there is adharmic behaviour, is that also God?

Sundari: Yes to both. Isvara is both dharma and adharma because it creates, regulates and destroys the field of experience. And yet, because dharma is built into the jiva program, everyone has an expectation of non-injury. Therefore, though we have a choice whether we act in accordance with dharma or adharma, a natural law is that we will feel bad if we don’t. There are few exceptions to this – though some do exist, such as psychopaths, for instance.

D: Perhaps I can relax and let Ishwara do what it does with a perfectly objective perspective

Sundari: Now that’s a smart move, seeing as you are not the doer as the jiva nor the Self. And no matter what, Isvara takes care of your getting and your keeping. Why worry about anything?  You are ok, life is good even when it’s not, because you are the Self. Do what you need to do in any situation as there is the law of attraction in the field – like attracts like. But better not be invested because this law, which is the law of grace,  belongs to Isvara alone. Don’t get deluded that you can game the system {as in ‘The Secret’) to indulge your likes and dislikes.

The Four Main Issues Relating to Free Will

1. The Law of Karma

Isvara, the Field, is impersonal, and runs on natural impersonal laws or dharmas. It must to function at all. The universal laws are dharmas or laws that apply to everyone. From this perspective, free will and the needs of the individual are not relevant other than how they relate to the total. Best accept that as it’s just the way it is. One of these impersonal laws is the law of karma, which states that all actions have consequences, and we are not in control of those consequences, only how we relate to them. As you reap, so you sow. This implies that we do have agency to respond appropriately to what life brings our way.

2. The Law of Dharma or Right Action

On the personal level are the dharmas that govern our personal world. Another important law is the law of dharma, right action, on the universal and personal level. The law of dharma states that we must respond appropriately to what life asks of us on both universal and personal levels, or we suffer. All the natural laws or dharmas are predicated by how the gunas, the three forces that create the Field, sattva, rajas and tamas, play out. The only way to manage these three forces is through knowledge of them, knowledge of universal and personal dharma as well as the practice of karma yoga, and surrender of personal will to Isvara.  Hand it over!

3. The Law of Attraction or Grace

The good news is that even though from the big picture point of view, meaning the Causal or Meta reality, everything is preordained, it is still true that grace is earned, that too is a natural law. It is the law of attraction. Isvara is Consciousness wielding Maya so has nondual vision, is unaffected by the gunas (duality) and sees everything as perfect. But thanks to the law of attraction operating in the Field, the jiva can maximize getting what it wants when it understands the law of karma and dharma. Here free will can be put to good use. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, that kind of thing. Isvara has no choice but to respond to us in like kind because Isvara is the Self and so are we. We can manage the gunas to maximize sattva and attract grace.

But if we have no way to understand reality from outside the box of duality, we suffer because we do not understand the identity between Isvara and us as an individual. The reason the jiva can exert its will and make a change in the Causal body, or Isvara, is that their common identity is the Self, Consciousness.

4. The Law of Morality – We Feel Bad if We Break Dharma. The laws of karma and dharma are built in, that should be clear. Unless you are a psychopath or otherwise mentally deranged, you will feel bad if you break dharma. Isvara has wired this into the meta-program, or we would have destroyed ourselves a long time ago. What everyone wants is peace of mind, to be happy, and nobody wants to be injured. And they seek that above all else, in whatever way possible. Because this is a lawful universe run by certain natural laws which are transgressed at our peril, it also makes it possible to succeed.

The Key take-away on the issue of free will:  

The most important point regarding free will is that if you’re completely satisfied with your life, free will is irrelevant, for reasons stated. But if you’re not satisfied with your life, you can do more than complain about it.  You can change your karma to the degree that it is changeable, and you can change your attitude toward it if your attitude causes problems. Karma yoga, of course, is always the key.

Ok, that’s it really. This is the short answer to the free will issue, but there is lots more to it, which you can read in the LONG version!

Much love

Sundari

Sundari: You are most welcome, as always Christian. You cannot not experience nondual Consciousness every second of every day, or the body/mind would be no more. However, ‘walking it’, which means for the mind/ego to be trained to think from the perspective of nonduality, and to discriminate between reflected consciousness and nondual Consciousness, is where all the ‘work’ of inquiry takes place. And while the inquirer needs to ‘show up’ and ‘do the work’, equally important is the realization that though it is only the ego/mind that must get ‘retrained’, the doer cannot retrain the ego/mind.  Only through the assimilation of Self-knowledge does highly resistant ignorance (duality) get scrubbed from the mind.

Christian: The gunas I now understand in this context: the mind is 70% wired to negativity confirmed by scientific evidence – but can also be inferred logically; going back 50 thousand years to our ancestors and well before that into the hundreds of thousands for early humans (as for every other animal on earth now) – “fight or flight” in the non-thinking part of the brain, triggered by overcaution, was crucial to survival.

Sundari: Yes, correct. The blueprint for sentient beings has not changed that much since Isvara evolved sentient life on this planet, and evolution ‘allowed’ for self-reflectivity to develop.

Christian: “Manusha” as the Rishis named humans – “the ones who think” – I take to mean the prefrontal cortex and is costly to run in terms of energy – discrimination and dispassion, empathy, communication, the ability to infer – all require more energy and knowledge; these are not tamasically driven (“it is harder to do the right thing” i.e. not lazy) nor quick fixes rajas chases after.

Sundari: Subjective self-reflectivity affects how the gunas play out, especially before we are guna educated and understand their existence and significance. When we do know, we can learn how to relate to and manage the gunas for peace of mind. It’s appealing to think of God/Isvara in the form of evolution weighing up the pros and cons of bestowing the faculty of self-reflectivity onto an upgraded animal form – thus ‘creating’ thinking/feeling bipedal humans. I can use my imagination to picture God having to take a lot into consideration. On the one hand, this would put humans at the top of the pecking order of sentient beings, seeming the roof and crown of creation. But it also would make them extremely troublesome!  Just take a look at the world to see how things worked out, the mess it’s in thanks to this faculty…Oi vey. Maybe Isvara should take this ‘gift’ back…, though it appears that Isvara really likes ignorance because there is so much of it! 

So, God went along with the idea, but made it difficult for the poor jiva, maybe even went a bit overboard with ignorance… Though Self-knowledge is built into all sentient life, after all, this is and always been a nondual reality. But humans are subject to mithya, the hypnosis of duality. Which means that Self-knowledge is not easily available. All the same, God was merciful because the upside is that being self-reflective grants humans an eventual out-card from their expanded, but still limited, human programme (assuming certain qualifications have developed), by realizing their true identity as the unlimited Self. 

On the downside, self-reflectivity would make jivas capable of thinking and feeling. More accurately, to know that they are thinking and feeling. Hence, thanks to inbuilt ignorance, the feeling of inadequacy, fear and worry would be jiva’s destiny, chasing answers in the world of objects, desperately seeking control. Another downside is that with the gift of self-reflectivity comes relative free will (which humans mistake for complete free will). Thus, humans are capable of going against their program and breaking dharma, causing much injury and suffering to themselves and to the field of life. 

We tend to anthropomorphize animals, though they do have rudimentary intellects and can feel, and thus suffer. But because they do not have the gift or curse of self-reflection, they are in total ignorance of the true nature of reality, and have no objectivity about their existence. They do not know what they are thinking and feeling, so they cannot go against their program. Unlike humans, they do not worry or try to control outcome. An animal is bound by its instinctive program, and if it is neurotic, its usually due to it’s contact with humans. Though some animals like elephants and some primates show some self-objectivity, no animal feels, thinks or ‘knows’ in the way human beings compute. Therefore, as much as animal lovers hate to hear this, though all sentient beings suffer, no sentient being other than humans knows they are suffering to the extent that we do. They simply do not have the same program.

Christian: My mind will default to either rajas or tamas unless a conscious counter-attitude is applied, with knowledge of why. The consequences of tamas / rajas will automatically happen if I don’t, as default and reflex. This is not bad, it just is the way it is, it is not a sin nor anything other than not knowing (ignorance, rather than stupidity) and especially for this stage of human development. Without Vedanta and the effort of the teachings, it would likely be the default for all – except a few “enlightened beings” !

Sundari: Well put. As I said in my talk last Sunday, we cannot control the gunas or how they manifest. Very often, we don’t need to ‘do’ anything other than to observe how they are playing out and not identify with them. At the same time, sattva is the guna to aim for if we want peace of mind, so managing the relative proportions of rajas and tamas to sattva is what mind management entails. This may or may not require ‘doing’ something about rajas or tamas, in the karma yoga spirit, of course.

There are definitely appropriate actions we can take to reign in too much rajas, or to give too much tamas a kick in the butt. The mind (ego) will resist all of them of course. But when Self -knowledge has activated dispassion and discrimination as the default, we can manage rajas and tamas before they drag the mind deeper into extroversion/fragmentation in the case of rajas, of dullness and denial in the case of tamas. Too little rajas or tamas and too much sattva can also be a problem as it can turn the mind into a “space cadet”. Or worse, spiritually vain. More on this below.

Christian: More recently studies have shown “humans have no free will” – though the Jiva / Ego believes there is free will – and it appears this temporal belief is useful for practicing Karma Yoga or (apparent) action would never happen. Tamas would then rule, inevitably. While my Jiva is more wired to Rajas, the outcome “back to Maya!” is the same. James sometimes asks in Satsangs about the references for these studies and I can recommend a recent book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky which summarises the evidence in the scientific terms he asks about, which Vedanta has known for centuries.

Sundari: The science on the topic is pretty well established, though we do have relative free will in that we can (apparently) choose one thing over another. If this were not so, success in anything mithya would be impossible. But the bigger nondual picture makes it clear that those choices are based on built in likes and dislikes that come from and are controlled by the Causal body, or Macrocosmic unconscious (Isvara). To effect a lasting change in the way the mind works requires two views, as usual, with all satya – mithya discrimination.  I wrote this for an inquirer this week:

The key to freedom is managing our feelings and the repetitive thought patterns that give rise to them through guna management. From this perspective, even if the mind is not peaceful (sattvic), it does not interfere with our baseline experience as the Self, satya. This is the essence of the guna teaching.  The only meaningful way to change the habitual patterns the mind runs on is to make a permanent change on the Causal level, through Self-knowledge.  So, here it seems that there are two things going on, which in mithya, there always is (apparently). Let me explain.

1. Mithya: To change things on the mithya, or cause and effect level, we need to have knowledge of and manage the gunas and practice karma yoga.  In this way, even though the mind is conditioned by the Causal body, to render binding likes and dislikes non-binding, we must re-educate the ego and subjugate it to the knowledge that it is not in control. One can even put this into practice without approaching discrimination between satya, pure nondual Consciousness, and mithya, reflected consciousness, duality. This greatly improves life for the jiva, but it is not moksa.

2. Satya: For moksa to obtain, Self-knowledge must free the mind of bondage to and identification with the body/mind, entirely. This requires satya – mithya discrimination, which if it assimilates, makes a permanent change in the Causal body – in Isvara. It is possible to effect a change in the Causal body because there is a common identity between Isvara and the jiva, which is non-reflected, or nondual Consciousness. But this is not easy because until ignorance is completely eradicated, there is still identification with the person, and their likes and dislikes. This is why nididhysana is usually the longest part of self-inquiry.

Essentially, these two points elucidate the difference between secular karma yoga, which is for doers, and jnana yoga, which is for inquirers qualified for moksa. At this point, what keeps some inquirers stuck is that they erroneously believe that they must study Vedanta to ‘Self-actualize’. While it is important to memorize all the teachings correctly, this will not produce moksa, Self-actualization. Self-actualization obtains when Self-knowledge has eradicated all duality, and the identification with the person is no more.  Here, satya mithya discrimination no longer applies because you are what is actual. Ignorance and knowledge are both objects known to you.

Christian: So I now see baselines in oneself for gratitude, even if just the slimmest but permanent reasons to be “cheerful in the face of adversity” are vital. Not as an empty epithet or a “Hallmark card” but truths which do not fluctuate – for both the darkest not right times and the lucky times; this brings perhaps the surrender you mention (?) allows continuance of the Sattvic mind without claim on either as “being bad or good” or worse a “good or bad person” either way. Tiny outcomes; part of a vast universe in a huge timeline which is beautiful in itself that it exists!

Sundari: Self-knowledge does not give us immunity against what seems like terrible, outrageous karma, or even ‘just’ the daily pin pricks of life that cause death by a thousand cuts for most. But when karma yoga and Self-knowledge become your default approach to everything and dispassion rules (i.e., surrender to Isvara), life becomes light, unencumbered. You can be joyous, despite ‘good or bad’ jiva karma because you no longer have the existential angst of trying to ‘do your life’. Isvara knows much better than the jiva does what is best for you and will give you what you need, one way or the other. And best of all, karma yoga puts the responsibility for any outcome not on you but on Isvara. What a pleasant thought! With that, we can start to understand the meaning of ‘let go and let God’.

The tricky part is that nondual vision nullifies all things mithya – which is anything related to the jiva, the field of experience and the Causal body. Everything is an object known to me, so who cares about ‘cleaning up’ the residual habits? There is no hard and fast rule on this because as the Self, you are free to live as you see fit. With only one real injunction: moksa is for the mind, the jiva; as the Self, you have never been bound. To be happy as a jive means following dharma and non-injury.  Your residual habits may only be injurious to you, and if you are too old/too sick/ couldn’t care or it’s too late to change, well, so be it. We know many Self-realized people who just cannot muster the will to change their bad habits, and keep living with the blowback karma from their ‘bad’ choices.

As the Self you are free of karma, but that does not mean you will escape the prarabdha karma in the pipeline for the body/mind.  A suffering body/mind is not much fun to experience, as we all know. And if your habits cause injury to others, well, that is not following dharma.  You will not feel good about it and it will cause agitation. Again, it’s our call. We are no less the Self either way. Only we will know if the Advaita shuffle is in play.

Christian: This attitude, while apparently hard to remember and practice initially, does get easier with time as you say, like training a muscle. I just was not aware I was doing this somewhat haphazardly and randomly.

Sundari: Retraining the mind/ego from its habitual built in dualistic operational system to permanent nonduality is no mean feat – veritably, it’s like David, jiva or system 2, going up against Goliath, Causal body, system 1. But it can be done because lucky for the beleaguered jiva, as previously stated, a permanent change can be made in the Causal body (only with Self-knowledge) because Isvara and jiva share the same identity as the Self. 

Christian: When Sattva is the predominant guna, it allows the Self to be reflected in us. Sattva means the absence of tamas and rajas tested especially under the duress of what life throws at the Jiva as long as we are alive. Sattva is not a state to be attained (e.g. in a cave) going “poof” the moment tamas or rajas rise, in or outside the cave.

Sundari: Sattva is the nature of the mind, and a pure mind is predominantly sattvic, true. But all three gunas are always present. In the creation story, or cause and effect teaching, pure sattva, prior to tamas and rajas appearing, is the pure mirror of Consciousness, called prakriti, or Maya.  Sattva provides the knowing function—it is Consciousness appearing as the Knower, Isvara, or God. Sattva is the intelligence part of creation, but alone cannot create. For the creation to manifest, we need tamas for the existence part of the blueprint, and rajas to put all blueprints into action.

Where your statement is incorrect is a mistake many inquirers make. It sounds like sattva can be experienced on its own. Spiritual types love this idea and mistake sattva for moksa. It also gives rise to a lot of spiritual vanity. But sattva, while it is the springboard guna for moksa because a mind run by rajas and tamas would not be qualified for it, it is impossible to separate the gunas. None is better than any other. 

Even though the nature of the mind is sattva, when the mind is extremely sattvic, rajas and tamas are also there, but in balance with sattva, so they don’t cause mental/emotional disturbance.  Additionally, even though sattva is the subtlest manifestation of Sat, Consciousness, like the other two gunas, it is an object known to Consciousness. It is not in and of itself, conscious, although by virtue of Consciousness, sattva makes conscious awareness and self-reflectivity possible for sentient beings.

Christian: The bliss which then may arrive cannot be owned, experienced or bottled as such and yet, it fundamentally “is” us because that is all that is left when we see it and this memory holds even under the influence of rajas and tamas.

Sundari: The bliss of the Self is always present and definitely experienceable, in fact, that is all you are ever experiencing.  It is only thanks to Maya extroverting (rajas) and suppressing (tamas) the mind that makes it so difficult to become aware of our unexamined experience, which is ever-present and unchanging Consciousness. While it is true that everything is known in the mind only in the form of a thought or feeling, the bliss of the Self is neither. The bliss of the Self is not produced by and cannot be removed by any experience, be it a thought or a feeling. It is just the Existence, the non-experiencing witness, the unlimited ever present fullness aware of the apparent ever-changing limited experiencing entity, which is unknown to the mind thanks to the hypnosis of duality.

Much love

Sundari

ShiningWorld.com

Dave: Great question. Freewill belongs to you, existence shining as awareness, not to the person represented by the body-mind-sense complex. That person does not have freewill because he is not a conscious entity, but rather an inert object – a fully automated process – that is known to you. You have no control over what arises in your mind, but since you are not that process you are free to respond as you see fit to whatever arises. You have an intellect for the purpose of determining the appropriate response. The question becomes whether you use your intellect in service of your worldly desires or of the desire for self knowledge.

Q: But aren’t my mind and intellect also part of the automated program that I have no control over whatsoever?

Dave: You don’t have control over the conditioning or the content of thought generated in your mind, but you have the capacity to reshape even that by virtue of your discriminating faculty (intellect) and your response to what appears. What is cannot be altered, but freewill is future facing, not past. You respond to every situation for the benefit of your future self, even as the present situation has already played out. Doing is done before you have anything to say about it, but as the action-less self evident witness, the intellect affords you the opportunity to apparently influence the future by your attitude and interpretation of experience.

Your mind does not enjoy this same freedom. As with everything else created, it is subject to the ever shifting winds of change. However, the intellect does enjoy the unique capacity to know you as its very own self, and to recognize your signature intelligence, benevolence and stability amidst the unending flux of creation. How? Because it is you. The uncontrollable unstable creation is nothing of the sort. Rather, it is governed by the very same unchanging benevolent intelligence that arises in your own intellect when the illusion of duality is pierced. The key to freedom is aligning yourself with that intelligence.

Q: It sounds like you’re suggesting that we not only have freewill, but the power to create our own reality.

Dave: In a manner of speaking, yes. Remember, the topic here is you, not some external reality. That means that everything that appears – including Isvara – is only you. Your mission, if you choose to accept it (😉), is to understand what that means. The evidence has all been disclosed, all witnesses have testified, and you are the judge and jury. Non-dual thinking, Vedanta, is observation, inquiry, and analysis of what you are and how you function. Not once are we ever referencing anything outside of you.

Therefore, look closely at your own experience. You know that your mind and senses can deceive you, and yet you also know that your mind and senses are the only means you have to experience the world. The conclusions that can be drawn from this challenging scenario are many. Spiritual bypassing, nihilism, and the idea that there is no freewill are tempting options to the fearful and unsophisticated part of ourself that seeks security at all costs. However, if your interest is in understanding reality as it is, then even your most closely held conclusions mean nothing to you. Your well-being and self worth are tethered elsewhere, so you are free to navigate life as you see fit.

Do you have freewill if what happens is not up to you? Can you create your own reality if there’s no freewill? The answers would seem to be no. Yet if you meditate to quiet your mind, and contemplate the teachings of Vedanta to understand it, can that lead to a greater sense of well-being and dispassion? Can you eat sensibly and workout regularly, and thereby improve your quality of life? Can you recognize that your lingering anger towards a person or situation is actually coming from yourself, and find a way to heal that suffering? The answer to all these questions is yes. It all depends on your perspective.

That is all you really need to know about freewill with respect to your own well being, and all we really care about in life is our well-being, contentment and satisfaction. If you conclude there is no freewill, you still have the apparent freewill I described above. If you conclude that you create your own reality, you are still subject to whatever happens, even the parts you would have preferred didn’t happen. Drawing conclusions is the nature of the intellect, but the conclusions that are drawn are only worthwhile to the degree that they serve you. If your desire is to be free from suffering and ignorance, then conclusions serve you when they point you to your ever-full nature as existence/consciousness, and not when they don’t.

Vedanta exists for the same reason that there is freewill. How would something like Vedanta, a means of knowledge to remove ignorance and gain self knowledge, even appear were it not for the self evident nature of consciousness? It wouldn’t because without you, existence shining as awareness, who would know the world?

Q: It just hit me that even my initial question had an obvious answer. Not an answer exactly, but I mean that the question implied the answer, me! I am the answer because even if I couldn’t resolve the logical discrepancy myself, I knew there was one. That means I am already free from paradox. Is that what you meant before when you said the topic is me?

Dave: That’s a great insight, and yes, that is exactly what I was pointing to. Remembering that you are the topic cuts right through anything. It engenders mature, independent, and nimble thinking because the real topic of any inquiry is always what you value most. Then whether you are trying to resolve a profound spiritual paradox, or a charged disagreement with a spouse, your touch will be light and free and any conclusions you come to will be in service to the greatest good.

Sundari: This is an important question; one we get asked often and have replied to often. The question presupposes a black and white answer, and that is not possible. The whole concept of free will is in duality, mithya, that which is always changing and only apparently real. In mithya it’s all shades of grey. However, though the truth seems paradoxical, it is only a seeming paradox once we investigate it from the point of view of the Self. Nonetheless the answer is complex, so I have given you the (very) long one! Make sure you read the whole satsang and take time inquiring into it because it basically covers the essence of the whole Vedanta teaching. If freedom from limitation is what you are after, then answering the free will question is fundamental to self-inquiry and the key to moksa because it cuts to the heart of it all: Who is the doer, the one who desperately wants free will, and why is it so important?

The ability to disidentify with the doer and surrender free will to Isvara, the Field of Existence, is called moksa, freedom from the doer, the limited identity. But to get to that requires certain qualifications, a deep commitment to self-inquiry, a qualified Vedanta teacher to guide your inquiry, and yes indeed, the grace of Isvara. If as an inquirer there is still a lingering identification with being a person it can seem pointless doing anything, even self-inquiry, once you start to understand that we are all just programs subjugated to the Macrocosmic impersonal meta-program: Isvara. Why bother?

Hence self-inquiry is the process by which we investigate our true identity to develop the ability to discriminate between that which is real, the Self, satya, from that which is apparently real, the jiva/mithya. As you probably know, satya is defined as that which is always present and unchanging, and mithya, as that which is not always present and always changing. To do this we must deconstruct what or who we think the person is in light of the teachings of Vedanta which reveal how the person is conditioned by duality (ignorance) and how it relates to its environment, Isvara or the Field. This is no easy task as ignorance is hardwired and Self-knowledge is extremely subtle, which is why one must be qualified for self-inquiry to bear fruit. The qualifications are described in detail in Essence of Enlightenment as well as in many satsangs on our Shiningworld website.

Perhaps the hardest thing to understand is that even though the apparent reality is a meta-construct set up by Isvara, one great big apparition, it has a unique status. It is neither real nor unreal. We cannot say the world does not exist because you can experience it. The question is, who is the experiencer and what is it experiencing? If the Self is non-dual, it cannot experience anything because to do so would mean there is something for it to experience other than itself, which is impossible. There is nothing outside the Self and everything appearing in it is an object known to it, which includes the jiva or person.

All objects owe their existence to Consciousness, and therefore, are conscious by virtue of Consciousness.  So, we can conclude that the jiva is the experiencing entity thanks to the presence of Consciousness.  What is the jiva experiencing? Well, that depends on who you think you are. As this is a nondual reality and duality is merely a superimposition on to nonduality, it must be that all anyone is ever experiencing is Consciousness, our own true nature.  But because the apparent reality is a product of Maya, which the power in Consciousness to apparently limit itself (note: apparently), those under the spell of Maya are identified with the instrument of experience, thebody/mind, instead of the knower of the instrument, the Self. Thus the need for control.

In the apparent reality, Isvara, the creator of the Field, runs the show. But not in the sense we think of it from the human perspective.  Isvara is not a person, or a benevolent or malevolent force doling out retribution or reward for good or bad behaviour. The Field runs on natural impersonal laws or dharmas. It must, to function at all. From this perspective, the needs of the individual are not relevant other than how they relate to the total.

One of these laws is the law of karma which states that all actions have consequences, and we are not in control of those consequences. Another important law is the law of dharma, right action, on the universal and personal level. The universal level are dharmas or laws that apply to everyone. The personal level are the dharmas that govern our personal world. The law of dharma states that we must respond appropriately to what life asks of us on both levels or we suffer. All the natural laws or dharmas are predicated by how the gunas, the three forces that create the Field, sattva, rajas and tamas, play out. The only way to manage these three forces is through knowledge of them, knowledge of universal and personal dharma as well as the practice of karma yoga, the surrender of personal will to Isvara.  

Even though from the big picture point of view everything is preordained, it is still true that grace is earned, that too is a natural law. It is the law of attraction. Isvara is Consciousness wielding Maya so has nondual vision, is unaffected by the gunas (duality) and sees everything as perfect. But thanks to the law of attraction operating in the Field, the jiva can maximize getting what it wants when it understands the law of karma and dharma. As you sow, so shall you reap. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, that kind of thing. Isvara has no choice but to respond to us in like kind because Isvara is the Self and so are we. We can manage the gunas to maximize sattva and attract grace.

But if we have no way to understand reality from outside the box of duality, we suffer because we do not understand the identity between Isvara and us as an individual. The reason the jiva can make a change in the Causal body, or Isvara, is that their common identity is the Self, Consciousness. How this process works is explained at the end of this satsang, where I unfold in more depth the teaching on the similarities and differences between Isvara, what we call ‘System 1’, the Causal body (also called the Total Mind or Macrocosmic Unconscious), and the individual, the jiva or personal unconscious mind (the Subtle body).

Thanks to the power of Maya, the hypnosis of duality, the thorny question of free will has plagued humans since time immemorial. The feeling of agency, which is the freedom to choose and have impact, of being in control, is central to our sense of self. If this is absent it is deeply problematic for most people. Yet ironically it is the need for control that keeps us tied to the small, limited, suffering doer self. Nobody is to blame for this. We are born doers, hard wired to control everything, and we never stop doing, from womb to tomb.  The problem is not doing but identification with the doer and its insistence on getting what it wants that cause suffering. If we are not identified with the doer, the issue of free will is moot because there is no separation between us and the Field.  We know that the Field is a reflection of us and are not deluded by duality. We are what we want.

Lately the free will question is driven by advances in neuroscience. Since the 1980s onwards, neuroscientific research made it possible to observe the physical brain activity associated with our decisions. Neuroimaging offers a clear-cut case pointing to our so-called free choices originating in our brains several milliseconds (sometimes longer) before we’re aware of making them. So how free can they be? These proofs have made it easier to think of our decisions as just another part of the mechanics of the material universe, in which “free will” plays no role. While many scientists believe that this means life is purely random and nothing is controlling our choices, Vedanta disagrees. Read on.

The issue of free will is such an explosive topic it engenders heated emotional responses in some people, to the extent that some philosophers and scientists who post research on it receive hate mail, even death threats. For these distraught souls, the idea that they have no control, nothing does, and there is no meaning to anything is an existential catastrophe. The worst news ever. Yet the difficulty in explaining the enigma of free will isn’t that it’s complex or obscure. It is actually something that is known to everyone even if only unconsciously.

If one thinks about life rationally and objectively, it is obvious that no one is in control of outcome or of the objects of desire. The Field of Existence is so complex, so many factors must be present for anything to happen, nobody has knowledge of all the factors involved in even the smallest event that happens or decision we make. Yet it is mostly denied or simply conveniently ignored. And contrary to what the scientists say, it is also obvious that the Field is intelligent and conscious. If you say that this is not obvious, then how do you account for your intelligence? Therefore, through inference, which is a valid means of knowledge, we can rightly deduce that there must be an intelligent cause behind the creation because we are intelligent, and the Field is intelligently designed.  Only this cause, what we call Isvara, has complete knowledge of and is in control of all the factors in the Field.

However, the need for control, the feeling that we are the authors of our choices, is so fundamental to everyone’s existence that most people do not have enough objectivity to accept this as a fact of life. Even in simple things, like choosing a banana over an apple, it seems absolutely obvious that you were free to choose the apple or the banana, both, or neither. Nothing could be more self-evident, right? But is it?

Lately the chorus of philosophers and scientists who say free will can’t be possible is growing (up to 80% by some accounts). “This sort of free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics,” says one of the most strident of the free will sceptics, the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. Leading psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom agree, as apparently did the late Stephen Hawking, along with numerous prominent neuroscientists, including VS Ramachandran, the famous Indian mathematician, who called free will “an inherently flawed and incoherent concept”. According to the intellectual Yuval Noah Harari, free will is an anachronistic myth. Useful in the past, perhaps, as a way of motivating people to fight against tyrants or oppressive ideologies but rendered obsolete by the power of modern science.

But if we look over the precipice of the free will debate with the eyes of someone who believes this world is real, we begin to appreciate how an already psychologically vulnerable person might be nudged over the edge into despair and hopelessness. The conviction that nobody ever truly chooses freely to do anything, that we’re the puppets of forces beyond our control, strikes many as cold and frightening, inexorably life-negating. 

By far the most disturbing implication of the case against free will is what it says about morality: that nobody is responsible for their actions, neither in terms of punishment nor, reward. From this standpoint, it seems nobody is culpable or deserving of either good or bad karma. The problem with this thinking is that the individual, whether an ordinary person, philosopher, psychologist, or scientist, taking this world to be real does not understand the laws of karma and dharma.  The laws of karma and dharma are built in, as explained. Unless you are a psychopath or otherwise mentally deranged, you will feel bad if you break dharma. Isvara has wired this into the meta-program, or we would have destroyed ourselves a long time ago. What everyone wants is peace of mind, to be happy. And they seek that above all else, in whatever way possible. Because this is a lawful universe run by certain natural laws which are transgressed at our peril, it also makes it possible to succeed.

A lack of understanding of dharma and karma often means we do not act appropriately. I.e., our fears and desires cause us to make ‘free will’ choices that break dharma, whether personal or universal, so we suffer. Therefore, on the morality issue, while no one is to blame for the way they are made, this does not inoculate us against existential suffering or excuse us from the consequences of our choices. There is no escape from the laws of karma and dharma. To be free of suffering requires that we understand the laws of right action and act dharmically because the highest value for everyone is non-injury.

It is true, humans are run by the unconscious or conscious vasana programs, most of which they are born with or develop according to the karma into which they are born. Nobody makes themselves the way they are or chooses their life circumstances from birth. While many are familiar with the idea of a collective and even the individual unconscious, there is no way to understand this fully without Self-knowledge, Vedanta, the science of the non-dual Consciousness. All means of knowledge available to worldly people are restricted to the apparent reality and therefore limited. Only a means of knowledge that can step out of the meta-program can explain it objectively.

Modern psychology is helpful in understanding our unconscious desires up to a point. But it falls short because it has no knowledge of karma yoga, no knowledge of the gunas that make up the Field and no knowledge of Isvara, which is another name for the Field itself. The guna-vasana-karma chain is beginningless and eternal. Individuals come and go, though the Jiva as a principle is eternal. Did the chicken or the egg come first? The chicken idea is eternal, and the egg idea is eternal. They are out of time. There is no ‘first.’ Neither came first because from the standpoint of the cause (past karma) it is an effect and from the standpoint of the effect (future karma) it is a cause. It is an appearance generated by Maya. Before creation manifests there was karma and after creation manifests there is karma. If you try to figure it out, you will be stymied because the cause and the effect are one. 

The same logic applies to fate and free will. Because of fate free will works and because of free will fate works. It is the same with every duality. Cause and effect, fate and free will, likes and dislikes, body/mind are all mithya—that which is not always present and always changing—apparently real. Cause and effect are mutually dependent concepts. Each influences the other. It is also inexplicable from the point of view of the person because the minute you understand it, it becomes something else. 

When we are under the spell of duality, we do not see that what we take to be real is just a chimera, a mirage. It is considered normal, just life! When we have no means of knowledge to discriminate between duality and nonduality, we do not know that the delusion of duality is the cause of all suffering. Duality traps us inside a very small box and we cannot see outside of it. It is like the metaphor of the fish who does not know what water is because it has never been out of the water or has any way of objectifying what it is always experiencing: water.

The answer in response to your question, ‘Is there or is there not, free will’, depends on one main factor: Who is asking the question? Are you the Self, the unlimited, ever-present, unchanging, and non-experiencing witness, or are you the small, limited ever-changing jiva, the experiencing entity? As a jiva, although it appears as if you are making independent moves and playing the game to win or lose, in actual fact, all moves are already pre-determined. The Field of Existence, also called the dharmafield, is just like a computer game. You can only make the moves, the choices, that are already programmed into Isvara’s meta-computer game.  

Isvara or the dharmafield created the game and is playing it, which is why karma yoga is such an important teaching and the only way to negate the doer.  Karma yoga is the most sensible way to live because it relieves the pressure of getting the ‘right’ result, or any particular result for that matter, because you understand that Isvara, the controller of the Field, gives you the results that are best for you at any given time, whether you like them or not. On the meta-level there is no chooser because the apparent reality is not real. But for the jiva, the answer to whether we do or do not have free will is not an either/or. It is a both/and.

On the personal level, you have limited free will in that you are seemingly free to choose one thing over another, according to your nature or conditioning.  From this perspective, free will gives the person the choice to ‘make the best’ of their lives. Even though the scientist will argue that our good or bad responses to life are tendencies that are also programmed, we do have free will to respond to what Isvara dishes out. How we respond either creates distress and agitation—unpleasant circumstances/karma, or acceptance and peace—pleasant circumstances/karma. In the end, does it matter if we do or do not have free will if peace of mind is the main aim? Who wants to live a life of misery and mental agitation caused by breaking dharma?

It is true we don’t have as much control as we think we have or want to have, but we have a certain degree of free will.  If we didn’t, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. There would be no spiritual, social, or economic progress possible, no civilization since there would be no reason for it, no possibility of success at anything. We have an inborn nature or programmed predisposition, our svardharma, which means we can work towards our goals, plan, and make choices. We gravitate towards and can choose to live a certain way that is right for us. If we understand the laws that run the dharmafield it is possible to achieve success from the standpoint of the jiva.  If that were not the case, success in anything, particularly freedom from the apparent reality, would never be possible.  If we take the appropriate action at the appropriate time, desired results are often, but not always, achieved. There are no guarantees in the apparent reality because Isvara takes care of the needs of the Total first.

The problem is that although most people’s choices seem to be volitional and individual, they are usually highly predictable and repetitive, thanks to the nature of the gunas. This is because most people, who have none, or very limited Self-knowledge behave like automatons although they don’t think they do.  They think that they are in charge and doing the choosing though their conditioning (vasana’s/gunas) is doing the choosing.

People often ask us: Is free will the cause of karma or is it the gunas?  Well, again, it’s a both/and not either/or. The gunas govern and colour the vasanas which create karma and vasanas/karma reinforce the gunas in an endless cycle.  To understand free will from the point of view of the Self, we first must understand that the gunas, vasanas and karma are three ways of saying the same thing, because nothing in mithya, the apparent reality, can be separated from the gunas.  

Everything that happens does so by virtue of the gunas. The gunas give rise to the jiva, the vasanas and their results (karma). Everything that happens is a vasana and, everything that happens is karma. Just like the gunas, all vasanas/karma are eternal and exist as principles in the Causal Body. They arise from the three gunas namely, sattva (the energy of peace, clarity, intelligence), rajas (the energy of action, passion and desire), and tamas (the energy of dullness, fear and sleep) which are what make up Maya—the dharmafield, or creation.  There are no new vasanas or karma. Just the same old programs recycled ad infinitum by the three gunas.  And the metaprogram in which the guna programs cycle is called Isvara, The Causal Body.

As the Self you may have negated the doer and rendered binding vasanas non-binding, and if you have, your likes and dislikes will be preferences, not commands. And they will be in alignment with dharma. But if we have Self-knowledge, or even if we are just a mature secular person with good values and always follow dharma, there is no guarantee of outcome. The difference between someone who knows they are the Self and someone who doesn’t is that they are fine with whatever result they get.

If you know you are the Self, you are not bothered with free will or outcome because you know not only that Isvara runs the show but more importantly, the show is not real. When Self-knowledge has removed ignorance and you know that your true nature is whole and complete non-dual Consciousness, there is no karma for you. There is nothing to gain or lose, there are no bad outcomes. Just outcomes.

As the Self, samsara, the hypnosis of duality, no longer exists in ‘your’ mind. You automatically see everything from the perspective of the nondual Self, as non-different from you. What is there to choose?  It is all you, the Self, and it is all good.  You unfailing respond appropriately to all situations so you never create unpleasant circumstances. You take everything as prasad, even if unpleasant circumstances present themselves.  You see it all like the movie it is, and nothing touches you. Even though Self-knowledge is not a magic bullet for the ego, which must still transact with this world, it is none the less seen as an object known to you.

As stated above but bears repeating, free will depends on who you take yourself to be. From the point of view of Consciousness, free will is non-existent. From the point of view of the Creator, Isvara/Maya, free will is non-existent because the Creator is not an individual entity.  From the point of all sentient beings, free will is on a sliding scale from almost zero to almost infinity. From the purely human point of view, if there is even a little free will there is a lot.  From the point of view of insentient matter, there is no free will. Where an individual falls on that scale, depends to a very large degree on his or her view of free will itself.  Vedanta says that there is free will if you think there is and there isn’t if you don’t.  People either deny free will exists or defend its existence tooth and nail. 

Most people think they have more than they do and misuse it with reference to their intentions by failing to help themselves when they can. Others manage it judiciously to create dynamic, interesting lives.  Some use it for good and some for evil.  Some see its upside some its downside and others see both.  Inquirers use it to understand the factor (Consciousness) that is beyond the human mind. Fate defines free will and free will defines fate.  Free will is definitely a dualistic mental concept with significant emotional ramifications and is only useful depending on what you want to do with your life. 

All the same, do you want to go limp and leave everything to fate or take the bull by the horns and transform your life? Self-inquiry is about transforming the jiva’s life, not the jiva necessarily, although that does happen by default. After all, moksa is for the jiva because as the Self you have always been and will always be free. What use is Self-knowledge if the jiva is still stuck in its limited identity and unsatisfactory suffering life? The benefits of self-inquiry don’t just ‘happen’. 

We need a burning desire for liberation and the presence of that desire is itself, the grace of Isvara. Vedanta comes to you when you are ready. But if we do not apply the nondual teachings of Vedanta to our life, self-inquiry does not bear fruit. Vedanta just provides a framework, a human toolbox as it were, that gives us nondual vision and allows us to manage the mind. It is up to us to use the toolbox. Isvara does not mind one way or the other and will provide the results either way because Isvara is not deluded about who we are.

The most important point regarding free will is that if you’re completely satisfied with your life, free will is irrelevant, for reasons stated above. But if you’re not satisfied with your life, you can do more than to complain about it.  You can change your karma to the degree that it is changeable, and you can change your attitude toward it if your attitude causes problems. Karma yoga, of course, is always the key.

I have posted a satsang on karma yoga recently and have shortened it here with reference to the question of free will, which is, of course, the desire to control outcome. The reason karma yoga is not easy is that it is a tool to disarm the spoilt childish ego, which wants what it wants when it wants it. The one who demands the right to individuality, that claims to have free will, who wants ownership and does not like to relinquish the idea of control.

However, why should we not want to have control over our experiences? Does it not seem natural that we want to have our desires fulfilled? Yes, it is human nature. But it is not good news for most because why would you want to give up control if you believe that exercising free will, getting what you want, equals happiness? The problem is it should be obvious that not only does getting what you want not equal happiness, wanting to control the outcome is about as nonsensical as wanting to control the weather. Why not be satisfied with the way things are, or just let the future unfold as it will and experience it as it does? If only it were so easy, life would be a whole lot less painful.

Being human, knowledge is power. The main reason our brains insist on trying to control the future to get what we want is that our brains find it gratifying to exercise doing so. Not just for the future or the result it seems to buy us, but for the exercise itself. Knowing the inside track, being effective, having a sense of agency to change or influence things, or ‘to make things happen’, is one of the fundamental needs with which human brains seem to be naturally endowed.  To give up our desires or not think about the future requires that we convince our frontal lobe, the part of our brain wired to plan and control, not to do what it was designed to do, and it naturally resists this suggestion.  Desires in the form of mental simulations of the future arrive in our consciousness regularly and unbidden, occupying every corner of our mental lives. Desire is intricately linked to time and control for the express purpose of gaining something we do not currently have.  Much of our behaviour from infancy onward is simply an expression of this desire for control. Most of us steadfastly believe our desires will prevail and fortune will favour us. And if we are blessed, it does, and we get what we want.

What is not obvious to us is that we try to control the outcome because fantasizing about the future can be more pleasurable than acutely living it. Reality seldom matches our expectations. Getting what we want does not make us happy for long because the problem is wanting itself. A fulfilled desire rarely returns the energy required to fulfill it, and the desire soon returns. And even less acknowledged is the reason we do feel good when a desire is met is that it is not about gaining or avoiding the object itself, but the removal of the pressure of desire, which is painful.

The truth is, no matter how hard we try to mine reality for more of anything, be it security or pleasure, it can only give us the basic pleasure and security of existence, no more. It’s true that a successful life is preferable to a miserable one.  But though we may think we experience more pleasure and excitement during high moments when we get what we want or avoid what we don’t want, actually, our pleasure level remains the same no matter our circumstances. In philosophy, this is called the hedonic treadmill. Whatever circumstances befall us, positive or negative, we tend to return to a pleasure/pain setpoint in a short period of time.  Life is a zero-sum.

For most people, the concept of zero-sum is about as unappealing as anything gets. It’s a very bad thing, destroying hope and nullifying goals. What they fail to see is the freedom zero-sum offers.  From the purely dualistic perspective, the good news is that you win as much as you lose, so why worry about anything? From the Self’s perspective, the great news is that nothing ultimately affects you. You are free of karma. There is nothing to gain or lose because we are already complete. Our good or bad karma only affects us if we are identified with the jiva. Sounds like a great deal to me!

Sadly, most people are identified with the body/mind under the spell of duality and cannot conceive of happiness being available any other way than chasing objects to complete them. To them, zero-sum sounds like never getting what you want. Taking that possibility away from them seems to negate the very reason for living. For these people, the feeling of being in control is seemingly so rewarding because life is so unpredictable. It promises to give them the edge over life, a false sense of security. 

Perhaps the strangest thing about this illusion of control is not that it happens but that it seems to confer many of the psychological benefits of genuine control. Much research done by cognitive scientists concludes that the feeling of control—whether real or illusory—is one of the wellsprings of mental health. For most, losing their faith in free will and ability to control things makes them feel unhappy, helpless, hopeless, and depressed, and occasionally, dead. Many suicides are the result of this feeling of utter hopelessness, as are many illnesses. 

To examine free will in relation to the factor beyond the human mind, your true nature as Consciousness requires inquiring into the Isvara – jiva relationship. So, to answer your question on free will, consider this. If this is a nondual reality, which we know it is, then my true nature is pure Consciousness/the Self. The person (jiva) or doer is a reflection of me but not my true Self, just like my reflection in a mirror is me but not me. How can I be a doer? Does free will even matter at all?

Isvara as a reflection of Consciousness created a meta-program (world of objects/fish in the ocean/water) for the jiva to work out its karma. Within this meta program are sub-programs. There are no choices outside this meta program because there is nothing outside the program—i.e., it is not real. This world exists as a thought in Consciousness, in me. Within the meta program choice seems to be one of many sub-programs. But although the jiva as reflected Consciousness seems to make choices, the choice making ability must be a program within the matrix of programs Isvara created.

Therefore, on the one hand, yes, I do make choices when I identify with the jiva and on the other hand, I don’t because they are all within Isvara’s programming matrix. Also, within Isvara’s programming is the program that pushes me towards Consciousness as freedom, the desire to know my true Self while seemingly incarnated. Therefore, freedom is outside the matrix as witnessing Consciousness. But accurately, the jiva is also me even though it is reflected consciousness, but I am not the jiva. Thus, all is Consciousness. Me.

Conclusion: Isvara in the role of creator arose from Consciousness as an expression of it and from Isvara arose the world including the jiva. Consciousness = Isvara. Isvara = world/jiva. Then I as jiva & all objects = reflected consciousness. Removing all objects, including Isvara, leaves just me, Consciousness. So, humanity’s essential nature is the same regardless of whether we identify as Consciousness, or not.  I am not a doer and am a doer.  I have free will and I don’t. Isvara is running the programs, not the jiva. I have never had nor has anyone ever had an original thought/fear/desire. My program to choose the objects of the world or freedom from them is available only as reflected Consciousness. Real freedom is stepping outside the box/matrix in identification with my true Self.

Free Will and the Isvara – Jiva Relationship

You may have heard us use the terms “System 1” and “System 2” when referring to the Causal and Subtle bodies. It is derived from Daniel Kahneman’s brilliant book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Unbeknown to Kahneman (who does not have Self-knowledge), System 1 can be applied as a code term to describe Maya in association with Consciousness appearing as Isvara, the Creator. In other words, the ‘cause’ of the world of objects, the effects, or System 2, the jiva. Isvara, System 1, is what I refer to above as the ‘meta-program”, also called the Causal Body or the Macrocosmic Unconscious. System 1 contains the ‘personal’ or microcosmic causal body (the subconscious jiva mind).  System 2 is the Subtle body, which incorporates the physical body, the conscious mind with its personal subconscious, the 5 subtle and gross organs of perception, the 5 organs of action, the five prana. 

The real usefulness of the terms System 1 and 2 either for the seeker of liberation or the average person (samsari) is that they help to understand why reality is not perceived the way it really is. Isvara wielding Maya (System 1) operates the dharmafield (Systems 1 and 2) in such a way that the conscious mind (System 2) is deluded.  The conscious mind cannot be blamed for this because without Self-knowledge, the person is programmed by Maya (duality) to interpret experience according to its conditioning, the Causal Body, i.e., System 1. It is like wearing a blindfold but not knowing you are wearing one; you think you can see.

We can liken System 1 to an information processor, like a computer. It not only provides the raw material for an experience it is responsible for all experience by setting it in motion and recording it.  System 1 is astonishingly powerful and ‘thinks’ so fast that we are almost never aware of the information until after the fact, if at all. According to cognitive neuroscientists, if we had to apportion actual brain function to the two systems (which they see as the unconscious and conscious minds), System 1 has 40 million nerve impulses per second whereas System 2 has 40 nerve impulses per second.  This means that System 1 is one million times more powerful … and faster … than System 2! 

In contrast to System 1’s computational brilliance, System 2 has only marginal aptitude for creativity.  It is a stimulus-response system, with pre-recorded responses totally predicated by System 1. This clearly demonstrates that System 1 controls all behaviour not attended to by System 2, which turns out to be just about everything that is apparently ‘happening’ in present time! For most people, System 2 or the conscious mind is so preoccupied with predictable thoughts about the past, present, and future, or whatever imaginary problem absorbs it, that it is unaware of the function of System 1. System 2 contributes about 5 percent of our cognitive activity.  This means that 95 percent of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behaviour are derived from the unobserved processing of System 1, the Causal Body. This process is automatic, which is why ignorance is so hardwired, tenacious, and sneaky.

It is believed that of the 4 billion stimuli that are available to the conscious mind at any given moment, only around 2,000 of these stimuli are recorded.  And which would these be? Only those stimuli that conform to the individual’s frame of reference: their conditioning. For all intents and purposes, the remaining stimuli do not exist for System 2, although they impact it in unseen ways too numerous to mention.  As long as ignorance of our true nature as Consciousness, and therefore of Isvara, remains, our ‘fate’ (and free will) is actually under the control of our conditioning or vasana load. 

We call this is called bondage. When in it there is no escape from the relentless pressure of the apparent reality, of being and becoming. Hence the saying: “Life is something that happens to you while you are busy doing other things.”  Or: “Man proposes, and God disposes.” System 1 is always running in the background and is the real lead in the movie of our lives, although most of us are unconscious of this fact.  If we do not have Self-knowledge, we think that System 2, the conscious mind, is making decisions and running our lives.

How To Make a Permanent Change in System 1

Where it gets difficult is to effect a change in System 2, a permanent cognitive shift first needs to take place in System 1, the Causal Body.  The important distinction to make here is that the effects which make the dharmafield are Isvara, but Isvara is not the effects.  Isvara is the cause, not the effects.  The cause does not change, it is eternal and outside of time. The effects change and affect each other, which is why we can render binding vasanas non-binding.

What is so important to understand about the question of free will is this: The only way for the conscious mind, ego, or System 2 (jiva) to effect a change in System 1 is by introducing a change in the intellect which brings about a change in the thoughts, feelings, and the execution of actions in System 2.  This is no easy task because System 1 or ignorance is very powerful.  Think of David and Goliath.  System 2, David, must aim that blow to System 1, Goliath, very precisely. But it is possible, thanks to Self-knowledge.  

The reason it is possible to effect change in the Causal body is that there is a two-way connection between Isvara and the jiva. Even though from a psychological perspective on the relative level or apparent reality, System 1 and 2 are so unevenly matched. The conditioning that runs System 2 can be changed in System 1 where it originates from, through repeated, appropriate action based on Self-knowledge. When it comes to deeply entrenched conditioning or vasanas, it is extremely difficult and requires constant vigilance. What this entails is every day, moment to moment asserting and re-asserting your nature as limitless Consciousness with every thought word and deed.

If no change of thought takes place in System 2, System 1 will continue running unchanged, by default.  Making these changes in one’s thinking in the light of Self-knowledge is what renders binding vasanas non-binding.  All true inquirers soon discover that the application of Self-knowledge is hard work and no walk in the park. It requires taking a stand in Consciousness as Consciousness 24/7, which is beyond both systems. Only Self-knowledge is capable of permanently removing ignorance of our true nature.

The important question to ask, always is:  Who is the knower of System 1 and System 2?  Of course, this is Consciousness, the Self. What does it matter, then, what our apparent nature is, if it is not real, and ‘belongs’ to Isvara? Why bother with it? The only issue with the jiva is if there are residual vasanas causing a disturbance in the mind, existential suffering.

In which case, dedicated self-inquiry with a valid means of knowledge for Consciousness and a qualified teacher to unfold it is the way to remove them.

Om

Sundari

I have pondered on this knowledge of what I am and honestly, I cannot be clear at all that I have any free will. If the vasanas direct my attention to behave in a certain way and the gunas my disposition, even though I have done so much therapy over 40 years, which I think helps tremendously to know how my ego/jiva operates, ultimately the dance of what I do is directed probably by mostly unconscious drives dreams and instincts.  When I look at this and my preferences for how I live my life, even though I know what I am I can’t be clear about what is really free will.

Sundari: Indeed.As I said in my last email to you, we don’t have as much control as we think we do but we have a certain degree of free will.  If we didn’t, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. There would be no spiritual, social, or economic progress possible, no civilization since there would be no reason for it, no possibility of success at anything. We have an inborn nature or programmed predisposition, our svardharma, which means we can work towards our goals, plan, and make choices. We gravitate towards and can choose to live a certain way that is right for us. 

As with everything, free will depends on who you take yourself to be. From the point of view of Consciousness, free will is non-existent. What is there to choose from if it’s all you? From the point of view of the Creator, Isvara/Maya, free will is non-existent because the Creator is not an individual entity.  From the point of all sentient beings, it is on a sliding scale from almost zero to almost infinity. From the purely human point of view, if there is even a little free will there is a lot.  From the point of view of insentient matter, there is no free will. Where an individual falls on that scale, depends to a very large degree on his or her view of free will itself.  Vedanta says that there is free will if you think there is an there isn’t if you don’t.  People either deny free will exists or defend its existence tooth and nail. 

Most people think they have more than they do and misuse it with reference to their intentions by failing to help themselves when they can. Others manage it judiciously to create dynamic, interesting lives.  Some use it for good and some for evil.  Some see its upside some its downside and others see both.  Inquirers use it to understand the factor (Consciousness) that is beyond the human mind. Fate defines free will and free will defines fate.  It is definitely a dualistic mental concept with significant emotional ramifications and is only useful depending on what you want to do with your life. 

Do you want to go limp and leave everything to fate or take the bull by the horns and transform your life? Self-inquiry is about transforming the jiva’s life, not the jiva necessarily, although that does happen by default. After all, moksa is for the jiva because as the Self you have always been and will always be free. What use is Self-knowledge if the jiva is still stuck in its limited identity and unsatisfactory life? The benefits of self-inquiry don’t just ‘happen’. We need to have a burning desire for liberation and if we do not apply the teachings to our life, self-inquiry does not bear fruit. Vedanta just provides a framework, a human toolbox as it were, that allows an individual to manage his or her mind. It is up to us to use the toolbox. Isvara does not mind one way or the other and will provide the results either way.

The most important point regarding free will is that if you’re completely satisfied with your life, free will is not an issue. You know that the world is not real, have surrendered to Isvara, live according to your svadharma, and always follow situational dharma so do not create blowback karma. As the jivanmukta, free will is ultimately irrelevant because all results are good. But if you’re not satisfied with your life, you can do more than complain about it.  You can change your karma to the degree that it is changeable, and you can change your attitude toward it if your attitude causes problems. Karma yoga, of course, is always the key.

G: My free will then is very small it means I may follow a deeper thread to do the work I do as a homeopath and a therapist, but I wonder even where this thought came from to do this work in the first place.

Sundari: The vasana-karma chain is beginningless and eternal. Individuals come and go but the Jiva is eternal. Did the chicken or the egg come first? The chicken idea is eternal, and the egg idea is eternal. They are out of time. There is no ‘first.’ Neither came first because from the standpoint of the cause (past karma) it is an effect and from the standpoint of the effect (future karma) it is a cause. It is an appearance generated by Maya. Before creation there was karma and after karma there is creation. If you try to figure it out, you will be stymied because the cause and the effect are one. As I said above, the same logic applies to fate and free will because of fate free will works and because of free will fate works. It is the same with every duality. Cause and effect, fate and free will, likes and dislikes, body/mind are all mithya, unreal. They are mutually dependent concepts. Each influences the other. It is also inexplicable because the minute you understand it, it becomes something else. 

To examine free will in relationship to the factor beyond the human mind, your true nature as Consciousness, requires inquiring into the Isvara – jiva relationship.

Free Will and the Isvara – Jiva Relationship

You may have heard us use the terms “System 1” and “System 2” when referring to the Causal and Subtle bodies. It is derived from Daniel Kahneman’s brilliant book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Unbeknown to Kahneman (who does not have Self-knowledge), System 1 can be applied as a code term to describe Maya in association with Consciousness appearing as Isvara, the Creator. In other words, the ‘cause’ of the world of objects, the effects, or System 2, the jiva.  We can also call System 1 the Macrocosmic Causal Body or the Unconscious. It contains the ‘personal’ or microcosmic causal body (the subconscious mind).  System 2 incorporates the physical body, the conscious mind with its personal subconscious, the 5 subtle and gross organs of perception, the 5 organs of action, the five prana, i.e. the Subtle Body. 

The real usefulness of the terms System 1 and 2 either for the seeker of liberation or the average person (samsari) is that they help to understand why reality is not perceived the way it really is. Isvara wielding Maya (System 1) operates the dharmafield (Systems 1 and 2) in such a way that the conscious mind (System 2) is deluded.  The conscious mind cannot be blamed for this because without Self-knowledge, the person is programmed by Maya to interpret experience according to its conditioning, the Causal Body, System 1. It is like wearing a blindfold but not knowing you are wearing one, you think you can see.

We can liken System 1 to an information processor, like a computer. It not only provides the raw material for an experience it is responsible for experience by setting it in motion and recording it.  System 1 is astonishingly powerful and ‘thinks’ so fast that we are almost never aware of the information until after the fact, if at all. According to cognitive neuroscientists, if we had to apportion actual brain function to the two systems (which they see as the unconscious and conscious minds), System 1 has 40 million nerve impulses per second whereas System 2 has 40 nerve impulses per second.  This means that System 1 is one million times more powerful … and faster … than System 2! 

In contrast to System 1’s computational brilliance, System 2 has only marginal aptitude for creativity.  It is a stimulus-response system, with pre-recorded responses totally predicated by System 1. This clearly demonstrates that System 1 controls all behaviour not attended to by System 2, which turns out to be just about everything that is apparently ‘happening’ in present time! For most people, System 2 or the conscious mind is so preoccupied with predictable thoughts about the past, present, and future, or whatever imaginary problem absorbs it, that it is unaware of the function of System 1. System 2 contributes about 5 percent of our cognitive activity.  This means that 95 percent of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behaviour are derived from the unobserved processing of System 1, the Causal Body. This process is automatic, which is why ignorance is so hardwired, tenacious, and sneaky.

It is believed that of the 4 billion stimuli that are available to the conscious mind at any given moment, only around 2,000 of these stimuli are recorded.  And which would these be? Only those stimuli that conform to the individual’s frame of reference: their conditioning. For all intents and purposes, the remaining stimuli do not exist for System 2, although they impact it in unseen ways too numerous to mention.  As long as ignorance of our true nature as Consciousness, and therefore of Isvara, remains, our ‘fate’ is actually under the control of our conditioning or vasana load.  This is called bondage and there is no escape from the relentless pressure of the apparent reality, of being and becoming. Hence the saying: “Life is something that happens to you while you are busy doing other things.”  Or: “Man proposes, and God disposes.” System 1 is always running in the background and is the real lead in the movie of our lives, although most of us are unconscious of this fact.  If we do not have Self-knowledge, we think that System 2, the conscious mind, is making decisions and running our lives.

Where it gets difficult is to effect a change in System 2, a permanent cognitive shift first needs to take place in System 1, the Causal Body.  The important distinction to make here is that the effects which make the dharmafield are Isvara, but Isvara is not the effects.  Isvara is the cause, not the effects.  The cause does not change, it is eternal and outside of time. The effects change and affect each other, which is why we can render binding vasanas non-binding. The only way for the conscious mind, ego, or System 2 (jiva) to effect a change in System 1 is by Self-knowledge introducing a change in the intellect which brings about a change in the thoughts, feelings, and the execution of actions in System 2.  This is no easy task because System 1 or ignorance is very powerful.  Think of David and Goliath.  System 2, David, must aim that blow to System 1, Goliath, very precisely. But it is possible, thanks to Self-knowledge.  

The reason it is possible to effect change in the Causal body is that there is a two-way connection between Isvara and the jiva. Even though from a psychological perspective on the relative level or apparent reality, System 1 and 2 are so unevenly matched. The conditioning that runs System 2 can be changed in System 1 where it originates from, through repeated, appropriate action based on Self-knowledge. When it comes to deeply entrenched conditioning or vasanas, it is extremely difficult and requires constant vigilance. What this entails is every day, moment to moment asserting and re-asserting your nature as limitless Consciousness with every thought word and deed.

If no change of thought takes place in System 2, System 1 will continue running unchanged, by default.  Making these changes in one’s thinking in the light of Self-knowledge is what renders binding vasanas non-binding.  All true inquirers soon discover that the application of Self-knowledge is hard work and no walk in the park. It requires taking a stand in Awareness as Awareness 24/7, which is beyond both systems. Only Self-knowledge is capable of permanently removing ignorance of our true nature. The important question to ask, always is:  Who is the knower of System 1 and System 2?  Of course, this is Consciousness, the Self. What does it matter, then, what our apparent nature is if it is not real and ‘belongs’ to Isvara? Why bother with it? The only issue with the jiva is if there are residual vasanas causing a disturbance in the mind, in which case, nididhysana is the way to remove them.

 G: Knowing I am conscious awareness means it really is in another realm and is unaffected by anything in this worldly life. 

Sundari: Why not replace ‘it’ with I Am? It may not be important and perhaps just a slip up, but there seems to be some objectification of Consciousness (duality) in your statement. You are not ‘conscious’ Awareness.  You are Consciousness/Awareness, which is not conscious in the way we humans use the term. Conscious implies unconscious and the Self is neither because there is only itself, Consciousness. ‘Our’ consciousness, meaning being ‘compos mentis’ and able to relate the world we live in, is possible because of the presence of Consciousness shining on the mind. Isvara associated with Maya is conscious (although it is not a jiva or person) but is not modified by ignorance/Maya (the gunas). Isvara is conscious because with the appearance of Maya, there is something for Awareness to be conscious of, i.e. objects. Consciousness is ‘prior’ to matter in the sense that matter depends on consciousness. Consciousness stands alone.  It is the first ‘principle’ out of which everything arises.

How can Consciousness be in ‘another realm’ if reality is nondual? Yes, Consciousness/Awareness is in another order of reality—satya, that which is always present and unchanging. And the jiva is in ‘another’ order, that which is not always present and always changing, mithya. But because mithya is not real, is it really ‘another’ order? No, because it dissolves in the light of Consciousness/Awareness. Reality is nondual, meaning nothing other than. We use the terms satya and mithya as teaching principles to destroy the notion of duality.  When you know you are Consciousness both terms fall away.

G: Probably looking back to save my parent’s marriage and help my sister none of which made any difference whatsoever to them. 

Sundari:  Jiva’s caught in duality who do not understand Isvara or how the Field works believe they have a duty to interfere with other people’s karma to ‘help’. But we cannot ever change another person’s karma and if we try to, we add suffering to them and ourselves.  Isvara is strict about this. Doing the dharma of another is fraught with difficulty, says Krishna says to Arjuna. Sometimes it may be part of the karma stream for us to help or be helped, but we can only ever do so with karma yoga and great dispassion.

G: But the good thing is I question everything now since meeting you both. The karma yoga, the devotion to God when I get confused and the turning away from emotions seem to be making me a very happy being.

Sundari: Being happy is what it’s all about, the fruit of self-inquiry, also called perfect satisfaction. Self-knowledge is who you are and not an action, but it has great applicable use in whatever life throws at us if self-inquiry is done right. Knowing none of it is real, armed with karma yoga and guna yoga, there is nothing we do not understand and by extension, respond appropriately to. There is no karma for the Self and no mind to manage anymore because Self-knowledge automatically runs it. The jiva no longer bothers us, even if it gets confused. Who is confused? Not you. That’s moksa.

G: I feel very blessed to have this gift of life, but I still fear illness and death even though I know it is just the body.  Or maybe it is just that life is so wondrous I don’t want to leave and there is so much I still want to do, like make big wildflower meadows on the farm!

Sundari: How can you fear death when you were never born? Recently someone sent me one of those many links going around at this time about the virus situation. The message from an ‘oracle’ was that ‘you are born for this time’.  I replied: As the jiva, ‘my’ body appears here with a karma stream given to me by Isvara, seemingly ‘in time’. But I am not the body. I am the Self. And as the Self, I was not born for these times or any other. I am unborn born and not in time. Time belongs to the lord of Maya and is known to me. Destruction and Resurrection is the nature of Maya. They are real for you if you do not know you are Me. I am the only Oracle. There is no need for any other as all voices are mine. There is never anything to fear from what is not real.

We all love life and don’t wish to leave it because it is beautiful, but we cannot lose anything because we are the uncaused cause of everything. Death is nothing more than a phase transition that only affects the body.

G: But free will seems right now to be most questionable.  I can go against my tendencies, which I am doing with my mother.  I see this as me learning to try out something new, it may bear fruit or not, but I know the outcome is up to Isvara and I am not so attached rather more curious.

Sundari: I think you are confusing free will with right action, though they go together in that we have choice in how to act. It may seem like you are going against your nature, but you are doing what the dharma of the situation requires of you. Just as Arjuna had to go against his nature to fight the unjust war. Perhaps you should read that part of the Bhagavad Gita again. The situation with your mother is your Arjuna moment, so stand up and fight.  It’s what is required of you and necessary for her too.

G: Much love to you, you are very special to me and thank you for keeping me in mind.   I wish we can all meet up soon and not just in a virtual world, but I suspect it is a while away.

Sundari:  I hope so too and look forward to that. We are all in our seemingly separate little bubbles at the moment, with the emphasis on seeming.  Life is indeed interesting!

Much love Sundari

I’m glad you read my commentaries and I value your input.  It really helps to get input because I can get a general idea how people see Vedanta and how well I communicate.  Of course different people are inspired differently, according to their inclinations.  I’m bound by the tradition to present the basic teachings as they are every-time, so there isn’t a lot of leeway for “creativity” except in the manner in which they are presented.  I’m striving to make these ideas available to more and more people without compromising their meaning and diluting their impact. 

Barbara:  You say, “Freewill borrowed from being all the qualities that are not thought.” Then you list qualities that you feel are not thought i.e. Training, Refusing, Speaking Truth, Belief, Ignorance, Looking, Inquiring and Curiosity. Then at the end of the text you share the e-mail from a woman and identify her words/process as her free will standing up to ignorance.

I think that this is the only part of your text where I feel an unnecessary disconnect.  It feels like the word game trying to pin down aspects of the coexistence of the relative and absolute…  Isvara and free will, to me, are part of the illusion. 

James:  Yes.  This is Vedanta’s point of view.  They are only concepts.  But it is not a word game. Instead it is part of a larger argument i.e. the difference between thoughts/emotions and the felt processes of the “I sense.”  

Barbara:  When you state that this woman used her free will to stand up to her ignorance, it is what was going to unfold anyway due to her program or evolving karma.  I know we “do” because we can’t help but “do” but I do not believe we have the control we think we do.  I am constantly looking at my thinking relative to what seems to appear.  This too is an apparent action because what I perceive and name is coming from my causal body powered by non-dual awareness.

James:  This also Vedanta’s point of view. But let me run though the issue again, as much for you as for the many people who are looking for clarification of certain important teachings. 

James:  I understand your view that we don’t have as much control as we think and I don’t disagree but, as far as Vedanta is concerned, we aren’t animals because we have a certain degree of free will.  Other animals don’t wake up in the morning, get dressed brew coffee and go to work.  There would be no spiritual path or no civilization since there is no reason, apart from the desire for a result, why an individual needs to make choices at all.  Mammals, plants, insects, etc. don’t goals, ideals or self-judgments.  The have no cultures or civilizations, yet they are conscious entities like us.  They make certain rudimentary inferences as do we but they don’t know the are making them.   

We plan and we make choices.  The point, however, from the human point of view, is that if there is even a little free will there is a lot.  For sentient beings, it’s a scale from almost zero to almost infinity.  And where a particular individual falls on that scale, depends to a very large degree on his or her view of free will itself.  Our view is that there is free will if you think there is an there isn’t if you don’t. 

People deny it.  People think they have more than they do and misuse it with reference to their intentions.  People use very little and fail to help themselves when they can and others manage it judiciously to create dynamic, interesting lives.  Some use it to understand the factor that is beyond the human mind.  Some use it for good and some for evil.  Some see its upside, some its downside and others see both.   

From the point of view of existence/consciousness…the “real” you…it is non-existent.  From the point of view of the Creator, Maya, it is non-existent because the Creator is not an individual entity.  From the point of view of insentient matter there is no free will and from the point of sentient entities there is very little to a lot.

Fate defines it and it defines fate.  So it is definitely a dualistic mental concept with significant emotional ramifications and is only useful, depending on what you want to do with your life.  You can go limp and leave it to fate or take the bull by the horns and transform it.  Vedanta just provides a framework that allows an individual to manage his or her mind.  It’s part of the human tool box. 

The basic idea, however, is that if you’re completely satisfied with your life, it’s not an issue and if you’re not, you can do more than complain about it.  You can change it to the degree that it is changeable and you can change your attitude toward it if your attitude causes problems.  I know very well that I am not connected what-so-ever to the s-called person I thought I was for a significant chunk of my life and I attribute it alternatively to God’s grace and free will, both of which are apparently real, which means not real, in so far as they have no impact on me, What Is.  I am a What, not a who, although I have a convincing “who act.”  Most people don’t know they are just acting.   

Vedanta says that your idea of yourself as an individual can’t be disconnected from the context in which your life is playing out.  It also says that What I
Am is an alternative.  When you understand the alternative you can choose to pursue the who option…or not.  Until you understand there is a choice, there is no choice. A dog or a cat is always going to be the same dog or cat because it doesn’t know there are options.

The whole discussion of karma yoga is about how to use free will to manage your emotions, with the idea that lack of emotional control is not helpful in so far as it compromises one’s success in life.          

Barbara:  You may be shaking your head at some lack of understanding that I have but I honestly do not feel confused about the big picture. 

James:  I don’t think you do.  I am just interested in your reaction to the statement, “You are not a healthy person if you don’t want to see beyond your fixations: security, pleasure, recognition, power and virtue.”  I don’t think it applies to you in so far as you have been on the spiritual path, which is a choice in so far as other options were available, for most of your adult life, I believe.   

Barbara:  The qualities you listed that are not thought still involve thought at a basic level.  To me, for example, you can’t refuse or inquire without thought being involved on some level.  You can understand the nature of thought which can allow truth to shine…which to me comes through when I question thoughts and allow some space.

James:  Yes, everything involves thought.  The mind motivates everything.  And yes, allowing and questioning are not specific thoughts, they are inbuilt ongoing functions of the “I-sense,” the human makeup, like the sense organs and the Unconscious Mind that we don’t “think” into being.  They are What Is.

Barbara:  It is very difficult for me to explain what I see and feel about this…if you feel I am in left field with these observations then I am in left field.  It is not that big of a concern to me.  I am just trying to tell you what I see because you asked.

James:  These are difficult concepts, Barbara, and you are doing a good job communicating.  The statement “I feel” is one of those natural inbuilt ongoing impersonal processes that are quite different from specific thoughts, the idea that “ït is difficult to explain,” for instance. 

Barbara:  Now that I stumbled through that one I will note statements/ideas that stood out for me.

“Journey without a goal”. This is true to me.  Under the heading See the Isness, not the Thoughtness I like the paragraph that starts with “your experiences are just you.  My habit of mind was that I have to “seize the day” when there is nothing to seize.  This was a burden that rarely rears its ugly head anymore…if it does it gets dissolved pretty quickly.

James:  Cool.  Do you think this dissolving was due to your own efforts or was completely up to God’s will?  I bet you say it is a combination.

Barbara:  Under Listening: “you can discipline your mind not to interpret words.”  This is a real practice for me now.

James:  Cool again.  That is the fundamental practice of jnana yoga i.e. Vedanta.

Barbara:  Under Where is the World?: “Your experiences are only thoughts accompanied by equally unreal emotions.”  Yup!

“You can perceive isness because you are isness. Only isness sees isness perceiving from a sense organ level.”  This made me wonder if all of those qualities you listed under the devotion section that are not thought are what you consider sense organ qualities.

James:  They are like sense organ qualities.  The senses are material instruments.  They don’t have free will.  They deliver information and the mind interprets the information according to its biases, it’s conditioning.  Interpreting is one of the mind’s unconscious processes.  This process is considered “natural” and most people don’t even think they have a choice about it because they aren’t aware that is happening, much less gain control of it.  But this process can be brought under one’s conscious control just like specific emotions and thoughts can be eliminated or altered.  An individual can let the conditioning stand…or not.  I once asked a woman, “Why do you keep such a messy house?”  Without a trace of irony she said, “Because my mother did.”  So, obviously she felt that no free will was involved in housekeeping, at least.  

The reflected consciousness that you as an individual “borrow” from Isness itself is like the senses organs in that it is it dominated by its conditioning, unless it becomes aware of how its habits are counterproductive, at which point it can either take the tamasic option and suffer the conflict or take the rajasic option, which is to attack the problem by discipling the mind.  Discipline is a power you can use, if you want.  It is not a specific thought.  Specific thoughts, are value neutral as are processes.  They are.  But when you add consciousness to them they become dynamic processes, a part of the “I sense” for better or for worse, depending on one’s values.

For instance, I love to write Vedanta.  I would sit on my butt writing 24/7 if I could.  But after sitting for a couple of hours, a discrete thought appears.  “I am hungry,” for instance.  I can suppress that thought and keep writing.  But I don’t think “I will suppress that thought,” before I suppress it.  I just suppress it.  Suppression is an innate impersonal universal process going on in the human mind.  It is.  Or I can act out the thought.  In this case I’ve consciously disciplined my mind to produce a counter thought, so when the thought involves moving my body, I indulge it.  Once I identify with the counter thought, no specific thoughts related to it are involved.  It just becomes a dynamic energy that moves the body effortlessly toward the object of my desire.  Desire is.  Again, it is an impersonal value neutral energy. 

So the idea in the commentaries I sent you so far is about dropping the thoughts and their attendant emotions and learning to feel what is natural.  That feeling is born out of your nature as awareness so by disciplining the mind to feel rather than to emote you are becoming more intimate with yourself, which is yoga.  It’s still duality but it’s the best duality because it sets you up for liberation, freedom from the “I sense,” your individuality.    

Barbara: If nothing comes of this for you it certainly gave my mind a little work out.  This is the most interesting subject there is for me so I enjoy looking at it.  Thank you for sharing.  I sure hope you get to see Sundari this year…such a strange time to watch.

You’re welcome, Barbara.  I very much appreciate your thoughtful reply.  It stimulated me to think more on this topic and incorporate the additional material into the original manuscript.  As far as Martin is concerned He is Me and I am He.  We understand each other.  No words are required. 

James:  There is nothing for the Self to account for in so far as these concepts are mithya, apparently real; they don’t affect the Self.  And the Jiva is the Self so there is no accountability for it either.  I will explain.

Mark: If there is nothing separate from the Self, then this includes evil and suffering in samsara, correct?

James:  If you say there is nothing separate from the Self including suffering and evil, then the Self is not non-dual in so far as it “includes” something else.  The word separate also implies Maya, i.e. duality (not a duality between Maya and the Self) but a duality within Maya where a jiva is situated.  zero-sum.

Evil is a concept generated by ignorance of the Self.  When a jiva doesn’t know it is the Self it is prisoner of its likes and dislikes and defines good as things that conform to its likes and evil as things that conform to its dislikes.  From this standpoint there can be no absolute definition of good or evil since jivas are free to like and dislike anything they wish. 

In so far as Vedanta only works if we provisionally accept duality because jivas are situated in duality, we need to see to it that jivas don’t blame themselves for evil or take credit for good in so far as both blaming and claiming keep the jiva firmly entrenched in duality.  And we don’t want Jiva blaming Isvara/Maya either or it will not surrender to Isvara and grow to maturity.   

So we speak of Isvara the first creation stage, assuming creation evolves, which it does from Jiva’s point of view.  To create Isvara needs intelligence i.e. sattva, a material substance (tamas), and the power to transform the material into objects, rajas.  The blueprint for the creation is embedded in sattva.  Creation implies destruction.  If something born didn’t die there would be no room for anything in the creation eventually.  For instance, if you have deer, the deer has to die.  So Isvara cleverly generates a mountain lion.  Prey and predator, a tidy duality. 

From the mountain lion’s and the deer’s point of view there is no good and evil because they don’t think they need to live happily or unhappily, a short time or a long time.  They are not self-reflective, so when something “bad” happens it isn’t “bad.”  But humans have intellects and always want to live another day so they generate good and evil thoughts, which fittingly is both a blessing and a curse in a zero-sum environment. 

Good and evil come in the third stage of evolution after the creation of the material world.  The jivas appear in the third stage because in the absence of a material world, how would they work out their karmas?  Plants and animals don’t work out karma because they aren’t self-conscious.  But when homo sapiens, an apelike creature, evolves intellect it becomes self-aware and is blessed or cursed according to its likes and dislikes. 

Mark:  It seems to me that from the non-dual Self’s point of view, evil and suffering are indeed dependent on Awareness–it is Self that gives birth to Maya, it is Self that illuminates good, truth, and beauty, and it is Self that illuminates evil, horror, and tragedy. And from Self’s point of view, this is all okay and perfect as it is for reasons this jiva’s intellect may not understand. 

James:  Yes, if you use cause and effect logic. However, the Upanishads state that there is only Awareness, so cause and effect logic doesn’t work, except from the worldly perspective, which Vedanta eventually negates.  Nothing depends on Awareness because there is  only Awareness and even if there were a creation, it couldn’t depend on Awareness because there is no connection between Awareness and the world, satya and mithya.  If there were, freedom would be impossible because satya and mithya would impact on each other.   The Self is associationless (asanga).  It inhabits an hermetically-sealed Teflon “world” of it’s own, blissfully unaware of anything else.  It is one without a second.

In so far as we tentatively accept the world we say that the world and Awareness are not the same and are not different.  Dependent and independent are duality.  Awareness wasn’t ever bound to objects so it can’t be set free of them.  At the same time it seems as if it is set free when ignorance is removed.  

If you understand Maya as Ignorance then you needn’t worry about cause and effect and karma because Vedanta pramana takes it away instantly in so far as the world, suffering, jiva, etc. are only thoughts generated by not knowing “I am unborn ever-present Awareness.” 

Mark: On free will and doership: Is it necessary to posit free will?  In nondual reality, in an actionless universe, isn’t free will an illusion and more like apparent free will?

James: Yes, our choices are seemingly real.

Mark: In truth, aren’t all actions, good or evil, mithya, and the result of Isvara/Maya and the gunas playing themselves out?

James: Yes.

Mark: If there is no action, how is there a doer at all?  (I realize from my identity as the Self, I am not a doer, I am the witness to experience being done in apparent reality).

James:  There is no doer.

Mark: Given nondual reality, given the role of Isvara, Maya, and the gunas, how is there free will, how does it operate, and from where does it arise?

James:  It arises from ignorance of the Self.

Mark:  Again, this doesn’t cause doubt for me. I am good with the knowledge that free will is apparent and an illusion, or that in some paradoxical way, jivas exercise some type of will apart from Isvara (or perhaps from within Isvara’s dream).

James:  If you understand the meaning of apparent, you’re good to go.  All these teachings are helpful at a certain level but as one’s understanding grows, they can be profitably discarded. 

Chad: I’ve read and listened to some of your teachings on these subjects as well as others in the satsang database. The questions that arise around these issues are not the kind that threatens my confidence in Vedanta, however.

James:  Great.  You’re obviously a mature person. 

Chad: I have studied spirituality, philosophy, and theology for decades. I realize these same issues surface again and again from every wisdom tradition and from wise and not-so-wise scholars trying to solve these paradoxes. I would like to have a correct and clear understanding for how Vedanta answers them. I know you have tackled these from students many times so I welcome your pointing me in the direction of those teachings on these subjects for me to look into further.

James:  It sounds like there isn’t any “further” for you since you say that they don’t bother you.  Apparent means unreal.  The world, individuality, choice exist all right but they are as good as non-existent, however, since none of the things in Jiva’s mind impact the Self.  Knowing the world as mithya puts the fun back in life. 

Love,

James

Sundari:  All the SW teachers have dealt with the question of free will at length.  My take is at the bottom of this email. Be grateful that Isvara has given you the grace to have such a strong a vasana for moksa, Vedanta!

G: As I said before it has been a sort of mind-shattering realization that I am not the gunas or the doer.  A relief and maybe a numbness where not much is going on, until I get poked by something and then it is not very dense or long-lasting like it used to be, I am not sure how to describe it.  

Sundari: No need to describe it, I know exactly what you mean. Negating the last vestiges of the jiva program, all its emotional/mental conditioning, is extremely subtle and cannot be rushed. Hence nididhysana being the longest and most difficult phase of self-inquiry.  You are technically no longer a seeker, yet the seeker/reactor program is still active, even if it is much reduced. At this stage you cannot forget who you are, but it is possible to lose access to Self-knowledge temporarily if you get ‘poked’, i.e., sucked into the jiva program. Mostly what one feels at this point is a new lightness of being, for want of a more original phrase. The ego feels a bit naked, like it must be missing something, or getting something wrong, a kind of imposter syndrome. It passes.

G: And then of course there is Love, but I am reading Essence of Enlightenment again on love. But I have not been feeling at all loving most of the time, not what I expected!  But maybe I confuse the feeling of loving others and being open hearted and connected as opposed to love being just what I put my attention on to.  

Sundari: Love is not a feeling or thought.  Thoughts/feeling are just the reflection of love, they are not actually love, just like your reflection in the mirror is you but is not you. Nondual love has nothing to do with what’s going on in the mind or jiva program.  Love as your nature means you are whole and complete and need nothing, it does not involve another. Love may be expressed as a feeling to ‘others’ whom you know to be nondifferent from you. The object is loved for its own sake, not for how the object makes you ‘feel’.  Real love wants nothing and fears nothing.  It is self-satisfied.  

In the discussion on love it is difficult to understand the equation between Consciousness and love because Consciousness is free of feelings, whereas love seems to be a feeling quite separate from Consciousness.  But there is actually no difference because reality is non-dual.  Feelings are never apart from Consciousness; they arise out of Consciousness and are made up of Consciousness, like the spider’s web is made up of the spider, but feelings are not real.

G: Please don’t think I am complaining, it’s been rather marvelous, but so strange.

S: I don’t think you are not the complaining type!

Free Will or Preordained?

The dharmafield is like a computer game:  all the possible moves are programmed into the game before you play it.  The question to ask, always, is: are you the Self, or the jiva? As a jiva, although it appears as if you are making independent moves and playing the game to win or lose, in actual fact, it is already pre-determined as you can only make the moves that are already in the programme.  Isvara or the dharmafield is playing the game, which is why karma yoga is such an important teaching, and the only way to negate the doer.  It is the most sensible way to live because it relieves the pressure of getting the ‘right’ result, or any particular result for that matter, because you understand that the dharmafield is out of your control and it’s a zero-sum  Only Isvara has knowledge of all objects and controls the Field for the good of the Total.  You get the results that are best for you at any given time.  There is no way to step out of the dharmafield as a jiva other than through Self-knowledge, moksha, which is liberation from the person, not for the person.

If you think you are the doer (the person or ego) you have limited free will in that you are seemingly free to choose one thing over another, according to your nature or conditioning.  The dharmafield operates according to certain laws which if understood and followed, it is possible to achieve success from the standpoint of the jiva.  If that were not the case, success in anything, particularly freedom from the apparent reality, would never be possible.  But if we peel back everything we think ‘we’ do to achieve a result, we will see that at every step of the way there were a million factors involved not in our control that made it happen. Everything happens by the grace of Isvara. All the same, if we take the appropriate action at the appropriate time, desired results are often, (though not always) achieved. There are no guarantees in the apparent reality because Isvara runs the Field and takes care of the needs of the Total first. People who do not understand how the Field of Existence works like to claim success at any endeavor as solely a result of their will and doing, though that is impossible because nothing happens without Isvara making it possible.

Apart from that, the other factor is that although most people’s choices seem to be volitional and individual, they are usually highly predictable and repetitive.  This is because most people, who have none, or very limited, Self-knowledge behave like automatons, although they don’t think they do.  They think that they are doing the choosing, but actually, their conditioning (vasana’s/gunas) is doing the choosing/doing. Still, it does look like one has free will, and in a way, the person does. From this perspective, free will gives the person the choice to ‘make the best’ of their lives. We do have free will to respond to what Isvara dishes out and how we respond either creates unpleasant or pleasant circumstances/karma. 

People often ask us: Is free will the cause of karma or is it the gunas?  Well, it’s a both/and not either/or. The gunas govern and colour vasanas which create karma, and vasanas/karma reinforce the gunas, in an endless cycle.  To understand free will from the point of view of the Self, we first must understand that the gunas, vasanas and karma are three ways of saying the same thing because nothing in mithya can be separated from the gunas.  Everything that happens does so by virtue of the gunas. The gunas give rise to the jiva, the vasanas and their results (karma). Everything that happens is a vasana and, everything that happens is karma. Just like the gunas, all vasanas/karma are eternal and exist as principles in the Causal Body. They arise from the three gunas namely, sattva, rajas, and tamas which are what make up Maya—the Field, or creation. 

Therefore, good or bad, our guna generated vasanas, not free will, are doing the responding/choosing, so we tend to get more of the same back. As the Self-realized jiva, you may have negated the doer and rendered binding vasanas non-binding, but you will still have vasanas. They will just be in alignment with dharma. Or they will be preferences, not binding. Even if we have Self-knowledge, or we are mature people with good values and always follow dharma, it is no guarantee of outcome. 

 But if you know you are the Self, you are not bothered with free will or outcome because you know not only that Isvara runs the show. But more importantly, the show is not real. When Self-knowledge has removed ignorance and you know that your true nature is whole and complete non-dual Awareness, there is no karma for you. There are no bad outcomes, just outcomes.

As the Self, samsara no longer exists in ‘your’ mind and you see everything from the perspective of the nondual Self, as non-different from you. What is there to choose?  It is all you, the Self, and it is all good.  You unfailing respond dharmically and appropriately to all situations so you never create unpleasant circumstances. You take everything as prasad, even if unpleasant circumstances present themselves.  You see it all like the movie it is, and nothing touches you. Even though Self-knowledge is not a magic bullet for the ego, which must still transact with this world, it is non the less seen as an object known to you.

Much love, Sundari

Thanks a lot for your answer. I think I’m almost through with this strong and unexpected emotional vasana download in this so-called corona crisis and my role in it. I eventually can step back and see this impersonal happening in the world. It’s not that my perception of it has totally changed. This worldwide projection of evil on a virus is still crazy. But such is this dark current culture and its medical approach. But my temporary identification with a “position“ has really changed. Thanks be to God. I am back on the way to Myself, i.e. to knowledge.

And – this is the good side of a crisis – I’m even more committed than before.

This Nisargardatta quotation touched me when I accidentally came across it: “Nothing stops you from being a jnani here and now except fear! You are afraid of being impersonal! As impersonal being it is all quite simple.”

James: Good for you, Rheinhart. Freedom is a choice once you understand the options. You didn’t actually choose fear. Maya chose it for you. And you believed it was a valid choice. It is valid if you want to suffer, meaning leave the path to truth. Good and evil are always present. We, meaning people who know, don’t choose either. We choose the other option, the “I,” the knower of good and evil. It is simple.

~ Love, James