Ramana...The Free Will Issues

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All the activities that the body is to go through are determined when it first

comes into existence. It does not rest with you to accept or reject them. The

only freedom you have is to turn you mind inward and renounce activities there.

 

Q: Are only the important event in a man's life, such as his main occupation or

profession, predetermined, or are trifling acts also, such as taking a coup of

water or moving from one part to the room to another?

Bhagavan: Everything is predetermined.

Q: Then what responsibility, what free will has man?

B: Why does the body come into existence? It is designed for the various

things that are marked out for it in this life...As for freedom, a man is always

free not to identify himself with the body and not be affected by the pleasures

and pains consequent on it activities.

 

Devotee: Has man any free will or is everything in his life predetermined:

Bhagavan: Free will exists together with the individuality. As long as the

individuality lasts, so long is there free will. All the scriptures are based

on this fact and advise directing the free will in the right channel.

 

Editors note: Is this really a contradiction of the reply given earlier? No,

because, according to Bhagavan's teachings, the individuality has only an

illusory existence. So long as one imagines that one has a separate

individuality, so long does one also imagine its free will.

 

Bhagavan; Find out who is it who has free will or predestination and abide in

that state. Then both are transcended. That is the only purpose in discussing

these questions. To who do such questions present themselves. Discover that

and be at peace.

 

>From The Teaching of Ramana Maharshi by Arthur Osborne.

 

Nisargadatta's take on free will.

 

Q: Is there such a thing as using one's will to do something? If one is trying

to stay awake, saying a mantra, or meditating, and keeps pulling himself back

from sleep, is he not doing something?

M: At the stage of a seeker what he is doing may be right, but he will soon find

out that the seeker disappears in the seeking . When the seeker disappears

there is not question of doing. Later the seeker will understand that it was

not his true nature which was doing all this, but that to which the label "born"

was attached--that is the consciousness which has identified itself with the

body and the states of waking and sleeping. That whole bundle is what was doing

and he in not that. This body is perceptible, but my true nature is That which

was before the body and the consciousness come in to being. Any thing that is

sensorially seen and interpreted by the mind is an appearance in consciousness,

and is not true.

I am not telling you anything which is foreign to my experience, I am telling

you what I have understood and experienced. .It is very simple: this is

time-bound and anything which is time-bound is untrue, because time itself is a

concept.

What I am telling you is based on this simple fact, as it is based on my

experience. If it appeals to you as a concept at the moment, accept it.

Otherwise not. If at all you want to do something, do that which you cannot do

at all. That is the state of no-being.