Free-will/Predestination

[Guest guest]

Arthur Osborne asked Ramana “Are only the important

events in a man’s life, such as his main occupation or

profession, predetermined, or are trifling acts also,

such as taking a cup of water or moving from one part

of the room to another?”.

A matter which theologians and philosophers have

debated for centuries in complex terminology and with

indeterminate result. It provoked a reply of

three words: “Everything is determined”.

Which I chose till now to interpret as meaning that

the only choice we have is to identify either with the

ego, which has no choice whatever, or with the Self,

which is an embodiment of free-will. But in ‘Talks’,

Ramana says that free-will is a concept existing only

as long as the concept of individuality.

The implication is that predestination and free-will,

being opposites, are identical; in the way that

half-empty is half-full, heads and tails the same

coin, up/down, left/right and east/west the same

straight line. Or black/white the limiting shade of

grey.

If we put a nickel in a nickelodeon, does the machine

control just the main themes, or every note of the

music? Or a film in a projector, does it determine

the movie’s main events, or everything?

It’s as if my spaniel asked me whether, after

liberation, one is oblivious to the biting of fleas,

or - in that state - fleas no longer bite. And I would

be forced to say (since he would lose all respect for

me if I were to try to explain an utterly abstract

state of flea-lessness) that such questions are better

asked after liberation has been realised.

Predestination and free-will would appear to be

inseparable halves of a coin without a joint name. For

being/non-being there is ‘existentialism’; for

reality/illusion, ‘validity’. And, in

contra-distinction from these latter, neither

free-will nor predestination is attributable to the

Self. Both are a state of the ego.

In illusion, there is no reality; but in reality there

is no illusion.

 

Nasrudin

 

 

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