Free Will/Part I: Bhagavad Gita XVIII.61
The Lord of all beings abides in the Heart,
Causing all beings to wander, to move (to revolve),
[As if] fixed, attached to, mounted on a machine,
By the power of Illusion (maya).
ishvarah sarvabhutanam
hriddeshe Arjuna tishthati
bhramayam sarvabhutani
yantrarudhani mayaya
The Sanskrit words yantra-arudhani
have always fascinated me. Somehow over the years again and again I find myself
thinking about them. I often connect this invisible cosmic machine-mechanism
that enfolds us in the temporal illusory hologram, to the famous enigmatic Sri
Yantra, which one can meditate on and never quite grasp. J.A.B. van Buitenen has
translated the yantrarudhani as ‘water wheel’ and I have thought there is value
in this because water symbolizes consciousness and a water wheel is a sort of
perpetual motion machine that only requires a constant flow.
In Swami Lakshmanjoo’s translation of verse 61, the Kashmir Shaivite conviction
comes across more bluntly. Remember that Lakshmanjoo was the embodiment of very
highly enlightened states of God-Consciousness, living Truth. Because his
command of Sanskrit was greater than his English, his sentences are peppered
with Sanskrit and sometimes a bit unwieldy, but nevertheless express his
superlative Wisdom-Knowledge. Also, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita speaks as the
voice of the Oneness, which is termed Parabhairava in Kashmir Shaivism:
“Ishvarah, I, think [of] Me [I am Ishvara, I am Parabhairava, I am residing in
each and every heart of everybody, every soul. Bhramayan, I am playing with them
with My own will.”
“Bhramayan sarva bhutani yantrarudhani mayaya. By My svantantrya shakti [the
Lord’s free will as creative power], they are going here and there, and I am
indulging in that way.”
The Sanskrit word Bhramayan is
explained further by Swami Lakshmanjoo: “He [meaning the One] handles it;
whatever you do, it is handled by Him, not by you. There is only ignorance in
that you say, ‘I am doing it, I am doing it.’ He [the One] is doing it. He is
handling it.”
Swami Lakshmanjoo continued: “Who are you [Arjuna] to [say] that you will not
[engage in this war]? Who are you? You are not existing at all; your will is
failure!
Who am I?
The question of 'Who are you?' resonates with the Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)
technique of self-inquiry in which the question 'Who am I?' is asked repeatedly.
Swami Lakshmanjoo in his youth was one of Ramana Maharshi’s favourites and there
are lovely inspiring photographs of the two together. The idea of continually
asking 'Who am I?' leads to the brain forming new synaptic paths which redirect
our consciousness away from the external ever shifting holographic temporal
coagulations and towards the Real, meaning the God-within and the understanding
that we are not the Doer.
The Bhagavad Gita III.27 teaches that we are not the Doer. It is only our
confused and deluded sense of ego,
ahamkara, literally ‘I-making’ that makes us think ‘I am the doer’ -
kartaham ‘doer I’- when in the Real
it is the material nature Prakriti performing the acts. Swami Muni Narayana
Prasad refers to this as Prakriti-wheel rolling on. Thus we understand that we
are mounted on this holographic water-wheel machine which is rolling on and on,
in Yuga after Yuga throughout the cycles of time. So where is our free Will?
Again, the Bhagavad Gita V.8 & 9 says that the man of yoga, meaning one who has
Become united – yoga means union – with the ubiquitous One realizes that we do
nothing when we are ‘seeing, hearing, touching, smelling.’ In truth “it is only
the senses operating on their objects” [J.A.B. van Buitenen].
Naiva kincit karomite is translated
by Swami Lakshmanjoo as “I don’t do anything.” – and the ‘I’ is understood to be
Krishna, who speaks as the voice of the Oneness.
In Kashmir Shaivism, Krishna is “established in the supreme state of [Para]
Bhairava. He [who] is established in the supreme state of Bhairava, he says,
‘although I do everything, I don’t do anything.’ …[The yogin who is in Union
with the One says] ‘the organs [Prakriti] are doing their job, what have I to do
with them? I am separate; I am aloof from this.... I am just the observer, I
don’t do anything.” The Sanskrit is
indriyani (senses, powers) combined with
indriyartheshu (in the sense objects,
in the objects of the senses).
The idea that what we believe we are experiencing as life, is only some temporal
illusory meeting, a marriage of sorts between our sense apparatus and the
objects they are engaged in, perhaps even creating as they send data back to our
brain that we interpret as solidity, sound, sight, etc. And it’s all somehow on
automatic. The yantra rudhani has us
in its endlessly whirling cycles of birth and death, desire and disappointment,
pleasure and pain, sukha-duhkha in
Sanskrit.
We are compelled by the gunas we ourselves have created over multiple lifetimes.
There is no being free of Prakriti’s gunas [BhG XVIII.40] either on earth or in
any other world, even the heavenly realms. While we are in delusion, continually
tossed around by our compulsions, the Lord of our Being, the God-within sits
observing, not attached, loving, patiently waiting, watching us manifest Its
infinite creative potency and glory. We are mirrors for the Oneness.
"All questions disappear."
A conversation I enjoyed with a long time disciple of the Swami Lakshmanjoo
produced a few helpful insights. The recognition that we are the One
(Parabhairava in Kashmir Shaivism) results in the realization that we are more
God doing the 'playing' in the time-space holographic universe than the
data-collecting vehicles (my term) being 'played'.
This realizing that we are and have always been the One comes about by
Grace, by the rising of our own Grace. Swami Lakshmanjoo
says that we can lift ourselves up by our own Grace, but we don't want to. We
prefer our self-created distractions in the external hologram, pursuing our
temporal desires that never bring us lasting fulfillment.
Thus our freedom is limited. Our only authentic freedom is to Realize we never
do/did anything, and
thus
surrender everything to the God-within because everything always belonged only
to the One, who we are anyway. Liberation (Moksha) is found
in the Recognition of the game, the Divine Lila, the 'Play'. By pulling our
consciousness back into the ubiquitous Oneness within, we lift the Veils of
Ignorance to understand the mechanics of bondage, the rules of the 'game' so to
speak.
So in the Real sense, Free Will in the temporal illusory hologram is useless!
Mildly amusing, isn't it.
Still this somewhat disturbing term 'played' is ambiguous, loaded — because we
are more God doing the playing than the incarnated data-collecting vehicles
being played. Subtle! In all respects we are that divine player, but we just
don't know it - yet.
My way of understanding this switching back-and-forth between the appearance of
Free Will and the teaching that we are not the Doer at all is this:
The Appearance of a Limited Free Will
Can it be that the One enjoys the temporal illusory appearance of a limited Free
Will in Its various manifested selves, you & me, as part of the entire spectrum
of Its infinite possible expressions. People in the west are more accustomed to
believe that we have Free Will, while one might assume that India and the East
have been more accepting of Fate and Destiny. Yet more recently as India
embraces the ideology of capitalism, the entrepreneur, the independent
individual self beyond family, many are experiencing the exhilarating and
precarious vulnerability of new freedoms, and breaking with tradition as they
shake off the old concepts of predestination - (as Anand Giridharadas describes
in his insightful book, "India Calling").
The scholar and polymath K.K. Nair/Krishna Chaitanya did not accept the
Sankarite rejection of the world as an illusion. He championed the idea that we
humans do have Freedom. "This means that God does not merely want, but in
reality needs, man's partnership in realising his design in history; and by
being his partner, man will move to a similitude with him." However, the Freedom
that mankind experiences must be aligned with and in harmony with God’s Design,
meaning the primordial metaphysical principles that are the very ‘being’ and
structural supports of this polarity universe.
A man’s thoughts and acts can reflect God’s intent and purpose (telos). In
Sanskrit this vast concept of God’s Design is named Rita (rta), meaning Truth,
Law, Right, Order, ‘the course of things’ (from the root
ri = 'to rise, tend, upward').
This concept of Rita is said to be the basis of the later idea of Dharma
— literally 'what holds together' and thus is the basis of all order [J.
Grimes/Sanskrit Dictionary]. Righteousness is the English word often used to
define Dharma, but in no way does it encompass the deeper understanding that the
root verb dhr implies: 'to uphold, to
establish, to support.'
Rita is one of the most frequently used words in the Rig Veda, occurring more
than five hundred times, according to the Vedic scholar Dr. A. Venkatasubbiah
(1886-1969) in a study on the “Satyaloka in the Rig Veda” (Vishveshvaranand
Vedic Research Institute 1974). In later Sanskrit texts Rita became obsolete and
was replaced by Dharma. There are many diverging opinions regarding the root
meaning of Rita (ri), like so many other early Sanskrit roots. However the idea
of Truth (Satya) or perhaps better, Cosmic Truth applies to K.K. Nair’s idea of
God’s Design.
Are we free or not?
In the Bhagavad Gita XVIII.59-60, Krishna expresses the same profoundly
perplexing contradiction when at first he tells Arjuna that he has no Free Will,
that as a warrior he will do as his Rajasic gunas compel him to do, his own
material nature (prakritis) will compel him, that he is bound to his warrior
kshatriya karma and he will do what he does not wish to do, even against his own
will. Yet a moment later Krishna (XVIII.63) says, “Do as you please!”
(yathecchasi tathA kuru), as if Arjuna does have Free Will.
K.K. Nair/Krishna Chaitanya believed that mankind does have Free Will which
allows us to decided to live in harmony with the metaphysical principles that
support this polarity universe or reject them. In his comments on the
yantrarudhani and the idea that we are “mounted on a machine” K.K. Nair warns
the reader not to misunderstand this as helpless “conditioned, determined,
will-less (avasa)” predestination.
K.K. Nair: “This is not what deity wanted when he made man free; he wants man to
align himself freely and in full understanding with his design in creation and
history. For such alignment in freedom, man has to be autonomous, not slavishly
dependent on deity.”
The goal of spiritual life is alignment with the One, Becoming the Oneness
within that is ubiquitous. When we in ignorance and delusion imagine that we are
separate from the Creator, we fall into disharmony, misery, and ultimately with
nothing Real to support us, we collapse into depression, sickness and the arms
of death. The Kali Yuga is the cycle of time in which most have forgotten that
we are the One, and thus most have come to believe that only greed and avarice
will fulfil them. The history of the last 6000 years is a repeating story of
tyrannical men and women who engaged in unending bloody wars to satisfy their
own frail vacuous egos at the expense of millions of innocent lives.
Subtle
The goal of Liberation from birth and death is very Real for me. I accept the
Wisdom-Knowledge in this ancient teaching as the final goal. However, I know
there are many enlightened men and women who want to remain here, in what
perhaps is rather like a Bodhisattva vow, and contribute to the upliftment of
mankind and planet Earth. We spend most of our lives throughout the cycles of
time in delusion. It is our behaviour in such bondage that determines our
consciousness and eventual release. Swami Lakshmanjoo says, “Don’t blame God for
your mistakes.” Even though the One is ‘enjoying’ the Veiled state of our
forgetting who we are, we are responsible for Remembering. Subtle, isn't it.
Therefore I find value in K.K. Nair/Krishna Chaitanya’s analysis of our
perceived 'appearance' of freedom through the teachings of Krishna in the
Bhagavad Gita. The Mahabharata has an entire book devoted to the dharma of kings
(raja), instructing good acts and character in rulers; within the Shanti Parva
is the Rajadharmanushasana Parva in which Yudhishthira asks Bhishma to describe
the righteous duties of a king. We could sure use some of that today! It is also
worth considering that K.K. Nair, along with many others in India, felt that the
idea of disconnecting from the world and becoming a parasite with a begging bowl
had been a serious anchor on India. He did not accept that the destruction of
man’s faith in himself was the true meaning of the Bhagavad Gita.
“Totally opposite is Vyasa’s [the Gita’s author] conception of both deity and
man. Deity has given freedom to man and his hope is that man will use it to
attain to a similitude with himself (Sanskrit below). And man can do this if he
alertly sees to it that the subsidiary powers of his psyche do not usurp the
role of the will by determining action.”
BhG XIII.18: madbhavaya – to My state of being; upapadyate – he enters
BhG XIV.2: mama sadharmyam – sameness with Me, state of identity with Me
We all know from experience how different life is for us when we feel
consciously connected to the God-within, even if that experience was fleeting.
Many have had a momentary ‘reconnection’ with the Real and True [Satya] that
carried us for the rest of our lives — or even into seeking full God
Realization, what Lakshmanjoo calls God-Consciousness. Only those who abide in
Wisdom-Knowledge deserve our trust to participate in the responsibility for the
well-being of our planet.
Part II continues...
We Meet in the Heart,
V. Susan Ferguson
Sources:
Bhagavad Gita, In the Light of Kashmir Shaivism, with original video, Revealed
by Swami Lakshmanjoo, Edited by John Hughes, Co-editors Viresh Hughes and Denise
Hughes; Universal Shaiva Fellowship, 2013.
WHO AM I? The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi; Sri Ramanasraman,
Tiruvannamalai, 26th Edition, 2011.
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Hind Pocket Books, New Delhi, 1986, 1992.
KRISHNA CHAITANYA, A Profile and Selected Papers; Edited by Suguna Ramachandra;
Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Delhi, 1991.
Life’s Pilgrimage Through The Gita, by Swami Muni Narayana Prasad; D.K.
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van Buitenen; The University of Chicago Press, 1981.
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Press, 1994.
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Satyaloka in the Rig Veda, A Study, by Dr. A. Venkatasubbiah (1886-1969);
Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute, 1974.
Who Owns the Future, by Jaron Lanier; Simon & Schuster, NY, 2013.
You are not a gadget, A Manifesto, by Jaron Lanier; Vintage Books, NY, 2010,
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The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr; W.W.
Norton & Company, NY, 2010, 2011.
India Calling, An Intimate Portrait of A Nation's Remaking, by Anand
Giridharadas
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