Destiny or Free will?

When we speak about karma, immediately the question of free will comes to the mind. The idea of karma implies some kind of destiny. If there is destiny, then where is free will? And if there is no free will, then how one could be responsible for acts he doesn’t have control over? As you can see, this can quickly become a very complicated question, with several ramifications.

To answer it, it’s useful to understand a little about Vedic astrology and its ramifications. You may question what astrology has to do with karma, but bear with me, it’s going to be interesting.

The Vedas of the east is a vast literature that includes most branches of human knowledge. The branches that deal with spiritual knowledge and self-realization, like the four Vedas, the Puranas, Upanisads, Mahabharata, and many other books are classified as “Para Vidya” (transcendental knowledge), while branches that deal with more mundane subjects are classified as “Apara Vydya” (practical or mundane knowledge).

This second branch includes subjects like how to maintain one’s health and cure disease (the Ayurveda), how to organize structures and objects in a way to create harmonious spaces (the Vastu Sastra), and even military arts (the Dhanurveda). Amongst them, Vedic astrology (Jyotish) is considered particularly important.

Why is it so important one could ask? The answer is that it helps us to understand and change our karma.

The Vedas explain that the destiny of human beings is determined by the stars. A person takes birth under a particular disposition of planets and stars (represented in his birth chart), and by following the calculations given in the sastras (the Vedic books of knowledge) an expert is capable of making accurate predictions about his life. Different celestial bodies influence an individual in different ways, just like ropes pulling a puppet. The position of different celestial bodies is going to influence what kind of family one will take his birth into, what education he will receive, what kind of spouse he will have, what challenges he will face during his life, when and where he will die, and even influence how he is going to think!

These influences act according to one’s karma. The planets and stars are actually not the cause, but an indication of how Karma is acting over a person. The purpose of this Vedic science is to help one understand where he is in the wheel of samsara and thus be able to find his way to a progressive life.

Naturally, nowadays astrologers are normally not so learned. At best, a modern astrologer can predict general tendencies to one’s life, favorable and unfavorable periods, calculate compatibility between couples, and so on. However, there are relates of how astrologers of bygone ages would be capable of discovering the color of a pencil that one is holding in his hand, or how many coins there are in his pocket, just by astrological calculations of the effect of the current position of planets and stars in relationship with the current circumstances.

If an astrologer can predict such details based on the position of the planets and stars, it means that our destiny is fixed up to the smallest details. If everything is fixed, to such an extent, it seems that there is very little space for our free will. This can easily lead to a conformist mentality. If everything is fixed, why should we struggle to make any kind of advancement?

The answer is that our karma works like an old elevator. Nowadays these are not very common, but the way they operated used to be a problem back in the days. When one would enter one of such elevators and push a button, let’s say to the 10th floor, the elevator would going to stop until this particular floor was reached. If one would start to press more buttons, the elevator would store the numbers in memory and would go to each one after the visit to the 10th floor that would be in course. Still, there was no way to stop the elevator: once you pressed the button for the 10th floor, you committed to visiting this particular floor. You could choose how to spend the time until you reach there and where to go afterward, but your visit to the 10th floor would be fixed.

Another example is that as soon as you enter a plane, you are committed to staying there until the destination is reached. It’s not possible to jump half-way. If you take a plane from Delhi to Paris, for example, you are going to be forced to stay on-board until it reaches Paris, no matter how much you may regret it.

However, there are still two opportunities to exert your free will: you can decide how to spend your time during the flight, and you can choose where to go next. You can pick up a fight with someone, or try to hijack the plane, and create a situation where you will be arrested as soon as the plane touch the ground, or you may make friendship with some rich person and get a nice job, read a book that may help you to solve some important problem, etc. This part is up to you.

In other words, our past karma determines the situation we are in now, and it also limits the choices we have in the present moment, but still, some choice is available, and if we make the right decisions, we can improve our situation. If, on the other hand, we make the wrong choices, we may regret them later.

Therefore, we should be careful with what we desire, because what we desire is going to determine our actions, which in turn are going to determine our next destination.

The trick part is that our current consciousness is also determined by our past choices. What we are doing now is largely determined by our past activities and desires. If we are not actively trying to change our consciousness and desires, our next actions are going to follow the same line, leading to a continuation of the same situation. If we do like that, then our fate is almost determined.

However, there is a possibility for real freedom. Once one starts in a spiritual process, he slowly starts to transform his karma. The first result of this is that he is able to start controlling his desires. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krsna explains how one should control his mind using his intelligence.

The mind is the center of desires and emotions. The role of the mind is to store different desires and impressions in the unconscious and bring them back to consciousness at the appropriate time. If one day you want to eat ice cream, but can’t because you forgot the credit card, the mind is going to store that desire and bring it back when another opportunity arrives.

The problem with the mind is that it is highly emotive, like a small child, that wants everything and wants it now. Therefore, we need to employ our intelligence to deliberate about what we really want and thus draw a path to follow. One that is trying to lose weight, for example, may use his intelligence to check the desire of the mind for ice cream.

Thus, intelligence is exactly the component that allows us to escape the endless sequence of desires created by the mind and instead find a progressive path. We usually think that to be free means to do whatever we want, but we usually don’t notice that this “what we want” is not really what we want, but simply what the mind wants! Thus, the parts of the Vedas that deal with spiritual knowledge, like the Bhagavad-Gita give us the tools to be able to escape these dictates of the mind and thus find real freedom.

This perfectional stage is described thus in the Bhagavad-Gita (6.20-23):

“In the stage of perfection called trance, or samādhi, one’s mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga. This perfection is characterized by one’s ability to see the Self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the Self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness, realized through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth, and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact.”

Thus, once one becomes serious in the spiritual path, he has the opportunity of a clean start, with the shackles of his past karma being loosened, allowing him more freedom than it would be normally allowed by his past karma. This is the real path to freedom.