{"id":134,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=134"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:08","slug":"33-all-will-and-free-will-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/33-all-will-and-free-will-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-33_All Will and Free Will.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nAll-Will
\nand Free-Will<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n                       
\n<\/span>H<\/span><\/b>IS
\n<\/b>is surely a bounded soul who has never felt the brooding wings of a Fate
\novershadow the world, never looked beyond the circle of persons, collectivities
\nand forces, never been conscious of the still thought or the assured movement of
\na Presence in things determining their march. On the other hand, it is the sign
\nof a defect in the thought or a void of courage and clearness in the temperament
\nto be overwhelmed by Fate or hidden Presence and reduced to a discouraged
\nacquiescence, \u2014<\/span> as if the Power
\nin things nullified or rendered superfluous and abortive the same Power in
\nmyself. Fate and free- will are only two movements of one indivisible energy. My
\nwill is the first instrument of my Fate, Fate a Will that manifests itself in
\nthe irresistible subconscious intention of the world.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>All error, like all evil, is born of a division in the indivisible.
\nBecause God has a myriad aspects, mind breaks up His unity; it creates a violent
\nopposition and vain attempt at mutual exclusion in the united family of the
\nIdeas and Powers that are convergently busy with the universe. Thus our thought
\nerects a mysterious Fate or an equally mysterious free-will and insists that
\nthis or that must be, but both shall not subsist together. It is a false and
\nunreal quarrel. I have a will, that is plain; but it is not true that it is free
\nin the sense of being a thing apart in the world determining itself and its
\nactions and fruits as if it alone existed or as if it could at all shape itself
\nexcept as visible crest and form of an invisible wave. Even the wave is more
\nthan itself; for that too has behind it the tramp of the whole measureless ocean
\nof Force and Time. On the other hand, there is no incalculable Fate, no blind,
\ncruel and ineluctable Necessity against which the wings of the soul must dash
\nthemselves in vain as if it were a bird snared by a monstrous Fowler in a
\ndim-lit and fantastic cage.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>All times and nations have felt or played with the idea of Fate. The
\nGreeks were pursued by the thought of a mysterious and ineffable Necessity
\npresiding over the divine caprices of the\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-282<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n
\n <\/span>\n<\/div>\n

gods. The Mahomedan sits calm and inert under the yoke of
\nKismet. The Hindu speaks of Karma and the writing on the forehead when he would
\nconsole himself for calamity or failure or excuse himself from perseverance and
\nmasculine effort. And all these notions are akin in the general imprecision of
\nthe idea they shadow forth and the vague twilight in which they are content to
\nleave its ulterior significance. Modem Science has brought in an equally
\nformless and arbitrary predestination of Law of Nature and Heredity to
\ncontradict the idea of responsibility in a free, willing and acting soul. Where
\nthere is no soul, there can be no freedom. Nature works out her original law in
\nman; our fathers and mothers with all that they carried in them are a second
\nvital predestination and the dead generations impose themselves on the Jiving;
\npressure of environment comes in as a third Fate to take from us the little
\nchance of liberty we might still have snatched out of this infinite coiling of
\nforces. The triple Moirai of the Greeks have been re-enthroned with other masks
\nand new names. We believe once more in a tremendous weaving of our fate, but by
\nthe measured dance of immense material Powers. It is the old gods again, but
\nstripped of intelligence and the chance of human sympathy, inexorable because
\nthey are conscious neither of themselves nor of us.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>It is doubtful whether belief in Fate or free-will makes much difference
\nto a man\u2019s action, but it certainly matters a great deal to his temperament
\nand inner being; for it puts its stamp on the cast of his soul. The man who
\nmakes belief in Fate an excuse for quiescence, would find some other pretext if
\nthis were lacking. His idea is only a decorous garment for his mood; it clothes
\nhis indolence and quiescence in a specious robe of light or drapes it with a
\nnoble mantle of dignity. But when his will clutches at an object or action, we
\ndo not find him pursuing it with a less strenuous resolution or, it may be, a
\nless childish impatience or obstinacy than the freest believer in free-will. It
\nis not our intellectual ideas that govern our action, but our nature and
\ntemperament, \u2014<\/span> not dh<\/i>\u00ee, 
\n<\/span>(<\/span>These are
\nterms of Vedic psychology. Dh<\/i><\/span>\u00ee<\/span> <\/span><\/i>
\nis
\nthe intellect, mati <\/i>the general mentality; manyu, <\/i>the temperament
\nand emotive mind<\/span>)<\/span> but<\/i>
\nmati <\/i>or even manyu, <\/i>or, as the Greeks would have said, thumos <\/i>and
\nnot nous.<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-283<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n
\n <\/span>\n<\/div>\n

On the other hand, a great man of action will often seize
\non the idea of Fate to divinise to himself the mighty energy that he feels
\ndriving him on the path of world-altering deeds. He is like a shell discharged
\nfrom some dim Titanic howitzer planted in concealment far behind this first line
\nof trenches which we see thrown out by Life into the material world; or he is
\nlike a planet sped out from Nature’s hands with its store of primal energy
\nsufficient for its given time, its fixed service to the world-life, its settled
\norbit round a distant and sovereign Light. He expresses in the idea of Fate his
\nliving and constant sense of the energy which has cast him down here whether to
\nbreak like some Vedic Marut the world’s firm and established things or to cut
\nthrough mountains a path down which new rivers of human des- tiny can pour. Like
\nIndra or Bhagirath he precedes; the throng of the divine waters follow. His
\nmovement decides their course; here Indus shall flow, there Ganges pace yellow
\nand leonine to the sea. Therefore we find that the greatest men of action the
\nworld has known were believers in Fate or in a divine Will. Caesar, Mahomed,
\nNapoleon, what more colossal workers has our past than these? The superman
\nbelieves more readily in Destiny, feels more vitally conscious of God than the
\naverage human mind.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>A saying of Napoleon\u2019s is pregnant of the true truth of this matter.
\nQuestioned why, since he talked continually of fate, he thought it worth while
\nto be always thinking and planning, he answered with just reason, \u201cBecause it
\nis still Fate who wills that I should plan.\u201d This is the truth. There is a
\nWill or Force in the world that determines the result of my actions as part of
\nthe great whole; there is a Will in me that determines, concealed by my thought
\nand personal choice, the part that I shall take in determining the whole. It is
\nthis that my mind seizes on and calls my will. But I and mine are masks. It is
\nAll-existence that gives me my reality; it is the All-will and All-knowledge
\nthat, while I calculate, works in me for its own incalculable purpose.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>For this very reason I am right in laying stress on my free- will. If a
\nNecessity governs even the gods, yet is my will a daughter of Necessity with a
\nright in the mansion of her mother; or even it is a face of the divine Necessity
\nthat in many forms\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-284<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

plays with the world. If Kismet is the will of God, yet is
\nthat will active in my present moment and not only in the hour of my birth or of
\nthe world. If my past actions determine my present, my immediate action also
\ndetermines the moment that shall be and is not utterly put off by a tardy
\nmechanism to belated effects in a far-off life. If law of Nature and heredity
\nand environment are powerful, yet do they depend on the individual for the use
\nto which they shall be turned.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The fruit of my actions belongs not to me, but to God and the world; my
\naction belongs to God and myself. There I have a right. Or rather it belongs to
\nGod in myself; the right is His, but I enjoy it. The Will that works in me is
\nthe indivisible All which only seems to separate itself from itself in my body
\nand personality, n<\/i>\u00e3 mar<\/i>\u00fbpa, <\/i>as the whole sea throws
\nitself upon a particular coast in a particular surge of waves. The All and the I
\nare at play of hide-and-seek with each other in a corner of an infinite
\nuniverse.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>I may play entirely at cross-purposes with the All-Will in me. That is
\nwhen I lend my will-power to be a servant of the nervous part of my mind which,
\nignorant and passionate, adores self, openly or under many pretences, as its own
\ngod. It is this in me, this egoist, this hunger that feels upon it in the heavy
\nhand of Fate the oppression of a tyrant or the resistance of a blind and
\nunintelligent power. For always absorbed in its own need and viewpoint it helps
\nthe All by that friction and opposition which are so essential to the mechanism
\nof the world. Therefore, it misunderstands the firm Teacher and His stern, yet
\nloving compulsion in things and must progress by self-will and struggle and
\nsuffering because it cannot yet learn to progress by obedience. But also I may,
\nby an intuition in my nature, an aspiration in my heart and a reason in my mind,
\nput myself at the service of some strong ideal, some intelligent Force that
\nserves God with or without knowledge of Him. Then is my will a true will; it
\ndoes its share, it leaves its quota, it returns to its Master with its talent
\nused or increased. And to a certain extent it is free; for a great liberty is
\nthis, to be delivered from the Animal and the Rakshasa in ourselves, free to
\nchoose the right or be chosen by it.\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>But how different a thing would it be if I could persuade my\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-285<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

ego to break and emerge from the mould in which it has
\ntaken refuge from its divine Pursuer! The great antinomy would then be abrogated
\nand not simply mitigated. My free-will would become God-will and Fate put off
\nher mask. By consenting to be the mere slave of God and consciously but one
\ninstrument of That which is not bound by its instruments, I should know a
\nfreedom which sings on the harps of heaven, but which no’ speech of man can
\nutter; I should be washed and rolled in the waves of pure puissance and pure
\necstasy, the immeasurable and un- fathomable ecstasy of all-being and all-life
\nand all-force. I should see Fate illumined melting into Will and Will glorified
\npassing into God.<\/p>\n

\nPage-286<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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