Free Will and Freedom

Wisdom Teachings
Essences of the Teachings

Essentially as souls we are freedom-lovers: Consciously or unconsciously we strive to be free and we suffer that our consciousness has solidified and has lost the free flow of life. Our concepts of life confine us and have crystallised. We believe that this crystallised state is life; we got so much stuck in it that we nearly suffocate. From a higher point of view we are also called the prisoners of the planet, whose consciousness is buried in matter like in a state of death.

It says that we are three times tied down in our body: One knot is between the base and the sacral centre, the second is between the solar plexus and the heart centre, and the third between the pituitary and the pineal gland. This delinking of ties is compatible with an attitude of detachment towards things around us. The path of yoga contains the techniques how to free ourselves from the ties and to proceed to higher realms of being. By raising our consciousness we can work from there with mind, senses and body. Thus we can enjoy the splendour of creation without being caught in it or being influenced by it.

When we don’t know how we free ourselves from the ties in the right way and act accordingly, we remain caught in matter. With the help of our free will we have created effects. With our free will we have to liberate ourselves again from the consequences. No one will help us but our free will. In this the teachings and the teacher give us guidance and inspiration, but no miracle of salvation will free us from our karma. Statements like that Jesus is washing our sins away are just profiteering. Jesus came in order to show once again the Law and to live like a king, and everyone should do this.

People blindly accumulate karma; later they are full of aches and pains and they complain. But such complaints only intensify the running effects, they don’t change the law. Karma is the divine action, as it is happening in creation. With the help of free will we can place ourselves under the law or go away from it. Free will doesn’t mean that we can do what we want. If we do things as we like to do, we should also bear the consequences as they come to us. The best action is to allow the divine will to act through us by attuning our will to it. In this process we have to patiently and continuously correct the consequences which have already accumulated. For this Hierarchy urgently recommends: “Learn how to think!”

Prayer and meditation can give us the right spirit for right action. However, they don’t neutralise yesterday’s wrong actions. But they can give us the strength to bear the consequences without inwardly revolting against them, and to work off existing debts through service.

Today freedom and free will are more misunderstood than understood rightly. We sleep as we want, we eat, drink, speak, move and couple as we want, and we consider this to be freedom. But smoking, drinking alcohol, eating what doesn’t do good to us – all this isn’t done out of freedom, but because we don’t know how to use the body and because the senses are more powerful than we ourselves are. If we knew that we suffer from the body and the senses and are bound by them, we would watch out for a better freedom. Today many people are searching for liberation and self-realisation in the spiritual realm just as if someone had stolen their freedom. But nobody has taken it away. We are kept in the grip of the body by a lack of knowledge and a wrong understanding of freedom.

Politicians proclaim freedom; they set up their own frame of freedom and then determine it for others. The capitalist is happy when all are in his frame of capitalism, the socialist, when all are in his frame of socialism. A businessman is happy when he can impose his idea of business on others. Wars are made in order to enforce one’s own thoughts of economy or of god. In order to spread a concept of god, people fight and kill. They have no respect for the life and freedom of others. They have no idea of what free will really is. From the point of view of the wisdom teachings all these religions are called “religions of utter ignorance”, and even every missionary activity is regarded as a militant activity. The culture of wisdom doesn’t know any aggression. It respects the free will and the freedom of the other man and doesn’t impose on him one’s own program. Jesus even permitted one of his disciples to hatch a plot against him. So much he has respected the free will of the other.

According to the Eastern understanding of wisdom the freedom of the soul is considered to be most important. Political and other kinds of freedom are secondary in their importance. Once we are free as a soul, nothing binds us any longer – neither the financial conditions nor the family nor the society. Sri Aurobindo, who wanted to work for the freedom of India, got the advice from the masters of wisdom: “First of all become free yourself, then you can work for the freedom of others.” For this reason also other great masters like C.V.V., Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Sri Ramana Maharshi and Shirdi Sai Baba didn’t enter into the fight for independence. Gandhi is considered to be a mahatma, because he had first of all liberated himself from all material bonds and thus could also give freedom to his nation. A man who cannot govern himself also cannot govern a nation; he is a prisoner of the body.

The technique for liberation from matter has been given by initiates, it is relatively unknown to religious people. Religion has its own place; it helps people by giving them a codex of ethical, moral and social behaviour, but it doesn’t give the technique of liberation. For this an initiate or a master of wisdom is needed.

The masters of wisdom are examples that you can live free while surrounded by the world. They take the things just like they are given. They live in be-ness, without asking for something. Thus they act without being bound by the effects of their actions. An initiate lives in freedom by not accumulating anything around himself; he is free from the urge of accumulating. No matter what is surrounding us, we shouldn’t grasp it or take possession of it, for otherwise it binds us. To live together in freedom without mutually taking possession, this is called real friendship.

The more we receive, the more we are bound by it, for we get circumscribed by receiving. If we give more than we take, we free ourselves from the limitations of the material and get rid of our karma. When obligations come to us, we should gratefully accept and fulfil them. Every obligation coming to us is a possibility of paying back a debt towards another being. Thus service becomes a way of life.

Thoughts also can bind us, normal thoughts, but also thoughts of good will. Thoughts are forms and covers, with which we can identify. An idealist is bound by his own ideals, learned people often get stuck in their own thoughts. When we regularly sit down and observe the images and thoughts, we slowly get liberated from them. Going beyond the thoughts is like soaring into the pure, clear blue sky without clouds. We can experience ourselves as a pure pulsating consciousness, which flies like a bird in the clear blue sky. With the time we can remain the clear, pure background, even if we descend again into the thoughts, the senses and the objectivity. Then we work with everything as if we were working with gloves. When we can see the One in all, we can live free on all planes without getting entangled in them.

K.P. Kumar: Mithila / notes from seminars. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India.