Free Will in the Ancient Sanskrit Texts
The question of Free Will has challenged the best minds throughout human
history. In the ancient Sanskrit texts Free Will is an enigma, a veiled
mystery bewildering to most westerners. The Bhagavad Gita is the brilliant
essence of the earlier texts, and even directly quotes various Upanishads.
The final Chapter XVIII in the Bhagavad Gita is a summation of the others
and verse 61 contains the
Sanskrit term yantrarudhana,
which is often translated as ‘mounted on a machine’.
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).
The graphic, apparently holographic image of the
yantrarudhana has always fascinated me. Over the years again and again I
find myself reflecting on this metaphysical construct, the invisible cosmic
machine-mechanism, which enfolds us in this temporal illusory holographic
universe. In my mind I have often connected the
yantrarudhana with the famous
elusive Sri Yantra, that one can meditate on and never quite grasp.
The Sanskrit scholar J.A.B. van Buitenen translates the
yantrarudhana
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.
The metaphysical idea is that Life, what we believe we are experiencing as
life, is only the temporal illusory meeting, a marriage of sorts between our
sense apparatus and the objects they are engaged in — perhaps even creating
as the five-senses send data back to our brain, which we interpret as
solidity, sound, sight, etc. And it’s all somehow on automatic. The
yantrarudhana is comparable to a
matrix that has us in its endlessly whirling cycles of birth and death,
desire and disappointment, pleasure and pain,
sukha-duhkha in Sanskrit.
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
meaning ‘doer I’— when in the Real, it is the material nature Prakriti
performing the acts. A wonderful teacher and scholar in Kerala India, Swami
Muni Narayana Prasad, refers to the
yantrarudhana as Prakriti-wheel rolling on. Prakriti is the Matrix,
Nature’s womb of endless creativity and shakti-power. Thus we understand
that we are mounted on a holographic water-wheel machine which is rolling on
and on, in yuga after yuga throughout the cycles of time.
Prakriti operates through the three qualities, the
gunas
(sattva, rajas, and tamas). We are compelled by these three qualities, our
modes of being, the
gunas
we ourselves have contributed to over multiple lifetimes. Their effects are
the result of our acts, karma, and accumulate nested in our DNA. There is no
being free of Prakriti’s gunas [BhG XVIII.40] either on earth or in any
other world, even the heavenly realms. In ignorance of our Real nature and
thus deluded, we are continually tossed around by our compulsions, while the
Lord of our Being, the God-within sits observing, not attached, loving,
patiently waiting, watching us manifest Its infinite creative potency and
glory.
Thou art That
We are that One, and simultaneously mirrors for the Oneness. Yet we
prefer our adventures and self-created distractions in the external
hologram, pursuing our temporal desires that never bring us lasting
fulfillment.
The Sanskrit texts teach that our only freedom is to Realize we never do or
did anything. This wisdom-knowledge is arduous to acquire and is described
as walking on a Razor’s Edge, however it is invaluable. The
Recognition of the Divine Lila, the ‘Play’ — Liberates our consciousness
(Moksha). We begin to understand the mechanics of bondage, the rules of the
'game' so to speak. The concentrated pulling back into the ubiquitous
Oneness within thereby lifts the Veils of Ignorance.
So, in the Real sense — Free Will in the temporal illusory hologram is
useless! Mildly amusing, isn't it.
This perplexing, often infuriating term Lila 'play' is ambiguous, loaded
because we are more the all pervading One, God-consciousness, 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 temporal
appearance of Free Will and the teaching that we are not the Doer at all is
this:
When we think we have Free Will, we are not in the Oneness. When we are in
the One, we realize there is only the One and the question is useless - it
doesn’t matter. No sense of separateness can exist. As the Kashmir Shaivite
Swami Lakshmanjoo says, “All questions disappear.” 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.
Siren Servers
The
gunas
(sattva, rajas, tamas) are the three qualities or modes that rule us and
compel our acts. They are Borg-like — and surely there has never been a
better material world symbol for the ‘mounted on a machine’
yantrarudhana than the massive
cloud-data-collector computers that have been named Siren Servers by the
very insightful programmer and computer scientist, Jaron Lanier. “A Siren
Server…is an elite computer, or coordinated collection of computers, on a
network. It is characterized by narcissism, hyper-amplified risk aversion,
and extreme information asymmetry. It is the winner of an all-or-nothing
contest and it inflicts smaller all-or-nothing contests on those who
interact with it.”
According to Lanier, Siren Servers take information without having to pay
for it (Facebook, Google, etc.), secretly analyse that information, much of
it personal including personal financial data, and use it to manipulate the
rest of the world to the advantage of those who own and control these elite
machines. Thus technology that was meant to liberate the mass of humankind
has become, in the hands of tyrants, the perfect tool of our enslavement -
or should I say in the pockets of tyrants.
Surely our own state of near complete disconnect with our Source has brought
on the creation of machines, which reflect our current state of
consciousness and are being misused to subjugate the many to the few. The
clever conceit of those who care only for self-interest and profit at the
expense of others and the environment is destroying the earth, her oceans,
air and soil. Lightning quick, shallow thinking, using however brilliant
algorithms to amass information in massive servers that only benefit the few
is leading us to inevitable collapse.
Escape from the Labyrinth
Perhaps living in human form remains exciting to us only as long as the
secret of life remains a mystery and an experience of the unknown. A life
that has been logically calculated and predicted offers no challenge to us.
Life without surprise is mechanical and dreary, ungodly, not fun. Are we
appalled and bored by a life that is totally predictable?
The Siren Servers intend, it seems to corral all of us into predictable
repetitive clone-like behaviour and patterns of consumption that benefit the
ruling tyrants, the rich and the technocrats who serve them. When our highly
complicated thought processes are entrapped in only specific areas of the
brain, where will individual creativity come from?
The over use of computers and addiction to surfing the Net has been shown to
actually alter the human brain physically. From ‘The Shallows’ by Nicholas
Carr:
“The Net’s cacophony of stimuli short circuits both conscious and
unconscious thought, preventing our mind from thinking deeply or creatively.
…Heavy use has neurological consequences. …as the time we spend hopping
across links crowds out the time we devote to quiet reflection and
contemplation, the [brain] circuits that support those old intellectual
functions and pursuits weaken and begin to break apart. The brain recycles
the disused neurons and synapses…”
One wonders how this kind of entrainment by the machine will damage our
capacity to meditate. Surely the rapid-fire experience of zooming around the
Internet, reading dozens of articles in the most superficial way, perhaps
only the first paragraph if that, is the extreme antithesis of the state of
consciousness one hopes to achieve in meditation. This ‘redirection of our
mental resources’ and ‘making judgements that are imperceptible to us’ as
Nicholas Carr says, have been shown to ‘impede comprehension and retention’.
Carr quotes the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, who back in the 1950s
said: "...the looming tide of [the] technological could so captivate,
bewitch, dazzle and beguile man that calculative [quantitative] thinking may
someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking." The
frenzy of quantity over quality, jumping from one focus to the next, using
only a small part of the brain may destroy our capacity for quiet
contemplation and meditation. The state of a calm and attentive mind
cultivated in silence is not only the source of all genuine creativity and
innovation, but also the only Door out of the temporal illusory holographic
webs we have bound ourselves within.
Tyrants & algorithms
How much of what we surf on the Net do we actually learn and absorb - and
how much is mere titillation, escape and addiction? Where is our Free Will
in formats generated by software? Are these new masters of the universe, who
we are in fact allowing to transform the very way our brains operate — are
they true masters of their own consciousness? Generic formats that gather
our personal information exist and are used not for our benefit, but to
manipulate us without our knowledge.
As Jaron Lanier says, yes it’s free - as long as we allow them to spy on us.
What kind of freedom is that? Perhaps in this phase of our current Kali
Yuga, the
yantrarudhana
has been projected externally into the hologram as these Siren Servers by
our own lost and confused consciousness. The Kali Yuga is the Age of
Conflict and Confusion. Rene Guenon’s description of the “Reign of Quantity”
has descended into new depths. Have we created a new sort of Labyrinth to
escape from, one literally and physically in our own brain?
Jason Lanier from his book ‘you are not a gadget’: “It’s crazy not to worry
that, with millions of people connected through a medium that sometimes
brings out their worst tendencies, massive fascist-style mobs could rise up
suddenly.” Will the next
generation be more likely to “succumb to pack dynamics” because they have
grown up with “crowd aggregation,
as is the current fad.” The Siren Servers make it easier than ever for
tyrants to herd the crowd, manipulating masses, shoals of people who never
met, on paths leading to an abyss.
We cannot abide in harmony with eternal metaphysical Truth when we are in
Ignorance of what that Truth (Satya) is — and it appears obvious to me
looking at the condition of human consciousness and the environment of the
entire ravaged planet, that we are ever more disconnected from our Source,
whirling madly towards imbalance, tilting, tipping, skewed into deeper
darker chaos. Those who choose to do so, to set Right the misalignments of
our era will be served by first aligning their being with the God-within,
the ubiquitous One that dwells within all.
The choice is clear. We can continue to run madly, rapid-fire around the
labyrinth, blind mice in ever more complex artificial fake and self-created
mirage-like mazes — or we can turn within to the Source of All that has been
patiently waiting throughout non-existent time for our Return. The only
authentic Free Will lies within.
V. Susan Ferguson
From a series on the final Chapter XVIII in the Bhagavad Gita:
http://www.metaphysicalmusing.com/gita%20XVIII/gitaxviii-index.htm
Sources:
The Bhagavad Gita in the Mahabharata, A Bilingual Edition, translated by
J.A.B. van Buitenen; The University of Chicago Press, 1981.
The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Winthrop Sargeant; State University of New
York Press, 1994.
Life’s Pilgrimage Through The Gita, by Swami Muni Narayana Prasad; D.K.
Printworld, New Delhi, 2005, 2008.
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.
Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Gitartha Samgraha,
translated by Boris Marjanovic; Indica Books, Varanasi, 2002, 2004.
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, 2011.
The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr;
W.W. Norton & Company, NY, 2010, 2011.
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