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The Free Will of the Individual in Relation to the Action of the Modes of Nature · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The ego consciousness lives within the illusion of having
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  free will and making its own independent decisions.
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  A closer examination shows us that the individual is not an
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  island unto himself. Rather he is a result of
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  innumerable factors from genetics to prenatal influences,
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  to interactions with family, friends, peers, coworkers as he
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  grows and develops, to the health factors and condition of
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  his physical body, nervous envelope and mind.
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  Environmental factors, societal factors, economic factors,
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  political factors, and the influence of media, marketing
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  and advertising and manufactured needs created by those
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  influences that push and mold his choices.
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  There is also the impulsion caused by past action, the law
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  of cause and effect, the law of karma, which may even transcend
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  a specific lifetime and carry impulsions forward in the
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  overall growth of the psychic being and the maturity of the
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  consciousness through numerous lifetimes.
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  All of these forces operate under the impulsion of the
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  gunas, the modes of nature. The Bhagwad Gita describes how
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  man's decisions and actions are driven by the gunas as if
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  mounted on a wheel. The universal forces act through
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  the various modalities of interfacing with the individual,
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  in most cases unrecognized and unseen, and once we internalize
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  them, we believe that we have made a free and independent
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  decision. In this case, free will is very
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  much an illusion. True free will resides in the
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  divine consciousness, and only when the individual ego is
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  transcended and merges its being into that divine consciousness
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  can it be said there is truly an action of free will at the
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  individual level. A disciple asks.
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  I have not understood this. At best we have only the poor
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  relative freedom, which by us is ignorantly called free will.
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  But that is at bottom illusory, since it is the modes of nature
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  that express themselves through our personal will.
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  It is force of nature grasping us, ungrasped by us, that
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  determines what we shall will or how we shall will it.
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  Nature, not an independent ego, chooses what object we shall
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  seek, whether by reasoned will or unreflecting impulse, at any
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  moment of our existence. Citation from Sri Aurobindo, The
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  synthesis of Yoga, page 88. The Mother responds quote not
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  understood. What do you mean not understood?
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  It's a fact. There's nothing to understand.
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  It's like that. I have explained this to you.
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  I don't know how many times you think it is you who decide.
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  These are impulses coming from outside.
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  You think you are conscious of your will.
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  It is a consciousness which is not yours and everything.
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  You are made-up entirely of something which is the forces of
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  nature expressing a higher will of which you are unconscious.
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  Only one doesn't understand this, except when one can come
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  out of one's ego, though it'd be only for a moment for the ego.
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  And this is its strength. It's convinced that it alone
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  decides, but if one looks attentively, 1 notices that it
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  is moved by all sorts of things which are not itself.
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  End Quote reference Srioro, Bindu and the Mother.
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  The Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter Eight Life A Mass of
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  Vibrations, pages 179 to 180.