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The Limitations in the Concept of Free Will · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  We believe we have free will. We are confronted with choices
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  and make a decision and carry it out and believe that the
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  decision was made freely by the individual we identify as our
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  self. At the same time, we can
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  recognize the stepwise development, which is called
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  cause and effect, or the law of karma.
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  If we pursue the retrogression from the current decision to
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  each antecedent act or event, however, we can see that there
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  is clearly a line of causality that stretches back step by step
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  to a past we cannot even see, and that we could conclude, if
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  we chose to do so, that indeed there is no such thing as free
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  will in our actions. We can see that each successive
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  level of the manifestation of consciousness appears to provide
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  more flexibility, more freedom of choice, such that on the
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  material plane we can speak of fixed laws of material nature.
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  We identify the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of
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  motion, the law of conservation of energy, the relation between
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  matter and energy, etcetera. As life emerges, we find that
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  the determinations appear to be much less rigid.
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  Yet there are clearly certainly principles or laws that govern
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  the development of life and life forms.
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  The mental nature appears even more fluid, and as we exercise
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  self reflection we seem to have a strong measure of free will.
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  Yet a careful analysis will show that even the decisions we make
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  that appear to be free and random, not bound by a fixed
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  law, are indeed conditioned by circumstances, education,
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  environment, relationships, etcetera.
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  Can we really say that any decision we make is actually
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  free will in operation? Or is it purely the illusion of
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  free will? We are a Nexus or point of
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  awareness of universal nature? Does the drop of water in the
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  ocean have free will? Or is it the ocean itself that
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  may have free will of which the drop partakes without exercising
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  its own independent freedom? If we shift our awareness to
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  further levels of conscious awareness beyond the mind, into
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  the realms where the pure manifesting consciousness of the
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  universal creation resides, we can identify the true mover of
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  all things, the place where free will actually resides.
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  It is through identification with that larger and higher
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  consciousness that we can begin to identify the true nature of
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  free will. In the meantime, it is clear
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  that even our exercise of free will at the human level of
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  existence is part of a larger pattern that plays out
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  inexorably and consistently. Variations that occur through
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  any flexibility we have are actually part of that larger
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  pattern, Sri Aurobindo notes. Quote At least 9/10 of our
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  freedom of will is a palpable fiction that will is created and
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  determined not by its own self existent action at a given
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  moment, but by our past, our heredity, our training, our
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  environment, the whole tremendous complex thing we call
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  karma which is behind us, the whole past action of nature on
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  us and the world, converging in the individual, determining what
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  he is, determining what his will shall be at a given moment, and
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  determining as far as analysis can see, even its action at that
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  moment. The ego associates itself always
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  with its karma and it says I did and I will and I suffer.
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  But if it looks at itself and sees how it was made, it is
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  obliged to say of man as of the animal.
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  Nature did this in me. Nature wills in me, and if it
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  qualifies by saying my nature, that only means nature is self
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  determined in this individual creature.
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  It was the strong perception of this aspect of existence which
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  compelled the Buddhist to declare that all is karma and
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  that there is no self in existence.
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  That the idea of self is only a delusion of the ego mind.
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  End Quote. Reference Sri Aurobindo and the
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  Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter One, Life Through
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  the Eyes of the Yogin, page 20.