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The Three Gunas, the Operation of Prakriti in the External Nature, and the Exercise of Will · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The actions that take place in the external world are
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  controlled by the action of the three gunas, or qualities of
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  nature. This includes not only the
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  physical nature, but also the vital nature and the mental
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  nature. There is what we may call a
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  machinery of nature that drives the creation forward for a name
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  determined by not each of us individually, but by the divine
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  will carrying out its intention in the creation.
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  To the extent that we exercise our will in carrying out our
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  lives, we are not wholly independent actors, but part of
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  the entire fabric of the reality that is woven around us and
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  which includes us. The force of the past chain of
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  causality, the actual present circumstances, and the play of
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  the Gunas drive, the eventual determination of decisions made
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  now and the shaping of the future.
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  Since we are not separate and independent of the Divine
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  reality, and in our external nature, we act under the
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  impulsion of procrity. The illusion we hold of a
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  separate status of being independent actors able to
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  exercise fully independent will, is erroneous.
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  The Bhagwad Gita points out that the divine is seated in the
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  heart and turns our actions as a form of machinery under the
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  impulsion of the gunas and their constant variable play.
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  When we shift our standpoint to identify with that divine
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  consciousness which permeates all existence and transcends it,
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  and which is seated in the heart of each being, then we share in
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  the exercise of free will of the divine, and the willpower we
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  exert takes on the color of the divine impulsion in the
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  manifestation. Sri Aurobindo observes, quote
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  The only free will in the world is the one divine will of which
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  nature is the executrix, for she is the master and creator of all
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  other wills. Human free will can be real in a
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  sense, but like all things that belong to the modes of nature,
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  it is only relatively real. The mind rides on a swirl of
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  natural forces, balances on a poise between several
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  possibilities, inclines to one side or another, settles, and
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  has the sense of choosing. But it does not see.
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  It is not even dimly aware of the force behind that has
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  determined its choice. It cannot see it, because that
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  force is something total and to our eyes indeterminate.
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  At most, mind can only distinguish with an approach to
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  clarity and precision some out of the complex variety of
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  particular determinations by which this force works out, her
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  incalculable purposes. Partial itself, the mind rides
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  on a part of the machine unaware of 9/10 of its motor agencies in
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  time and environment, unaware of its past preparation and future
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  drift. But because it rides, it thinks
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  that it is directing the machine.
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  In a sense, it counts for that clear inclination of the mind
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  which we call our will. That firm settling of the
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  inclination which presents itself to us as a deliberate
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  choice, is one of nature's most powerful determinants, but it is
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  never independent in soul. Behind this petty, instrumental
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  action of the human will there is something vast and powerful
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  and eternal that overseas the trend of the inclination and
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  presses on the turn of the will. There is a total truth in
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  nature, greater than our individual choice, and in this
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  total truth we're even beyond and behind it.
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  There is something that determines all results.
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  Its presence and secret knowledge keeps us steadily in
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  the process of nature, a dynamic, almost automatic
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  perception of the right relations, the varying or
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  persistent necessities, the inevitable steps of the
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  movement. There is a secret divine will,
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  eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses
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  itself in the universality and in each particular of all these
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  apparently temporal and finite, inconscient or half conscient
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  things. This is the power or presence
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  meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of
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  all existences, who turns all creatures as if mounted on a
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  machine by the illusion of nature.
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  End Quote Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the
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  Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter One, Life Through the Eyes of
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  the Yogin, pages 21 to 22.