4. Freedom of the Will

The last of three pre-suppositions of Gita’s ethics can be said to be Freedom of Will.

The term ‘freedom’ is a multidimensional one and it is difficult to conceive of freedom except in the human context. Freedom is an essential part of man’s thought or man’s life without which an individual cannot be thought to able to change his fate and consequently he cannot be morally judged. But according to fatalism, actions of men are predetermined by external circumstances which are beyond our control.Individual is a helpless victim of those external circumstances.They think themselves to be mere puppets in its hands and consequently lose all personal initiative. But the advocate of free will believes that man is a free agent of his actions. At every step in the course of life, people are confronted with so many alternatives; they choose between them as their will directs them. The Gita is the gospel uttered by Krishna in order to bring Arjuna out of the spell of grief, gloom, despondency, melancholy and apathy and in a process to revive him so that he regains his strength. This very effort of Krishna indicates that the Gita believes in freedom–that man has the capacity to change. Thus it can be said that the Gita pre-supposes the concept of freedom. This concept can be traced in the beginning and can be found pervading throughout the whole of the Gita. In the physical sphere, however, the Gita does not seem to allow freedom. Every man works as his nature impels him. The freedom the Gita believes in is not in the physical sphere. Every individual acts according to his physical disposition made of sattva, raja, and tamas.

His actions spring from his inner nature and conform it.

sadrsam cestate svasyah prakrter jnananan api
prakrtim yanti bhutam nigrahah kim karisyati (iii,33)

“Even the man of knowledge acts in conformity with his own nature;(all) beings follow (their) nature; what shall coercion avail?”

Nature (prakriti) is the samskara manifesting itself at the commencement of the present birth. Even the man of knowledge acts according to his own nature; it needs no saying that that an ignorant man acts according to his own nature. Thus all living beings follow their own nature. But he is not completely determined by his empirical nature. The Gita admits that every human being has the power to counteract his natural impulses, and desires and realizing his supra-organic, supramental, spiritual nature. The Gita believes that man is free in his choice to react to the situation. To perform work without attachment is also freedom as one can desire to work without attachment. Freedom is not act, it is mental attitude. The ethical discipline enjoined by the Gita implies human freedom. But it is to be understood that the freedom it implicitly believes in is spiritual freedom. It appears to recognize empirical necessity and spiritual freedom of the human soul.

The Gita says that the Supreme Self is within us. The personal self and the universal self is not antagonistic to each other. The universal self can be the friend or foe of the personal self. Therefore, if our impulses are under our control and if our personal self offer itself to the universal self, then the latter becomes our guide and teacher. Every one of us has the freedom to rise or fall and our future is in our own hands.

The Gita says:

uddhared atmana ‘tmanam na’tmanam avasadayet
atmai'va hy atmano bandhur atmai’ va ripur atmanah (vi,5)

“Let a man lift himself by himself; let him not degrade himself; for self alone is the friend of the self and the self alone is the enemy of the self”.

Though we act according to our gunas but when we make our individual being one with the Supreme, we rise above nature with its three modes, become trigunatita(xiv,21 ) and freed from the bond of the world. According to Gandhi, one who has risen above the three gunas will not seem to the world to be happy when one sees activity or unhappy when one sees lethargy.A person who has risen above three gunas should appear to the world to be a cipher, a mere stone. That is, he should have got rid of his “I”.^[1]

The Gita in places (iii, 33) seems to suggest the omnipotence of nature over the soul and requires us to act according to our own nature, the law of our being. But it gives man the freedom to act or not to act according to what is actually right within nature’s determinism. It does say that man should act according to buddhi or understanding. This can be understood as allowing man freedom to choose how to act. The Gita says that if we are victims of our impulses, our life is aimless, but we can stop acting according to our impulses. The exercise of freedom is conditioned and not cancelled by the necessities of nature. The Gita’s concept of freedom is freedom of the spirit: it allows freedom to dedicate oneself to the pursuing of values, freedom to focus the mind on chosen ideals. In the Gita life is meaningful to the extent one strives for this kind freedom.

The Gita by giving hope for better future indicates its belief in man as possessing freedom to change his life. Towards the end of the Gita Krishna is found to be telling Arjuna that finally it is unto Arjuna to choose whether to act as suggested by Krishna or not to follow him(xviii,63). Man is to be drawn not driven, persuaded not compelled. Krishna is not trying to impose his command. Arjuna is free at any moment to reject or accept Krishna’s advice. Krishna is not going to assume responsibility for what Arjuna decides. Even if a pupil takes a wrong turn, the teacher’s duty is to counsel and not compel. Arjuna is a free individual who can choose as he pleases. The Gita suggests man to choose the good and realize it by conscious effort. But it leaves the choice of whether an individual would do it or not to the individual himself. Every act of the self is a creative one, while all acts of the not-self are truly passive. The Law of Karma holds in the realm of the not-self where heredity, biological, and social factors operates but in the spiritual aspect of the individual lies the possibility of freedom, of triumph over the determinism of nature, over the compulsion of world.

Neither nature nor society can invade our inner being without permission. The world is not fulfilling a pre-arranged plan in a mechanical way. The aim of creation is the production of selves who are not within the control of the modes of nature. Human beings are asked to control their impulses to rise above the current of nature and regulate their conduct by reference to buddhi or understanding. Allowing oneself to be controlled by nature’s modes is not prescribed at all. The Gita says: “This is craving, this is wrath, born of the mode of passion all devouring and most sinful. Know this to be the enemy here” (iii, 37). The Gita lays stress on the spirit’s freedom of choice and the way it is exercised. Nature does not determine everything of an individual. Karma is a condition not a destiny. It is only one of the five factors involved in the accomplishment of any act -the basis or centre from which we work, doer, the instrumentation of nature, effort and fate. However there are certain factors of lives which are determined for human beings over which one has no control. One does not choose how or when or where or in what condition of life he or she is born. It is our past that determines our ancestry, heredity and environment. Our life is a mixture of necessity and freedom, chance and choice. But the present necessity is a product of previous choice. By exercising one’s choice properly now one can control steadily all the elements and eliminate the determinism of nature. Being human man should justify his actions. If he acts blindly according to his impulses and passions, he acts more like an animal than a man. The Gita believes that the will should direct towards ones ideal.

In the Gita, Krishna appears as a charioteer; he himself is not involved in the fight. He bears no arms. He can advise Arjuna where to move, can help Arjuna to go where he wants to go; but the decision is Arjuna’s finally to choose. However, Krishna suggests that the choice made on the basis of one’s spiritual nature is the right choice; it is actually the choice that is free. In other words, reason alone allows for freedom in the Gita. As long as one is under the control of nature one is not free. Man is warned against his likes and dislikes, which are “the besetters of soul in its path.^[2]. Gandhi says that man bears the capacity to choose which in other words mean that he is free. It is true that man is born as a helpless creature. The child needs someone -a mother-god or father-god to look after it. Man is born dependent, but he need not always remain so. Freedom is a state of mind which is to be acquired. A man can describe himself swadhin (dependent on oneself) only to the extent that he feels so, for he can say that he submits himself to a law of his free will. And because of this capacity, a man who is still not-free in the sense of being under the control of nature can be held responsible for his acts. He might not have allowed himself to become free, but he bore the capacity to become free which he chose not to become. As a man is free to follow the dictates of free will or to follow the path destined by his nature, he is responsible for his acts. A man cannot commit a crime and escape its consequences.^[3]

Thus man freely acts and produces results at every step whether in childhood, in youth or in old age. It is due solely and wholly to his own free karmas that man may rise to a higher plane of success or bring his own downfall. Hence every man is free to choose any course of conduct, irrespective of his conditions. Moreover, If this freedom of action is not granted, all scriptures containing exhortations such as ‘awake, arise, seek the great ones and obtain wisdom’ (Katha Upanisad, iii,18),^[4] would go waste and meaningless. If this freedom of will is not conceded to man is free in doing his actions, how can he be held responsible for that what he did? Where lie the justification in rewarding or punishing the doer for the work which he has done not of free choice but out of compulsion. If a man is not the free agent of his actions, his lot would not be better than a lifeless thing like a piece of wood or stone being kicked by fate from one place to another. In this position, virtues or vices will lose their merit and both religion and ethics will become baseless. But whenever we closely observe, we find that our all actions form strings of failures, successes, and that cannot be the work of blind caprice. Whatever actions take place, are found to have arisen from one or the other cause. Moreover, they create moral effects, teach lessons and bring a variety of experiences not only to the agent but to the other people of the society as well.

But here another question arises if one karma fructifies in the second and the second karma fructifies in the third, and in this way one is the cause of the other, thus forming the continuous chain of cause and effect, then there lies no scope for any free will and free action. There is another controversy between determinism and free will.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Gandhi, M.K: The Bhagavadgita, p-248-249)

[2]:

Radhakrishnan,S: Theism of Gita, p-80

[3]:

Gandhi, M.K: The Bhagavadgita, p-81

[4]:

Katha Upanisad, iii,18