Lessons - 2

[Charles Wikner]

On Fri 20 Mar 1998, Gregory Goode wrote:

> At 05:45 PM 3/20/98 +0530, Swami Vishvarupananda wrote:

[snip]

> > But it is dangerous (for most) to say, I have no choice. Unless
> > one is already a great devotee and set firmly on the path, one
> > will use this as an excuse to follow the dictates of the mind.
>
> I agree with this! Not a teaching for everyone! Charles Wikner said
> something similar I believe, in one of his recent postings on this topic.

WRONG !!  Like you, I agree with Swami Vishvarupananda, but I do not view
it as some sort of elitist superior separate belief that negates free will.
Rather, with increasing vairaagya, a finer level of understanding becomes
available, and free will assumes a less important role: the larger circle
of vairaagya includes the smaller circle of free will, as it were; it does
not exclude it, which is what you seem to be suggesting.

An illustration may help: the sun rises in the East, travels across
the sky, and sets in the West -- this is valid knowledge at the level
of the senses.  Later one comes to know of the solar system and that
the Earth in fact rotates -- this is finer knowledge, but does not
negate the validity of the sensory experience.  If you now go about
preaching that there is no such thing as sunrise or sunset, well
you deserve to be branded as a heretic and burned at the stake!

Given the geocentric and heliocentric views, you need to realise
that both are correct -- it just depends which you take as your
reference point.  To see them as mutually exclusive is limiting:
is is far more useful to be able to change frames of reference
according to circumstance.  Then one may come to appreciate that the
entire creation is relative to whatever is chosen as the reference
point -- usually the ego!

The search then continues until one realises that absolute reference
point that never moves: only from there can you know the true measure
of anything with certainty.  To stop short of that, simply means that
any judgement will be made according to the limited measure of the ego.
To judge beliefs as right or wrong is ignorance: view them rather as
useful or not, appropriate or not.

My point (if there is such a thing) is that there APPEARS to be free
will, and that any statement that there IS (NOT) free will is simply
not universally true.  Furthermore, in making the judgmental statement,
the speaker limits his own development (serves him right too), and
distracts others holding different beliefs (and hence it is flame bait).

Regards, Charles.