From the Archives - March 2005

Free-will/Devout's surrender - From Archives March 2005

"God helps only those who help themselves" is an oft repeated quote of the so called rationalists of today's world. From the school going children, to grown up adults, this evokes a tremondous feeling of empathy. Alas, I wish, I can share this feeling; there are two aspects of this which make me feel queasy. If one can help himself, pray where is the need for a God? And does it mean that the millions of the underpreveliged (including yours truly) who only look up to Him for succour, have no hope of receiving His grace? Lest I digress & jump ahead of my story, let me get back to the main theme.

The above quote suggests that there exists a free will in every one of us which can be exercised. Quite unfortunately, every character of this genre, (who seem to exercise this in both history and myhology, turn out to be either tyrants or powerful rulers & the Gods appear to be willingly helping them. For instance where were/are these Gods when (a) Hitler was busy exterminating the Jews, (b) the Bush's and Blairs of this modern world are continuing to punish any and everyone to protect themselves in the name of saving democracies, (c) our own politicians in India, who are stopping at nothing to protect their fiefdoms and finally (d) the Dawoods/Terrorists who even invoke His name & continue to terrorize/hold every one to ransom?

This incidentally runs contrary to what the psychanalysts would have us believe; namely that there really is no such thing as "free will". Everything is attributable to compulsions and urges and these are mistaken for "free will". ( We will revert to this later some other time).

There are another set of characters ( from the same source namely history and mythology) who belong to a totally opposite genre. Everything is "gods will" according to this set of people. They even go to the extent of asking God to give them only adversaries, lest they forget Him even for a moment.

Moses, led his followers for more than 40 years before they all could find their "promised land". Jesus let Barabaaz get a pardon from the king and allowed Himself to be nailed to the cross, Kunti asks Krishna to give her only adversities, so that she will behold Him all the time, Hanuman the devout, ( when Sita asks him as to how he crossed the ocean, he says that, with Rama the Lord incarnate who is there to help everyone of the universe to cross the ocean of "birth and death" in his heart, where was any doubt about his ability to cross a mere ocean?), and then there are the countless other saints who had no other thought than of the Lord Himself..... None of these greats nurture any thought in their minds about the so called free-will.

What then differentiates the above set of two diametrically different personalities? The answer that comes to me loud and clear is "fear". While the latter genre is totally devoid of fear in every aspect of the term, the former lives in perpetual fear; fear of the next moment, fear of the future, fear of death, the list can go on and on. It would appear that the Gods will "egg on" all those in the former category to delude them to believe that they are excelling in exercising their "free-wills" ( Psycho analysts are not wrong after all).

Being brought up /moulded by a dictatorial/fundamental/orthodox/but yet caring/ Hindu brahminical patriarch, I would love to be able to get into the latter set. These are the people who possess what I would like to call the highest degree of equanimity. The modern world has a very inadequate term for this, namely "high emotional intelligence quotient". I am wary of the term "intelligence" which in the normal course has nothing to do with with the "heart". And the equanimity of the genre I am talking about is free from fear and is full of compassion. Can any one daresay that they lack in intelligence?.

But yet alas, we cannot have them as our role models; perhaps we may lose our jobs if we do. But surely, one can pray that the Gods at least give him the strength & the resilience to withstand adversities He chooses to visit on him, if He cannot rid him totally of "fear" due to one's prarabdam. Think it over........... ALV"

PS: After 5 yrs of writing this piece and going by the current upheavals in the family and resultant doubts, especially in the context of the "free will" debate, I am beginning to feel re-assured about my faith in the credo " everything is His Will" as I seem to be in no power to take on all the privations that He is choosing to visit upon me/us, with my so called "free will" and feel convinced that all that is required is His Grace as I have no means to know what I desire/want/need, which is best in taking me to that final realisation.

Love, Peace, prosperity and dawning of realisation

Vichu