there is a free will where actually there is none.
This concept was touched subtly in the Heart of Parashara Lajjitaadi Avastha course in the 'Mercury starving Mars' video. (which I have through a decent aspect)
The core of Mars is to exert our free will and to train our soul here. Mars needs to believe that what he does matters.
But Mercury, being Vishnu in everything, shows that no act of will matters. In the face of the greater understanding of Mercury, Mars feels powerless.
So we need our Mars to believe that will matters, else we as individual mortal beings may not survive (I have to save myself from the fire). But the higher truth maybe that even that action won't matter.
Hi Dr. Rajan,
The point you brought up maybe the direction I was looking for! I have Mars in Gemini, by the way!
Referencing Ernst's video about Astrology, Fate and Freewill, maybe Mars's role is to train our soul when we are not using our 25% God's will, but just stuck in our 75% fate?
Maybe, what Mercury is showing us (everything is Vishnu), is also part of this 75% fate part?
When we are solving our bad lajjitadivasthas, we are actually exercising the 25% God's will?
This seems to be reconciling my doubt, thanks a lot for the insight you provided!
Regards,
Anand
I will try to answer with my simple thoughts 🙂 ,
1. God's will - Divine will; will of someone who created the universe and is ever satisfied, who is silently trying to get us back.
2. Freewill - Everyone of us as humans has the gift of using freewill. When we are born, we don't have control over material experiences due to self-created karma. But, we have full control over how we use our will to respond/react to a particular situation. It is this will that can help us solve our starved avasthas.
3. Mars - I find this is very useful to understand if we add human design factors. @angela already mentioned Ernst says most of it is to use the will to not act at the wrong time. If you look at human design, the system says 70% of the people are energetically designed to wait and respond. about 9% are here to think and act.
Capricorn is like the crocodile with mouth wide open and chilling out, but when its ready to act, it acts at the right time to catch its prey, there is no escaping a crocodile.
When we are born, we don't have control over material experiences due to self-created karma.
This implies that at a previous lifetime or state of existence, we had the free will to "create self-created karma" e.i. material circumstances in this life. We created it by ourselves i.e. "I was the doer".
Without getting into the "chicken or the egg" conundrum of "When was our original choice made that created it all?", do we self-create our future material circumstances by how we respond to our current circumstances (which we created by ourselves in the long-forgotten past, whether consciously or in an unconscious reactionary way to, to what were then unalterable external events)?
I wonder if God laid out the original unalterable circumstances and said, "You can create your future circumstances by how you react to these".
S.
Haha, actually I think that is true "You can create your future circumstances by how you react to these".
Yogananda says we should use calmness to respond to self created misery (circumstances) and pray to overcome it using discriminative will that can be developed by meditation.
I had the same questions too, but found it answered well in his translation of the Gita : "God Talks to Arjuna"
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:f3cdc87f-cc87-4bbd-96d0-fd05bb22cb70
As far as I remember, we are all part of God. Before we are born and after we die, we are with God and merge with the great ocean. When we are born, we go through this traumatic experience of seemingly being separated from God
At the same time, when we are incarnated, by virtue of that process, we have a role. We have a body and characteristics that make us the individuals we are. In order to be able to survive on this planet and relate to everything on it, we develop individual consciousness and the idea of separate existence.
@angela-w, @scoobydoo, @mitryendra80
At last I am being able to respond to this incredibly fascinating topic...
Referring to the above two quotes from Angela's post, please let me offer my views on this....
As Angela said, I believe first there is God (non-duality), but next should come duality (Individual Consciousness). This duality should be the idea of separate existence on one hand, and the realization that this idea is a mere illusion, on the other hand.
I think there should be the idea of separate existence before we have the physical body we are carrying in this life time. Otherwise, where does the design and the composition of this physical body come from? In God layer, being non-dual, there would not be discrimination of any kind, so the different mental and physical characteristics of people, animals, plants and all the inanimate stuff could not have come directly from God.
I think God directly only becomes the duality, one part of which is an idea of separate existence and that sets the ball rolling for the whole drama of life that we experience as a life separate from God. As described by the famous analogy....Ocean that becomes a Wave and the Wave may think it has a life of its own, separate from the Ocean, till it merges back into the Ocean....
The individual consciousness should align with the Wave phase.....and the wave keeps changing forms before it merges back into the ocean....each of our births with a physical body may be equated to a form assumed by the wave....
So, depending upon the gray scale of the idea of individual consciousness, we have the seed of our destiny or fate, and the state of individual consciousness at the time of birth decides what kind of physical body we choose...
Now, the whole journey of individual consciousness (from the idea of separate existence right upto realizing that idea was a mere illusion) should be a dynamic interplay of fate and free will....this dynamic interplay of fate and free will should be what the universal drama is all about....
The fate part of the universal drama we perceive should be the robotic existence of the individual consciousness, and the free will part of the universal drama should be where the individual consciousness has the maturity to let God play the game, which is always spontaneous, at will and disrupting the fate....this maturity of letting God play the game, employ free will...should be an integral part of the individual consciousness in spite of its idea of a separate existence...the fate and free will parts should both describe individual consciousness and these paradoxical descriptions is what that should give rise to the duality that an individual consciousness should really be....
The fate part of the drama can be described, as it should be based on logic, and the free will part should be disrupting this logical domain of fate....this logical domain is described by astrology and, based on the principle of five elements, should be a baseline of 75% of the overall individual consciousness experience....however, this 75% fate can become 100% fate if the maturity is lacking enough to not let God play the game at all, and it can be 0% fate if the maturity is such that individual consciousness lets God play the game optimally....
Within this fate part of the dynamic, there should be one more sub-plot of illusory free-will which is played out by Mars. This is needed for individual consciousness to pretend its fate part is not a robotic existence.
I am not sure how much of the above would make sense....but this is where I am at presently....
Regards,
Anand