Free Will vs. Predetermination: the Ego and the Self – 08.19.10

Student Question: Could you say a little bit more about the levels of freedom and predetermination that you just mentioned?

“At every moment, you have the freedom to will whatever you wish; you can make choices. But do you have the freedom to choose what you wish to choose,” asks Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It’s a higher logical level. Do you have the freedom to choose who you think you are, that is making those choices?” The ego’s will is a set of predetermined biological and cultural programs. “And yet, at any moment, you are free to transcend the ego, to disidentify from it through an act of radical detachment. And through that act you can free yourself. . . . But you could say that even that act of freeing yourself was determined by the trajectory of your own soul that chose a certain egoic structure that had enough ‘free will’ in it—enough give of the fixations of that determination—that enabled it to escape through a crack in the egoic logic.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.