Destiny and Freedom

[Xan]

Osho on Destiny and Free Will


Question - Are Our Lives Predestined or Not?

Osho : This is not a personal problem, it is a philosophical question. Our lives are both predestined and they are not. Both yes and no. And both answers are true for all questions about life. In a way, everything is predetermined. Whatever is physical in you, material, whatever is mental, is predetermined. But something in you constantly remains undetermined, unpredictable. That something is your consciousness.

If you are identified with your body and your material existence, in the same proportion you are determined by cause and effect. Then you are a machine. But if you are not identified with your material existence, with either body or mind – if you can feel yourself as something separate, different, above and transcendent to body-mind – then that transcending consciousness is not predetermined. It is spontaneous, free.

A person who has known consciousness has known freedom. So only a spiritual person can say there is no determination at all. That realization comes only when you are completely unidentified with the body....

With matter, no freedom is possible. Matter means that which cannot be free. It must flow in the chain of cause and effect. Once someone has achieved consciousness, enlightenment, he is completely out of the realm of cause and effect. He becomes absolutely unpredictable. You cannot say anything about him. He begins to live each moment; his existence becomes atomic.

Your existence is a river-like chain in which every step is determined by the past. Your future is not really future;it is just a by-product of the past. It is only the past determining, shaping, formulating and conditioning your future. That is why your future is predictable.

If one person in the whole history of mankind is free and unpredictable, then mankind is potentially free and unpredictable. The whole possibility of freedom depends on whether you emphasize your body or your consciousness.

If you are just an outward flow of life, then everything is determined. Or are you something inner also? Do not give any preformulated answer. Do not say, ”I am the soul.” If you feel there is nothing inside you, then be honest about it. This honesty will be the first step toward the inner freedom of consciousness. If you go deeply inside, you will feel that everything is just part of the outside. Your body has come from without, your thoughts have come from without, even your self has been given to you by others.

That is why you are so fearful of the opinion of others – because they are completely in control of your self. They can change their opinion of you at any moment. Your self, your body, your thoughts are given to you by others, so what is inside? You are layers and layers of outside accumulation. If you are identified with this personality of yours that comes from others, then everything is determined.

Become aware of everything that comes from the outside and become non-identified with it. Then a moment will come when the outside fallscompletely. You will be in a vacuum. This vacuum is the passage between the outside and the inside, the door. We are so afraid of the vacuum, so afraid of being empty that we cling to the outside accumulation.

One has to be courageous enough to dis-identify with the accumulation and to remain in the vacuum. If you are not courageous enough, you will go out and cling to something, and be filled with it.

But this moment of being in the vacuum is meditation. If you are courageous enough, if you can remain in this moment, soon your whole being will automatically turn inward. When there is nothing to be attached to from the outside, your being turns inward.

Then you know for the first time that you are something that transcends everything you have been thinking yourself to be. Now you are something different from becoming; you are being. This being is free; nothing can determine it. It is absolute freedom. No chain of cause and effect is possible.


http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Psychic-World/Destiny-Free-Will.htm

I was thinking a lot about destiny, and cause and effect. It's a question I put forth when I was on a buddhist retreat, but I didn't receive the answer.

How do we dis-identify with the accumulation? Our minds seem automatically obsessed by it? How do we get past that obsession when it has such a power over us?

Do we have to leave society and find a cave somewhere? How do we find the vacuum, and why are we afraid of the vacuum? I can't get there. I want to, I've had enough of my story, this world, this life, I want freedom. I can merely glimpse the open space of awareness on occasion.

[Xan]

Good questions, peacegarden.

We disidentify with accumulation and our material/mental nature by recognizing it for the surface deception of reality that it is... and find a way in ourselves to let it go... bit by bit.

Some rare people leave society to do this work, but these days more and more are learning how and choosing to let go of their conditioning in ordinary life. I do.

I don't much like Osho's term 'vacuum' for this as I feel it's a frightening idea. In my experience we begin finding our true nature in the quiet open space within ourselves, and eventually all around us too.

We are afraid of this because it shakes up our beliefs about ourselves and reality, and the ego-mind does tend to resist change.


It's simply meditation in the Silence, which we come to discover is whole pure Presence.


Xan

[Seawolf]

Originally Posted by peacegarden

I was thinking a lot about destiny, and cause and effect. It's a question I put forth when I was on a buddhist retreat, but I didn't receive the answer.

How do we dis-identify with the accumulation? Our minds seem automatically obsessed by it? How do we get past that obsession when it has such a power over us?

Do we have to leave society and find a cave somewhere? How do we find the vacuum, and why are we afraid of the vacuum? I can't get there. I want to, I've had enough of my story, this world, this life, I want freedom. I can merely glimpse the open space of awareness on occasion.

There's another choice besides dis-identifying or identifying. Freedom can simply come from falling in love with the accumulation. There's nothing wrong with being afraid. It doesn't make a person less spiritual. There's nothing wrong with the mind or identifying with it unless you say it is. Freedom to me isn't trying to get rid of the mind, it's apologizing for treating it so bad and talking about it so bad, even trying to destroy it. Can you imagine someone wanting to completely leave you behind?

Tolle speaks about his awakening as falling into the void, when his ego-story self and his true self seperated in his mind, when he realized there was two of him, the 'self' that 'I' could not live with anymore. I assume his void was the same thing that Osho means with the vacuum? It's like something just clicked in his mind and he disidentified fully in an instant. Do we have any control of when this moment comes for us? I assume most of us have to work at it bit by bit, like you say.

I have been reading about soul ages recently, and that our journey is predetermined and there are steps we must go through. It has kinda shattered my understanding of growth a little, I mean, can we still find this seperation even if we aren't an old soul? Can we find it at any point? Does it take more work the younger our soul age is? If we are coming back anyway, why try?

[Xan]

I agree, Seawolf. Accepting and including it all is part of letting go of the clinging and resisting in the mind that keep us trapped and unfree.


Xan

[Xan]

peacegarden: Tolle speaks about his awakening as falling into the void, when his ego-story self and his true self seperated in his mind, when he realized there was two of him, the 'self' that 'I' could not live with anymore. I assume his void was the same thing that Osho means with the vacuum? It's like something just clicked in his mind and he disidentified fully in an instant. Do we have any control of when this moment comes for us? I assume most of us have to work at it bit by bit, like you say.

Yes... people are using the term 'void' these days for what I call the infinite silent presence. There are many other names for it... the nameless.

We do and don't have control over when it happens. For some few people there's a moment of sudden revelation like Tolle and Psychoslice had. It seems for 99.9% of us the gradual process through spiritual pracetice is what happens.

There are meditation practices that can take one directly into awareness in the silence, which continues to develop gradually. Here's one:

Three Steps into your true nature - http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/showthread.php?p=32551#post32551


I have been reading about soul ages recently, and that our journey is predetermined and there are steps we must go through. It has kinda shattered my understanding of growth a little, I mean, can we still find this seperation even if we aren't an old soul? Can we find it at any point? Does it take more work the younger our soul age is?

I observe that these days spiritual awakening goes much faster and is available for many people than historically. Ideas like soul age and sequential stages can only hold us back.

There have never been as many people awake in our true nature in the world, I think.


If we are coming back anyway, why try?

It all depends on what you want, peacegarden... in this life... now.


Xan

Originally Posted by Seawolf

There's another choice besides dis-identifying or identifying. Freedom can simply come from falling in love with the accumulation. There's nothing wrong with being afraid. It doesn't make a person less spiritual. There's nothing wrong with the mind or identifying with it unless you say it is. Freedom to me isn't trying to get rid of the mind, it's apologizing for treating it so bad and talking about it so bad, even trying to destroy it. Can you imagine someone wanting to completely leave you behind?

This is interesting. If we can find peace with the mind, then we find freedom. But, so long as we continue to identify with the story, we continue to suffer.

[Seawolf]

Originally Posted by Xan

I agree, Seawolf. Accepting and including it all is part of letting go of the clinging and resisting in the mind that keep us trapped and unfree.


Xan

Accepting and including is part of it sure, but the key for me is loving the mind. The mind is not something separate or a hinderance to me, sure I think it is sometimes, but I don't make a lot of progress with blame. There is nothing keeping us trapped but ourselves, if I want to be free it's my responsibility, there is no separate part of me that's clinging and resisting to blame.

Originally Posted by Xan

peacegarden: Tolle speaks about his awakening as falling into the void, when his ego-story self and his true self seperated in his mind, when he realized there was two of him, the 'self' that 'I' could not live with anymore. I assume his void was the same thing that Osho means with the vacuum? It's like something just clicked in his mind and he disidentified fully in an instant. Do we have any control of when this moment comes for us? I assume most of us have to work at it bit by bit, like you say.

Yes... people are using the term 'void' these days for what I call the infinite silent presence. There are many other names for it... the nameless.

We do and don't have control over when it happens. For some few people there's a moment of sudden revelation like Tolle and Psychoslice had. It seems for 99.9% of us the gradual process is what happens.

There are meditation practices that can take directly into awareness in the silence, which still develops gradually. Here's one:

Three Steps into your true nature - http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/sh...2551#post32551


I have been reading about soul ages recently, and that our journey is predetermined and there are steps we must go through. It has kinda shattered my understanding of growth a little, I mean, can we still find this seperation even if we aren't an old soul? Can we find it at any point? Does it take more work the younger our soul age is?


I observe that these days spiritual awakening goes much faster and is available for many people than historically. There have never been as many people aware in our true nature in the world, I think.


If we are coming back anyway, why try?

It all depends on what you want, peacegarden... in this life... now.


Xan

Hehe, I want freedom, I don't want to keep coming back, I get it. So, we can skip the rest of the process if we work hard enough at finding that freedom from identification? If we want freedom bad enough, we can work at it and find it? When I read about soul ages, I feel like I have moved faster than one step in just the 29 years I've been here, I feel like I would not have awakened so quickly if there wasn't a general 'pull' of awakening at our point in history. The truth is, the soul age thing made me pretty depressed, because I felt like, at any point, liberation could come, but now it tells me I could have another 10-20 lives here. I really don't want that.

Thank you for the meditation, I was looking for something new to work on.