I welcome you to this session of the course,
Reconnecting to the Soul.
In the previous session,
We learned that nothing in the universe has meaning in itself.
It is about the meaning we allot to various things and phenomena that creates our experience of life.
In this session,
We will talk about something that has been a hot topic for debate among philosophers,
Scientists and spiritualists.
We will talk about free will and what role does our soul has to play when it comes to free will.
In philosophy,
There are various schools of thought on this topic,
Libertarian free will,
Hard determinism,
Soft determinism,
Etc.
And in the known history,
There has been a debate for over 1500 years now that whether we have a free will or not.
And there hasn't been a conclusion yet.
The purpose of today's session is not to get into that debate or prove whether free will exists or not.
I just want to present to you a gist of what various spiritual traditions and mystics believe about free will along with my own understanding.
The argument that we don't have a free will,
That every action of ours is predetermined by the laws of physics,
Was a strong argument until the discovery of quantum physics.
Quantum physics showed us that unlike the large objects we observe in our physical universe,
Subatomic particles have weird behavior and you cannot determine where an electron will be in the next moment.
Hence,
The future cannot be determined and occurs randomly.
Consequently,
Even our actions cannot be determined.
If we just look at the physical world and how it functions,
Many might conclude that everything happens due to the laws of physics and hence our destiny is fixed and we don't really have free will.
Basically,
What they are trying to say is that the thought that came to your mind that you want to listen to this session today was supposed to happen due to your past behavior.
You couldn't have behaved in any other way.
This means that you didn't have the free will to choose to listen to a song instead of this session.
However,
The perception that we don't have free will will totally change when we bring this soul into the picture.
What I learned is that both arguments are valid.
We have free will and we don't have free will.
How can that be true?
Well,
Mystics throughout ages have realized that the more we are connected to our soul,
The stronger is our free will and the less we are connected to our soul,
The weaker is our free will.
Among the subconscious and the conscious levels,
Our conscious mind is only 5%.
Whereas the subconscious mind is 95%.
That means that most of our thoughts and all of our emotions are generated by the subconscious and only few of them are generated by our conscious mind.
For example,
If you love chocolates,
The thought that you want to eat that chocolate comes from your subconscious.
It is an automatic habit of yours.
But when you consciously decide not to eat the chocolate because you might become fat,
It is the will that you are exerting on your subconscious habit.
The more conscious we become of our subconscious habits,
The more will we can exert to change them.
Now I will give you an example of how by connecting to our soul,
We can exert even stronger free will,
Where even our conscious mind fails.
Let's say there is a person close to you with whom you fight a lot.
A lot of times when you talk to this person,
They trigger anger in you.
Now here,
Anger is your subconscious response,
Which gets triggered as soon as this person says something which hurts you.
Now you try to bring in your conscious mind to calm down yourself.
However,
Even your conscious and the rational mind tells you that your anger is justified because this person hurts you all the time.
Now let me ask you this question.
How would a monk react to this situation who genuinely meditates for hours every day?
Most probably,
The monk would not get triggered by anger when he faces the same situation that you faced.
Why is that?
By meditating regularly and properly,
You get connected to the higher levels of your consciousness,
That is,
The super and supra conscious levels.
Or in other words,
You get connected to your soul.
So now when that person would say something that can hurt you,
Your subconscious mind would want to react in anger.
Even your conscious mind might want to react,
But your soul will exert a stronger will and it would keep you calm and make you respond with compassion.
Another example can be that let's say you are just starting to meditate and initially you are not able to sit for a long duration.
So just as you sit for the meditation in the morning,
You get thoughts like,
Let's not do it today.
I will start tomorrow.
Or let me first have breakfast and then I will think if I want to meditate.
Or just after sitting for a few minutes,
You feel like ending the meditation.
That is the subconscious mind telling you to follow your habits of the past.
But as you sit longer and longer and as you meditate more and more,
You connect to your soul more and more and you will see that your will of doing the meditation increases and eventually you will become regular.
You will also start meditating for longer durations.
Therefore,
Meditation has power to it and that power is free will.
The more you meditate,
The more you get connected to your soul and you will soon experience a sense of control arising in you.
You will no longer be a victim to the external environment,
But you will in fact exert your free will in the external environment and would hence effectively manifest your own desired reality.
There are many paths to the future and it is our choice what path we choose.
If we give our power to our unhealthy subconscious habits and patterns,
We will choose an unhealthy future for us.
But if we exert our free will,
We can choose a path that will lead us to a future that we desire.
Namaste.
