I curse the day on which I was born. I curse the day on which I shall die. I curse the whole of my life. I fling everything back at your cruel face, senseless Fate! Be accursed, be forever accursed! With my curses I conquer you. What else can you do to me?…With my last thought I will shout into your asinine ears: Be accursed, be accursed!
But even on the objective plane it does not follow that determinism deprives us of all freedom, because no Western metaphysician or scientist has yet decided what is the precise difference between the soul of man and fate itself.
Now Oriental philosophy is quite clear on this point, and for this reason has never found any stumbling block in the fate–free will problem. Vedanta says that the soul of man is Brahman, which means that our own deepest self is that First Cause which set the wheels of fate in motion. But then Vedanta does not share our commonsense view of time, for only from the standpoint of maya was the First Cause a thing of the past. In reality the First Cause is forever now. We speak of the beginning and the end of the universe in terms of eons, kalpas, and ages simply because human intellect cannot grasp the nature of eternity unless it is spread out upon the measuring rod of time. But to the Oriental philosopher the creation and destruction of the universe are taking place in this moment, and for him this is true from both the metaphysical and the psychological standpoints. It is not our purpose to enter into the former because it is quite outside everyday experience, and has no more to give to the solution of immediate human problems than the scientific or objective view.
In terms of practical psychology I would say that this metaphysical concept of the East is a state of mind in which the relation between oneself and life, fate, or destiny is no longer a question of moved and mover, passive agent and active power. Therefore it involves a change from the view of life in which man is an isolated being without any sense of union or positive relationship between himself and the rest of the universe as it exists both externally and within the soul. Spiritual freedom is not apparent in this state because man as an isolated unit has no meaning, just as the finger is meaningless without the hand, and the hand without the whole body. A life without meaning is unhappiness, and we have this lack of meaning whenever man’s view of life is not whole, whenever man sees himself as a creature whose desires and whose very human nature have no positive relation to the universe.
In this view we are the merest whims of fate who can only find salvation in letting ourselves drift on the sea of chaos or in fighting for everything that we can hold. Man can never understand his freedom while he regards himself as the mere instrument of fate or while he limits his freedom to whatever his ego can do to snatch from life the prizes which it desires. To be free man must see himself and life as a whole, not as active power and passive instrument but as two aspects of a single activity. Between those two aspects there may be harmony or conflict, but conflict itself may also proceed from that single activity. Thus man’s experience becomes whole when he sees the activity of life as a whole in himself as he is now, when he realizes that there is no difference between his own thoughts and actions as they are at this moment and the nature of the universe. It is not that life is making him think and move as you pull the strings of a marionette; it is rather that man’s thoughts and deeds are at once his own creations and the creations of impersonal nature. Man’s volition and nature’s activity are two names for one and the same thing, for the doings of life are the doings of man, and the doings of man are the doings of life.
Two as One
Here there is no question of which is the mover and which the moved, for man lives his life by the same power with which life lives man. This is why total acceptance, which seems to be a response to bondage, is actually a key to freedom, for when you accept what you are now you become free to be what you are now, and this is why the fool becomes a sage when he lets himself be free to be a fool. Indeed, we are always free to be what we are now and only false pride keeps us from seeing it. Therefore acceptance is activity and passivity in one; as passivity it is accepting ourselves, our desires, and fears as movements of life, nature, and the unconscious; as activity it is letting ourselves be free to be ourselves and to have our desires and fears. Whereupon the ego and the unconscious, man and nature, oneself and life are seen as the two dancers who move in such close accord that it is impossible to say which moves and which responds, which is the active partner and which the passive. It is possible to have this feeling of wholeness not only in rare moments of insight but also in everyday living, and this comes just as soon as we realize that all our activities are just as much activities of nature and the universe as are the circling of planets, the running of water, the roaring of thunder, and the blowing of the wind.
In this understanding we shall move forward as freely and uninterruptedly as the wind. But our freedom will not inflate us if we see that we share it with all things under the sun; for if you think you can possess and acquire freedom it will inflate you to the point of bursting with spiritual pride. Therefore it is not a question of putting yourself artificially into a certain state of mind, for freedom is no different from the state of mind you have now, and whether you realize it or remain ignorant it makes no difference to your freedom. But we are always trying to interfere with our states of mind as they appear from moment to moment, imagining that some are nearer to freedom than others—singing “Nearer my God to Thee” instead of “Just as I am, Thou wilt receive.” This very interference drives out the sense of freedom, for spiritual pride is to imagine that some creatures and some states of mind are nearer to God than others. Now acceptance becomes love when it enables us to see that God does not depart from us even when we are sinful men.
But does man have freedom only through God? In other words, can he realize his freedom only in the moment when he is predestined to do so and not before? This question has been much of a puzzle to the theologians, the Calvinists having taken the view of predestination and the Catholics, generally speaking, the view that although man is not free to be good without the Grace of God, he is nevertheless free at all times to choose the acceptance of Grace. Thus Berdyaev writes in his Freedom and the Spirit:
If human nature was definitively perverted and the freedom of the spirit definitively impaired, there would be no faculty in man capable of receiving the truth of revelation and he would be insensible to the operations of grace. But man though wounded and broken remains a spiritual being and has preserved his religious consciousness, for the Word of God could not be addressed to a being who was deprived of it. Liberty in man precedes the action of revelation and grace. [pp. 130–31]
The answer seems confused because the question is wrongly stated. Both the Calvinist and the Catholic answer seem to fall short of the mark through not recognizing that man’s acceptance of Grace is one and the same act as God’s giving of it. Man’s free choice does not precede the action of Grace, nor does it follow it, and it cannot be said that the initiative comes from either side. The two acts occur simultaneously because they are two aspects of the same process; man’s ascent to God is God’s descent to man. The theologians are confused because they make too hard and fast a distinction between God and man—a distinction which, in view of the Christ symbol, the God-man, they should have avoided. As St. Athanasius said, “He became man that we might be made God.”1 Therefore, in Christian terms, the descent of God into man as Christ is a historical symbol of an eternal event—a union of God and man in which neither ceases to exist (for Christ was as much man as God) and a union which achieves realization from both sides at once. Eckhart puts it in this way: