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What is destiny?
Is there some thing
called free will?
One of
the greatest and everlasting debates of humanity has
been about the role of destiny in the lives of human
beings. There was a time when it was almost an
accepted fact of life that each and every event was
governed by destiny of human beings. Astrology was
considered a science. Then with the advent of modern
times the importance of role of destiny as a concept
started losing weight. Today, belief in destiny is
considered a superstition by majority of people. And
rightly so, since there seems to be no evidence for
the irrevocability of destiny.
There are three schools of thoughts about fate. The
most prevalent these days seems to be the one which
says that there is nothing called destiny or fate.
This line of thinking says that human beings do
possess free will. All our successes, failures and
actions are governed by the decisions we take. If we
take correct decisions and act accordingly, no one can
prevent us from achieving what we want to. If we fail,
it must be due to something wrong on our part. We have
the option to take decisions using our free will. In
this line of thinking, fate is considered a
superstition at worst and at best one can regard it as
a psychological defense system to cope with the
failures in life. Whenever you fail in some endeavor
or whenever something happens which is not in
accordance of your wish, you use it as a convenient
scapegoat. You say, it was your bad luck which caused
you to fail. Otherwise, how could you fail? You are
never ready to accept that it was you who was
responsible for the failure. It may have been due to
some bad planning, lack of efforts in the right
direction or outright failure to correctly judge the
realities of your goal. But since it hurts to accept
that you were the one who committed the mistake, you
take shelter behind the concept of fate and blame it
on your karma. This relieves you of the terrible pain
of knowing and accepting the defeat.
This line of thinking has gained currency mainly
because of the persons who subscribe to this theory.
Among the votaries of this theory, one will hardly
ever find people who can be called a failure in their
lives. Almost all of the people who are considered as
successful in their lives agree with this line of
thinking. They say there is nothing called fate, they
believe in themselves and in the existence of free
will. Other people, looking at the supporters of this
theory, grudgingly start accepting it since the logic,
that one must be right if he is successful, comes into
play.
This theory leaves many a questions of life
unanswered. For example, this theory does not even
begin to answer the question of differences between
different people at the point of their birth. Why one
is born to rich parents and another to poor ones? Why
are some children born healthy and some sick or
crippled in some way? There are many such questions,
but for starters such questions suffice. Apart from
offering the word "Coincidence", it has no credible
sounding answers. There can be many arguments for and
against this theory, but the debate is bound to remain
inconclusive.
It must be said at this point that once a successful
person, who does not believe in destiny, starts
experiencing failures, he slowly begins to accept the
existence of fate. Perhaps, the experiences of people
are the strongest arguments in favor of destiny.
There is another school of thought which seems to be
the most logical line of thinking. It says you are
free to take the first step, but as soon as you take
it, your second step becomes inevitable and
predictable. You become bound by the different laws of
life which govern the outcome of an act. Let us take
an example. Say, you are going to plant a tree. As
long as you have not done it, you have plenty of
options. You may choose not to plant the seed at all.
You may choose the type of tree you wish to grow. But
once you have taken that decision and acted upon it,
your freedom is curtailed by many degrees. If you
plant a mango tree, then no matter what you do you
cannot get any other fruit from that tree. Of course,
even for reaping the harvest of mangoes you have to
keep you fingers crossed. You cannot guarantee that
the seed you just planted will grow to a big tree at
all. It may also happen that the tree grows, bears
fruit, but you cannot taste even a single fruit. There
might be plenty of reasons for this. In other words,
your freedom is limited to the actions you take but
not to the outcome of that act. This sounds logical
because the outcome of any act depends on so many
factors that one cannot realistically hope to have
control over all those factors. That is why even the
best laid plans of the mightiest and most intelligent
people turn to dust. This concept is called "Law of
Karma".
In the eastern philosophies, like Hindu or Buddhist
philosophy, there is the concept of reincarnation. It
says, we all keep taking birth after birth. This cycle
of birth and death has been continuing since eternity,
and will keep on repeating itself till a human being
attains "Enlightenment". This state of enlightenment
has been described differently by different sages.
Some have called it Self-Realization, some have called
it Self-Actualization. It is also known as attaining
Moksha, Nirvana or Kaivalya. Only after one achieves
it, one can break out of this relentless cycle of
birth and death.
The law of Karma says that all that happens in one's
life is result of his own deeds. One can never escape
the fruits of whatever he has done. Just like
different plants take different time spans to grow up,
different actions also take different time spans to
bear fruit. It may be that the result of some act may
take more time to fructify than the remaining life
span of the person who committed that act. In such
cases, the person has to bear the results of such
actions in his next life.
Now we come to the theory which says that all events
are predestined. There is nothing called free will. We
are all like instruments in some grand design and
nothing else. All our thoughts and actions are
predestined. I would give two arguments in favor of
this theory.
Let us
first examine the subject of Astrology. It has also
been a subject of a great and inconclusive debate. Is
there some truth in the astrological sciences( see
Astrology: A Science or
Superstition)? I think that while it is not
possible to establish the efficacy of Astrology beyond
any doubt, it is perhaps more difficult to deny it
altogether. Most of us have had some experience with
astrologers where some of their predictions came out
to be astonishingly accurate. It can be argued that a
majority of astrological predictions fail. But I am
not talking of failed predictions. There can be many
reasons for that. I am focusing on the predictions
which turn out to be true. How can it be possible for
someone to predict some event of future?
Let us
consider for a moment a journey from one place to
another. Someone who knows the route can tell us that
city A will come after city B. Now it is only possible
if the landscape remains
unchangeable. If someone can change the location of
cities then it would be impossible to predict this
order. Similarly, the very fact that it is at all
possible to predict future events, proves that future
is unchangeable. And if it is so, then where is the
place for free will?
The
second argument derives itself from the knowledge of
modern science. It says that the whole universe is a
continuum. What this means is that there is no part of
the universe which is isolated from other parts.
Whatever happens in one part of the universe
influences the whole of it. This effect might not be
detectable, but that it occurs cannot be denied. For
example, if I throw a pebble in the Pacific Ocean then
the disturbance it will create is bound to travel
to the other end of the ocean and affect the water
molecules there. It is entirely another matter whether
we are capable of measuring that effect or not.
Similarly, take the case of stars billions of light
years away from us. Since the light from those stars
eventually reaches us, it must be influencing us in
some way or the other. We also understand that for any
event to take place there must be numerous events in
the past which make this event possible. Each event is
a culmination of innumerable events in the past as
well as forerunner of some other event in the future.
For example, for me to have taken birth the births of
my parents was a necessary precondition and so on. If
we start tracing back the turn of events which made my
birth possible, we will have to go back to the very
beginning of the universe. Now let us consider the
insignificance of a human being in the scheme of the
universe. Even a drop of water in the largest ocean
has more significant presence in the backdrop of that
ocean than a human being has in the universe. What
this signifies is that it is impossible for a man to
change the course of events, since the causes of those
events lie not in his domain but in the whole of the
past of the universe.
Can one
realistically hope to negate the whole tide of the
past considering the limits of his much less than
insignificant strength, thought or will?
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