This page lists some of the all-time best Swami Sarvapriyananda quotes. Enjoy!
Page Contents:
- Quotes on Religions & Advaita Vedanta
- Quotes on Appearances & Reality
- Quotes on Subject-Object & Witness
- Quotes on Self & Turiya
- Quotes on Freedom & Free Will
50+ Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Advaita Vedanta, Reality, Self, & More
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Religions & Advaita Vedanta
“All the other theistic schools in different religions of the world stop with three things, a triangle: God, individual, and the world. You are there, you experience a world with other people in it, and we have a faith/belief in God. You have a triangle set up, and theistic religions end with that. Advaita Vedanta goes beyond that and says that there is a deeper reality, a higher reality. Beyond the individual, beyond the world, and beyond God even. And that it calls the Absolute, Brahman, Sat Chit Ananda (existence, consciousness, bliss). It says your reality is that: Sat-Chit-Ananda. That alone is real.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Religions:
“This is the promise of all religion … that you go beyond suffering, you attain to a state beyond suffering of peace and bliss.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“There are two broad approaches to spiritual life: 1) One is a ‘that’-centered approach, God-centered, and 2) the other is a ‘thou’, inquiring to the self. 1) Search for God … and 2) what/who am I?” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“All the Abrahamic religions are God-centered, theistic religions. And, because this is the only kind of religion that the West has been used to, they find something like Buddhism very confusing. How can you have a religion without God? Whereas in India it’s no problem at all. Buddhism has been there for 2500 years, Jainism even before that … In Buddhism, there is no talk about God. It’s openly agnostic. In Jainism, there is no talk about God.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The God-centered religions/mentality is likely to be devotional: worship oriented, likely to be dualistic, likely to be temple/church/mosque oriented, likely to be ritualistic. In contrast, you will find the self-inquiry based religions tend to be: more monastic in nature, more of an inquiry, more intellectual, meditative rather than devotional, more meditation hall oriented rather than temple oriented.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The great disadvantage of a God-centered approach, especially in today’s world, is that the God-centered approach starts with—and proceeds with for a long time—faith. Belief. If you start with questioning and skepticism, it’s very difficult to follow the God-centered approach.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“There are religions which are self-inquiry based—based on self-inquiry into ‘What am I?’ … They are all based on inward inquiry.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Notice how much effort is put forth in trying to convince others and yourself God exists. In contrast, nowhere you will find any effort put forward to prove that I exist. Nobody really doubts his or her own existence. If you doubt, then who is the one doubting? That one exists … The advantage of the thou-centered approach is that there’s no doubt that I exist. But the problem is this: I exist, but my existence is a miserable existence.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Advaita Vedanta:
“Advaita Vedanta is one of the schools of Vedanta, but I would dare say it’s sort of preeminent because of certain reasons which make it peculiarly acceptable to the modern mind. There is little to no theology, and the emphasis is on experience and reason. Advaita Vedanta gives tremendous emphasis and importance to life as we experience it, and then uses reason to come to its conclusions … The conclusion of Advaita Vedanta was that we are, in a sense, profoundly mistaken about our own nature … Advaita’s purpose is to educate us, to shift our paradigm, so that we come to see the world and ourselves in that way.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“That is the purpose of spirituality: to realize yourself as that Brahman … Vedanta says you and the other are not separate. You and the other are one reality.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Advaita Vedanta’s stunning breakthrough was that this ultimate nature of things—sat chit ananda—is you … Our real nature is this sat chit ananda … Tat Tvam Asi (That Thou Art) … Once we realize this, once we come to know it and we see it as a living reality, at the deepest level all our problems are solved.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Vedanta is a vast, vast literature. It’s an ancient tradition, 5000 years back to the Upanishads. And, yet you can describe Advaita Vedanta in one sentence: Tat Tvam Asi (That Thou Art) … ‘That’ meaning that which is worshipped as God, the reality behind this universe. ‘Thou’ meaning you the individual. You and that are the same thing … We investigate these two polarities … The analysis into who am I or what am I, and an analysis into what is God. Then you come to a synthesis: seeing that what is the reality beyond God and beyond individual.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“What does Vedanta do? That thou art. It brings these two together. The great insight of Advaita Vedanta is: what you reach through the God-centered approach (that) and what you reach through the self-inquiry approach (thou) is the same reality. By bringing them together, Atman is Brahman. That thou art. The realization is: that indubitable, undoubtable, personal existence is also the infinitude of God. The unproblematic, infinite nature of God, and the undoubted, certain nature of yourselves are combined. So, you have a certain, undoubted, infinite existence. That is what you come upon in Advaitic realization.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“That thou art. We don’t realize how radical that statement is. It means you are nothing other than God—which means you are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not even this little person. Even more stunning, God is nothing other than you.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Vedanta is at the heart of Hinduism … Vedanta is the core philosophy of Hinduism in its various schools, flavors, if you will … The original meaning of philosophy was jnana yoga, a philosophical inquiry into reality … The fundamental texts of Hinduism are the Vedas. And, Anta literally means the end. So, the end of the Vedas—end in the sense, the last teachings of the Vedas, the final teachings of the Vedas, the highest teachings of the Vedas, (the final conclusions of the Vedas)—that is Vedanta.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“What is Vedanta? It is the source of spiritual knowledge called the Upanishads … In a secondary sense, the texts themselves are called Vedanta. In a primary sense, the spiritual knowledge that we get from the Upanishads is Vedanta … If there is one text that is associated with Hinduism, it is the Bhagavad Gita … The Bhagavad Gita is basically the essence of the teachings of the Upanishads … These three—the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Brahma Sutras—are together called the triple canon or the triple foundation of Vedanta.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The Upanishads contain perhaps the most ancient living teachings on spirituality. Spirituality at its most original and fresh … The basic teaching of the Upanishads is that there is an ultimate reality—this world that we experience, and how we experience ourselves, are all manifestations of that reality. We are that reality. If only we would know ourselves truly, we would realize ourselves to be that absolute reality. That absolute reality in the Upanishads is called ‘Brahman.’ Brahman literally means ‘the vast’. That is the closest word you’ve got in Vedanta to God.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“What is Vedanta? Swami Vivekananda would say two things: the divinity within us, and the oneness of existence … Vivekananda used Advaita Vedanta as a foundation for morality. What Swami Vivekananda said was, because it is one reality, if I hurt somebody else, if I cheat somebody else, if I lie to somebody else, I am hurting myself in the deepest sense … Swami Vivekananda has said that he who runs away from the world to meditate and die in a Himalayan cave searching for God has missed the way. He who plunges headlong into the vanities of the world—he too has missed the way. Then what is the way? The way is to spiritualize your everyday life … We should realize ourselves as pure consciousness—Turiya—and everyone and everything as none other than the same Turiya, and live life in peace and fullness and joy. Realize the divinity within yourself and the spiritual oneness of the whole universe. Manifest that divinity in daily life through peace, love, and service to all beings. That is the spiritualization of everyday life.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Shankara’s commentary on the Brahma Sutra is the foundation of Advaita Vedanta, nondual Vedanta … ‘Nondual’ means apart from you—that real Self—there is no other thing. You are the only reality that exists. Apart from you, there is no second thing. If there is not two, a very interesting consequence is then everything that we see around you must be, in some sense, you only—not not apart from you … Consciousness is nondual meaning there is no second thing apart from consciousness … In you the consciousness, the entire universe is an appearance—not a second thing apart from you, hence you are that nondual consciousness … Oneness at the core expressed as the many—then what we have to practice is the harmony of the many.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Vedanta shows you how you are not the body-mind-intellect. The moment you see that I am not any of them—the limitations imposed by body-mind-intellect—when they disappear you realize your infinite Self which is one with God. When you realize that, you see that not only is there no problem, there never has been. This whole conception of a problem and trying to get out of a problem is what is called ‘maya’ in Advaita Vedanta … When you inquire into the thou, into the individual, what do you come across? The divinity within us—not body, not mind—beyond body and mind … According to Advaita Vedanta, it’s one divinity … Vedanta says that which is beyond body and mind, right here, is one.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Consciousness alone is the reality and that which we take to be the non-conscious—matter, time, space, bodies, this world—these are appearances in consciousness, not apart from consciousness. Just like a dream when you go to sleep and dream—all the things that you see in the dream have no existence apart from your own mind. In the same way, this entire universe which we experience has no existence apart from consciousness … There is no reasonable, logical answer within the dream for a dream.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The spiritual journey of Vedanta is not a journey in space. It’s not a journey from one place to another … Vedanta is not a journey in time. You are not waiting for something to happen … Vedanta is not there. It’s not then. It’s here and now.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Vedanta understands the spiritual journey as a journey from ignorance to knowledge. From not knowing, not realizing, to knowing and realizing what I am, what this universe is, what is the point of all of this.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I exist.’ Vedanta would go one step further. Even when I don’t think, I’m still aware of not thinking … Instead of saying, ‘I think, therefore I exist’, it would say, ‘I exist, therefore I think.’” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Appearances & Reality
“The essence of the teaching is that you are the ultimate reality, and if you would know yourself as that, then all your problems would be solved. You’ll be able to overcome all the sufferings of life … There is no greater adventure in human life, no greater challenge in human life, no greater purpose or goal in human life, than to know this and to realize it in our life.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Appearances:
“The world is an appearance … You are real. But, you are real as the Absolute.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“There is an absolute reality, this world is an appearance of that reality, and you are that absolute reality.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“This universe which you experience, you are experiencing it in your consciousness. In your consciousness, no universe is born—it appears. No universe is produced. No universe actually evolves. It appears, it is experienced, it disappears.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“From this point of view, the universe is not produced, and it is not destroyed. It is nothing other than you. It appears in you, it shines in you, and it disappears within you.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Body-mind appearances appear in you, the consciousness, and they disappear within you. You, the consciousness, are the experiencer but ever unaffected.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“This entire world, body, mind, this person, and all other persons are all appearances in Me, the one consciousness.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“This entire universe is appearing in the locus of its own absence which is you, the consciousness.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Reality:
“When you know yourself truly as you are, you will know the reality … Our reality is the ultimate reality. God is our own reality. You are Brahman. This is the ultimate reality.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“This very consciousness that you have right now, this awareness itself, is the absolute reality … This very self, this Self itself, is the absolute reality.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Your real Self is the silence of the universe … That real Self is the ultimate reality. There is no such physical, subtle, or even causal universe apart from you.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“There is no origin of this universe—no cessation, no creation, nor destruction of this universe. There is nobody who is in bondage. There is nobody who is a spiritual seeker who is doing spiritual practices. There is nobody who is seeking liberation, and indeed nobody who is liberated. This is the ultimate truth.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Being itself, existence itself, isness itself manifests now as planets and stars, quarks and protons, whales and human beings—all of these are a network of names and forms drawn upon that primal isness, the being … Maya just draws a network of names and forms over you including this particular body and mind. We say, ‘I am this body and mind’ … But, as far as the substance, the reality, is concerned, it’s still that primal isness.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“I may act through the body and mind, but I am not under the error that I am the body and mind.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Once you walk through these doors, and you look back upon the world and see it as your Self shining forth, the work is done.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
”The ultimate reality which you want to realize is beyond causality. You cannot do something and get it.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“It’s not that you are peaceful; you are peace itself.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Subject-Object & Witness
“Advaita is entirely philosophically-based on reason and most importantly on our common shared experience. Advaita does not demand of you any kind of belief, it does not demand of you any kind of extraordinary mystical experience, it just demands of you that you are conscious and then look at the structure of our conscious experience—a subject and an object.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Subject & Object:
“Any experience any one of us ever has had is always subject and object. I am experiencing that. If you ask the question, ‘What is the reality about myself?’ That is the inquiry into ‘thou’, into the individual. If you ask the question, ‘What is the reality about this universe?’ That’s the inquiry into what religions call ‘God.’” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Advaita says take your experience seriously. In consciousness, everything is experienced … Whatever you experience is an object; that which experiences is a subject. In the beginning, we make a division between the subject and object. We take it seriously, and we investigate. The subject is seen to be consciousness. A negative definition of consciousness is ‘that to which objects appear’. An object is anything that is experienced … ‘anything that objects to my consciousness.'” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“When we make this division that whatever you experience is an object, very soon we begin to see that the things we experience in the world ‘out there’ are objects but then our body is an object too … And, even more stunning, mind is an object—thoughts, feelings, emotions. Clearly objects come in two varieties: one is a publicly shared (what you can see around you), and one is the first-person private set of objects (memories, thoughts, pleasure, pain, the very personality itself).” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Advaita Vedanta makes a clear distinction between mind and consciousness on the basis that mind is something that appears to consciousness. Therefore, consciousness is just that which illumines all objects … First-person experience is what consciousness does … From Advaita’s perspective, the definition of experience is ‘consciousness plus object.'” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“I am not a bundle of flesh and thought. I am consciousness to which appears this entire universe … Now, the subtle question is what are these objects which appear to us? Are they distinct, are they exterior to consciousness, or are they in some sense interior to consciousness? … Both the world and the body are experienced in thought, and thoughts are experienced in consciousness. When you pursue this line of thought, then the initial distinction which we made to appreciate ourselves as beings of pure consciousness, we begin to see not only consciousness but whatever consciousness is aware of—the entire external universe, the entire internal universe of thoughts and emotions—all of that is also not distinct from consciousness. It’s true that consciousness is distinct from everything it experiences and illumines, but that which it experiences and illumines is not actually distinct from consciousness because it’s just an abstraction to say that something exists outside consciousness.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Advaita says the entire universe is an object, known and unknown, appearing in consciousness—not distinct from consciousness, not constituting a countable second to consciousness. It’s not actually a second entity apart from consciousness, just as waves are not a countable second apart from water … All the universe, known and unknown, is nothing but consciousness appearing to itself as its own objects, and therefore not two, non-dual.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Subject and object are both in consciousness, so it’s not an individual subject which dreams up the entire objective universe.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Vedanta is talking about you. Your own reality. The Atman means the Self itself. Who am I? What am I? Right here, right now. Not a journey in space. Not a journey in time. Not a journey from one reality to another … Vedanta is not even a journey from one object to another.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The real Self is not an object of the senses: you can’t see it, you can’t hear it, you can’t smell it, you can’t touch it, you can’t taste it.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“You can’t walk to the real Self … You cannot catch hold of it. It’s not an object.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Your existence is not dependent on what you are attached to … You are unattached. You are the illuminer. You are real … That which illumines is not affected by which it illumines. The object illumined does not affect the light … The appearance cannot affect the reality … That which is an appearance cannot affect that which is real.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Witness:
“You are ever the witness, never the witnessed; ever the subject, never an object.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“You are the one which is free of happiness and sadness. You are the one which is the witness of happiness and sadness—witness of their arrival, witness of their stay, witness of their departure.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The good and the bad, the elevating and the demeaning, float past you in the stream of the mind. You are the consciousness sitting on the banks of the river of the mind watching.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Sorrow is at the level of body and mind, and I am the unaffected witness of it … When the mind shuts down, the sorrow which it bears also goes away with the mind.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“You are the witness of all your thoughts, and you are the witness of the absence of your thoughts too.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Consciousness is never bound. It seems to be bound only when it imagines an ‘other’ within itself and then establishes a relationship with that other … Are you bound by the body? Are you not the consciousness which witnessed the little baby’s body, the child’s body, the teenager’s body, the young person’s body, the middle-aged person’s body, the old person’s body? The body keeps on changing.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“I am the mind, right? No, not really. How many times the mind has woken up in the morning, how many times the mind dreamt, how many times the mind slept—and you are the witness of all of them.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“‘I feel that I am trapped in the mind.’ What notices this feeling of being trapped in the mind? Is that one trapped in the mind? … That one is not trapped in the mind. Never was.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Self & Turiya
“You the Self are the witness of the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep … All of the three states (waking, dreaming, deep sleep) are appearances—they appear and disappear in one consciousness which is the Turiya, your real nature.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
1. Waking (Gross/Physical Aspect):
The waker, and the waking world. Through the physical body, we interact with the physical world. Basically, what we call ‘my life’.
2. Dreaming (Subtle Aspect):
The dreamer, and the dreamed world. The dream takes place entirely in our minds. When you fall asleep, and you forget the waking world. You even forget that you are lying on the bed and sleeping, and you generate a dream. It does not feel like a dream at that time; it feels like another waking experience. You only call it a dream after waking up. In the dream, you exist. You have a body in a dream, you meet people in a dream.
3. Deep Sleep (Causal Aspect):
Dreamless. Everything disappears. Blank. Darkness. Consciousness continues, it’s just there is nothing to be conscious of—instead of calling it an absence of consciousness, we call it a consciousness of absence; instead of no experience, an experience of nothing. Where everything else emerges from. I fall into a blankness and from there emerges dreams, from there emerges waking. Deep sleep is a seed which sprouts our waking experience and our dream experience. Deep sleep is considered a “cause” of the other two.
4. Turiya (Real Self, Real Nature, The Absolute):
As distinguished from the other three aspects.
“What is the real Self? The waking self was not there in the dream. The self in the dream which experienced so many things is not there in the waking … Yet there is something common: you cannot deny that you experience the waking world, you cannot deny that you experience the dream world.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“You are not really the waker. You are not really the dreamer. You are not the deep sleeper … Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep keep coming and going throughout our days, but behind it is one common consciousness, one common awareness.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“It’s the real Self in which the three apparent selves—the waking self (gross aspect), the dream self (subtle aspect), and the deep sleep self (causal aspect)—appear, they dance their dances, they live their lives, and they disappear. They come and go. The unattached witness, that which shines in and through all of them, that is the so-called ‘fourth’. It is not really the fourth—it is the one. It is the one which is appearing as these three … If you realize yourself as this fourth aspect—in which the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep universes arise and fall like waves in an ocean—that reality is forever beyond suffering. It is bliss itself.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“To think that I am this waking body and mind, this person, is an error based on ignorance of Turiya, my real Self … You think of yourself as this person—this seems to be the indubitable truth for us. What Vedanta claims is if you investigate in this method of the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, you will come across the real you—not this person but the witness of this person, the Turiya in which this person is arising, shining, and falling again.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“If you are Turiya, pure consciousness, you don’t have problems. If you have problems, then in some sense you’re still identified with the body and mind … Problems are always there in the three states, but in the one reality beyond the three states there is no problem … Realizing yourself as that, then live your life in the waking state, in the dream state, and in the deep sleep state—you are not affected by any of it.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“What is that common ‘I’ which survives the coming and going of the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep experiences? … The whole point is to shift the reference of the ‘I’. When you say, ‘I’, right now it means the waker. The Upanishad wants you to shift the reference of the ‘I’ to the Turiya—the one consciousness beyond the waker, dreamer, and deep sleeper. That ‘I’ has to be realized.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Freedom & Free Will
“There is freedom, but nobody who is free.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Freedom:
“Why would absolute reality want freedom? Freedom from what? There is only one reality. You are that one reality right now. What freedom are you seeking and from what?” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“We do not know ourselves as the immortal existence. We have a desire to live—I must continue living in this body. Why? Because I do not know that I am the immortal … The experiencing Self which we are is immortal. It is not touched by the experience of the world.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The person is never free. You become free of the person, the person does not become free.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“There is nobody who is an enlightened person or free.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“When you are enlightened, you realize everything is that one consciousness.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“When I say that I am God, I mean all of us. When an enlightened person realizes that he or she is one with God, they realize that everybody is one with God.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“To get stuck in a particular body, mind, and personality is ignorance. To step back from a particular body, mind, and personality into the background consciousness is enlightenment.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The secret of enlightenment: When you are enlightened—when you know the absolute, Turiya—it’s not as an object. No, no. You are that. That’s what you realize. You are not a person who realizes the absolute. If you’re a person who says, ‘I know the absolute’ then you do not know. One who knows that it cannot be known as an object, truly knows. You are not a person who lives eternally; you are that eternal existence itself. You are not a person who knows that ultimate reality; you are that knowledge itself. You are not a person who enjoys various kinds of blissful experiences; you are that bliss itself … You are not somebody who has become free; you are freedom itself.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The ultimate reality is free. Our real nature is freedom … The director of the movie is free. In the movie, no character has freedom, but you are the director luckily. You are free, and this whole thing is your expression.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“It’s more like a show to which we are a witness … Nature is putting up a show for your benefit. This universe, this body, this mind, this life, the entirety is a show put up by nature for your benefit.”
Free Will:
“From an Advaitic point of view, there is freedom, not free will … Advaita says there is freedom—you as Atman are free, but as a limited, individual being you do not have free will.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Free will is assumed in religion, in politics, in economics, in our society, and in common sense. Is it really there? No. That’s the amazing thing when we investigate. What do I mean investigate? Investigate scientifically, investigate philosophically, investigate in religion and theology. Everywhere the answer seems to come up that in a deep sense, no, free will is not as we understood it.”
“‘Free will’ is a contradiction in terms the moment you speak about ‘will’—will is always caused, and anything that is caused is determined.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Beyond the mind, is no question of will. Will is within the mind, and being within the mind, it is a chain of cause and effect.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“In the ultimate reality, there is no question of will. What would the absolute will about? How would the absolute will anything? Willing is in the mind.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The great spiritual masters all seem to say that it’s God’s will alone—Thy will be done. It is God’s will which is working through everything, not ours.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Everything that happens to you is a manifestation of the light of the divine—your own light, you yourself appear. Whom to blame? Whom to praise? Praiser praised, blamer blamed are but one—and that one is you. This is the ultimate truth … You are the truth.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Vivekananda said ‘free will’ is a misnomer in terms. There is only freedom. Atman is free. Brahman is free. Pure consciousness is free in itself. But, when it becomes ‘will’—I will do this, I will think this, I will say this—it’s already determined. It’s far down the chain of cause of causality when it becomes expressed as will.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Stages of Free Will (also referencing Arindam Chakrabarti):
- Stage 1 (appearance of free will): “We seem to have free will. We feel that we have free will … The first answer is when we look at our lives, yes … Straightaway what it looks like on prima facie, there is free will.”
- Stage 2 (understanding there is no free will): “When we look through philosophy, religion, science, neuroscience, the answer is no … Upon examination, it seems that we have no free will … Upon investigation, scientific investigation, philosophical investigation, neuroscientific, religious teachings, no free will … They all seem to be saying that your feeling of free will is an illusion.”
- Stage 3 (freedom beyond will): “Finally, the truth is that ultimately we are free, though not free will … When we look beyond to the enlightened person, the jīvanmukta (liberating while living), yes, freedom—no free will, but freedom … When we come to freedom itself, enlightenment, we have freedom.”
- Wisest Way of Living: “If you put these three together, what you get is the wisest way of living. The wisest way of using this appearance of free will is to surrender to the Lord—that I freely choose to surrender to the Lord. Both things are there: I’m using my appearance of free will, and at the same time acknowledging that it is God’s will. That is called ‘surrender’. It’s a very beautiful resolution of this paradox … This acknowledgement that it is God’s will which is operating through everything—even appearing as my so-called ‘free will’—is the wisest way of living.”
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