INVALIDATION OF DESTINY

Every being in the phenomenal world cannot remain idle even for a moment without doing some activity, whether physical or mental, manifest or unmanifest. Self-action, or self-effort, is basic to a being's trajectory of existence momentum. Is there any destiny in the trajectory of existence? The Yoga-Vasistha categorically invalidates the concept and belief in destiny. It claims that destiny has no form, act, motion, or might, but is merely a myth perpetuated by stupid people. It is a word that has gained popularity from the concept of future retribution for one's previous actions, or retributive justice, and the like, which is known as "destiny." If the idea of destiny differs from that of an agent, it must signify something else; if it is the same as the agent, why give it a new name like destiny? If it is proven to be an imagined phrase, it is preferable to consider one's exertion as the agent of one's actions. As a past misdeed is remedied by a good action the next day, let the current day supersede the past and devote yourself to activity today. If destiny is the single cause of everything, why should a man devote himself to his daily routines (bathing, walking, sitting, eating, and other rituals), all of which may be performed by his destiny? What is the point of urging another person to accomplish anything if destiny is in charge of everything? Let us all remain silent and say nothing to anybody. Immaterial destiny, such as vacuity, has no link to the material body. If it had a form or figure, it would be visible to someone; so, destiny is a non-existent entity. (Yoga Vasistha 2.8.1-2.8.13).

1. Outline

A human being is a strange complex mixture of volition, feeling, and logical thought, says Swami Sivananda. He wishes to own the objects of his desires. He has emotion, and so he feels. He has reason; therefore, he thinks and rationalises. In some cases, the emotional aspect may predominate, but in others, the intellectual element may dominate. Work, devotion, and knowledge, like will, feeling, and cognition, are not distinct and separate entities.

Sage Vasistha, through his discourses with Sri Rama in Yoga-Vasistha (2.8.1-2.8.26), establishes varied examples to assert for self-effort. Sage Vasistha says, Should one who is foretold by his fortune-teller to become a learnt man attain his learning without being taught in it, then may we believe fortune to be true. That way he elaborates his point by advancing various examples from our scriptures. Sage Vasistha elaborates how the sage Viswamitra has cast away his destiny at a distance and attained to Brahmahood (attainment of a changeless eternal state) by his own exertions.  He also gives his own example, as well as that of other sages who have become sages, that it was by their industry they became aeronauts or wanderers in the etherial regions. Other notable instances are chiefs of the Danava race (the sons born to Kasyapa Prajapati by his wife Danu, a race of demons), who have established their empires on earth by their prowess and by discarding their destinies altogether. There are similar other cases of chiefs of gods who have wrested the extensive earth from those demons by their valourous deeds of slaying and harassing them in battle. Sage Vasistha highlights that in all our works of giving and receiving, walking, resting, and the like, we see no causality of destiny in their completion, as we see of medicines in healing diseases. Vasistha Rishi emphasises that this concept of destiny is a mistaken fancy, which is in reality devoid of its cause or effect and is a false and ideal nullity; and commit yourself to your best exertions.

 2. Scriptures

The clarion calls of vedantic scriptures put firm emphases on self-effort to become conscious of the Self. It is yoga, or meditative union, to realise the Self by way of application of yoga into Karma (action based on selfless service), Jnana (union with Self through knowledge, or philosophy of self-enquiry), Bhakti (devotional union to realise Self), and Raja (union with Self through self-restraint). Yoga is based on meditatively controlled synchronisation of body, senses, mind, and intellect to realise the Self.

All the embodied beings are in a material world of transience, having birth, growth, decay, and dissolution. Just as the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from childhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The wise are not bewildered by this change, proclaims the Srimad Bhagavad Gita (2.13). The Bhagavad Gita (14.20) adds that by transcending the three modes (Sattva-harmony, or wisdom, or goodness; Rajas-passion, or motion, or activity; Tamas-inertia, or inaction, or darkness) of material nature associated with the body, one becomes free from birth, death, old age, and misery, and attains the nectar of immortality. Every moment of life processes is intertwined with a certain degree of activities, and no body can remain without action for a moment. Indeed, all beings are compelled to act by their qualities born of material nature (Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas). This has been clearly enunciated in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita (3.5).

The Srimad Bhagavatam (6.1.53) also tersely says so that not a single living entity can remain unengaged even for a moment. One must act by his natural tendency according to the three modes of material nature because this natural tendency forcibly makes him work in a particular way. The Srimad Bhagavad Gita states unequivocally that self-effort is the key to progress in life. The colophon refers to it as Brahmavidyā (knowledge of Brahmān) and Yogaśāstra (the text of Yoga). The former refers to the Gita's aim, which is the realisation of Ātman or Brahmān, whereas Yoga in general refers to the means to be used to achieve the goal as described in the Gita, which is yoga. However, in the Gita, the word Yoga refers to meditative activities that serve as both the means and end of a spiritual quest. Every chapter contains at least one of these ideas. As a result, each chapter of the Gita functions as its own yoga. According to Swami Sivananda, to behold the One Self in all beings is Jnana, wisdom; to love the Self is Bhakti, or devotion; to serve the Self in all is Karma, or action.

Charaka Samhita (Vimana verse 3.29-38) “Is life span predetermined?” Charaka deals with this question in his own way by treading the middle ground. He disagreed with the view that life span was predetermined and nobody could do anything to alter the predetermined span of life. He points out that this view would make human effort, including Ayurveda, meaningless and futile. While errors—small and large—committed in the past would have generated negative forces of karma, subsequent actions undertaken in accordance with a virtuous code of life would generate positive forces that could neutralise or even overcome the burden of the negative forces from the past.

Although present along with the struggling mind within the material body, the Cosmic Self is not endeavouring because He is already endowed with transcendental enlightenment, emphasises the Srimad Bhagavatam (11.23.44). Acting as my friend, He simply witnesses from His transcendental position. I, the infinitesimal spirit soul, on the other hand, have embraced this mind, which is the mirror reflecting the image of the material world. Thus I have become engaged in enjoying objects of desire and am entangled due to contact with the modes of nature. 

Simillarly, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (4.4.6) asserts that desires emanating from the manufacturing machine mind drive a man to a perpetual state of Samsāra through birth, death, and reincarnation. It says, being attached, he, together with the work, attains that result to which his subtle body or mind is attached. Exhausting the results of whatever work he did in this life, he returns from that world to this for fresh work.’ Thus does the man who desires transmigrate. But the man who does not desire never transmigrates. Of him who is without desires, who is free from desires, the objects of whose desire have been attained, and to whom all objects of desire are but the Self—the organs do not depart. Being but Brahmān, he is merged in Brahmān.

The Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad (3.2.2), in a similar vein, says, he, who broods on and longs for objects of desire, is born there and there with such desires; but of him whose desires have been fulfilled and who has realised, the Atman (Self), the desires end even here in this world. Shankaracharya, in his commentary on the Upanishad, stresses that he who covets visible or invisible objects of desire, brooding on their virtues, is born again and again with those desires of external objects, which are incentives to the performance of good and bad deeds. Wherever his desires lead him to do karma for the realisation of their objects, he is born with the same desires in those products. But for him who has all his desires fulfilled because the Ātman is the object of his desire and has been made to assume its highest, i.e., true form, by the removal of the lower form imposed on it by ignorance, all desires impelling him to do meritorious and sinful deeds are destroyed even while his body is still alive. The implication is that wants do not arise since the causes of their emergence have been removed.

3. Remarks

The mind alone causes the soul to wander in the cycle of worldly life. Mortals, gods, souls, planets, reactions of work, and time are not the causes of one's happiness or unhappiness. The true goal of all generosity, religiosity, and so on is to keep the mind under control. The false ego connects the transcendental soul with material sense things. I will overcome the insurmountable ocean of material existence by serving Sri Krishna's lotus feet with complete trust, just as the great devotees of the past have done.

dvija uvāca

nāyaṁ jano me sukha-duḥkha-hetur

na devatātmā graha-karma-kālāḥ

manaḥ paraṁ kāraṇam āmananti

saṁsāra-cakraṁ parivartayed yat

The brāhmaṇa in the Srimad Bhagavatam (11.23.42-57) says: These people are not the source of my joy and pain. Neither are the gods, my own body, the planets, my previous labour, nor time. Rather, it is the mind alone that creates happiness and pain and sustains the cycle of material life. The powerful mind activates the operations of the material modes, resulting in the many types of material activities in the modes of kindness, ignorance, and passion. The activities in each of these modes result in the development of the associated life status.

 The Yoga-Vasistha (3.62.1-3.62.4) underlines that the inert destiny, although it exists everywhere in the myriads of worlds and millenniums of Kalpa (a unit of time in Sanatana Dharma) eras, is no more real than our incorrect estimation of the millionth part of an atom or the twinkling of an eye. It is our inaccuracy that makes them appear true to us, even though they are as incorrect as our calculations of the infinitesimals. These creations, whether past or future, follow one another in an endless succession, much like overflowing currents of water, complete with waves, eddies, and whirlpools. The possibility of these manufactured worlds is as illusory as the enigmatic mirage of a stream of water flowing with strings of flowers fallen from the plants on the coast.

 -Asutosh Satpathy