It is said that if you knew the sum total of all your life experiences, you would realize you are exactly where you are supposed to be. Bruce Lee said, “To me, ultimately martial art means honestly expressing yourself. Now it is very difficult to do.” If you take what he said and extrapolate it out to infinity, that is really what the whole process of human evolution is about. It is about expressing yourself honestly, from the depth of your being. But see, it throws another component in when you realize that your divinity will emerge out through your environment. It is an interface. If you are from Ireland, you speak with that accent; if you are from the United States, you speak with this accent. That accent, the sum total of our life experiences, and we are exactly where we are supposed to be. It is all very interesting.
Particularly Westerners like to think they are masters of their own fate. In the East, it is a little different. People see themselves as more subject to karma. In the West, we are pretty independently minded. It’s a very beautiful thing to really take a look at the laws of cause and effect.
Predetermination vs. Free Will
There are two components to life. From one perspective, we can call it predetermination and free will. This world of relativity, existence, creation, functions in the realm of cause and effect – Newton’s Law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, angle of momentum, conservation of mass, etc., and it is all just physics. If you take a billiard ball and you roll it on a pool table, and if you knew the coefficient of friction of the felt, the elasticity of the cushion, spin on the ball, velocity, etc., you could calculate and predict exactly where that ball would stop. So, this world is one big pool table. Cause and effect.
But that is just one component. The other component is the unified field… that level of existence that transcends (which is Transcendental) the world of cause and effect. And, it is infinitely free. There are some interesting quotes from modern physicists about this. From the perspective of relativity, from the perspective of creation, cause and effect, from that perspective, when they looked at electrons and subatomic particles, they realized it is uncertain, they couldn’t predict through cause and effect if that electron were to emerge here or over here. This is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Einstein made a very interesting comment. He said, “I don’t believe that God played dice with the universe.” That is as far as he took it, to my knowledge. But how does that all precipitate out? What’s the story on that? Free will.
The depth of your being is infinitely free. It transcends the world of cause and effect. In the course of human evolution, you start to come from that level of your being more and more. You become free. You are still in the world of cause and effect, but you are less and less of it, less enslaved by it. It’s a beautiful thing.
What is God’s Will?
Now, we’ll take the next step. It’s more confusing, even. Because, you’ve got free will and you’ve got predetermination. So, then we can talk about will. We can talk about: you are the unified field. I agree with the atheists. There is no guy sitting on a cloud up there. It’s ridiculous and I agree with them. That’s not what I mean when I say “God.” When I say “God,” I mean the unified field. It’s physics. But, everything has a personified correlate. They asked Einstein if you can describe a sunset in terms of pure physics, and he said yes you can, but if you do, it loses its meaning. Can you describe another human being in terms of pure physics? Yes, you can, but it loses its meaning. When I think of you, I don’t think of electrons, protons, and a math equation. I think of the being, the meaning.
Why is it so hard to believe? If a chunk of flesh can have a personified correlate, why can’t the thing that birthed all the chunks of flesh and all things in creation have a personified correlate? It almost seems like it necessarily has to. So, when I talk about God, that’s what I’m talking about. So, are you still with me? God’s will. God’s will comes in two forms. You are one with the unified field, so you are one with God.
Everything was born out of pure Consciousness, out of that one thing, that source of all things that we have now explained as God. So, the whole field of cause and effect, Newton’s laws, and like that, was willed into being, you could say. It’s God’s will. Karma, the laws of karma, the laws of action; action means relativity, the laws of cause and effect. So, cause and effect are God’s will. That’s one type of God’s will. There are two types. The other type is functioning from that place of infinite freedom where it is no longer uncertain where the electron manifests, to speak to Heisenberg directly. But, it is willed by your own infinite freedom, by your own divine self. So, it is the interplay between God’s will of infinite freedom and it is God’s will that willed the world of karma into being. It is that interplay that determines what happens. Which is it, cause and effect or infinite freedom? Am I free to lift this cup or was it all predetermined by cause and effect, the electrons and protons bouncing around in my brain that told me to lift the cup? In the final analysis, they are really the same thing… two facets of the same one coin. The two sides of God’s will.
However, moment to moment, in your experience, what you want to aspire to is living a life that is free from cause and effect… in the world of cause and effect, functioning in the field of cause and effect, but not lost to it. Infinitely free to determine where those electrons emerge. As Ramana Maharshi said, you want the boat in the water, but you don’t want the water in the boat. You want to function in the field of cause and effect, but not be lost to it.
What is Karma?
When people think of karma and cause and effect, they oftentimes think of it as the boogie man out there. Watch out, because when you cross that street, if it’s your karma, a lightning bolt is going to hurt you. You are going to get struck by lightning if that is your karma. Well, that’s true, there is that kind of karma. But, most of your karma isn’t what happens outside of you. Most of your karma is what is going on inside of you: inside your head, inside your mind, inside your heart… your thoughts and your feelings. They are largely predetermined by your karma, your conditioning, we call it. Maharshi Patanjali called it your samskaras… your programming.
Just because you feel like you are free doesn’t mean you are free. People get together and say, “Oh, I’m going to be a man who hears a different drum a-drummin’.” So, I’m going to make this decision and now I’m free. No, no, no. You think you are free. But, most of that type of thinking is also a result of cause and effect.
Evolve Through It
The other day, I picked my younger daughter up from school and we were waiting for my older daughter. I don’t know where she heard this, but she said, “This is all a dream. This is all imagination. Have you heard that?” I said, “Yeah, I have.” So, I told her about Vedanta, the highest Knowledge, and I told her because she wanted to get it. I told her these things are called the highest Knowledge in the Vedic tradition. Sometimes they even call it secret knowledge. Secret, not because someone’s not going to tell you, but secret, because even after you have been told, it still remains a secret to you. It’s that elusive, secret Knowledge. I told her that it takes a long time to really understand this stuff. And, I told her that is what I teach: Vedanta, the highest form of Knowledge. This is all maya, it’s illusion, born out of Consciousness. Because she asked if it was like a dream and I said, “Yeah, it’s a dream born out of Consciousness, like a dream is born out of your consciousness.” And I told her that you can’t get out of it by going around it. You have to go through it. What’s the gospel song? So high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t go around it… you’ve got to go through that door. It’s a dream you can’t wake up from. You have to evolve through it.
© Michael Mamas, 2/16
