Two Sages and a Taoist
Excerpts from a couple of What Is Enlightenment magazine interviews*, one with sage Ramesh Balsekar, the other with sage Swami Dayananda.
Ramesh Balsekar interview:
Q: [To Balsekar regarding his assertion that he and all of us are fated, not determined, and have no choices in what we do.**] On the other hand, though, if one believed that one does have control over [his action] as opposed to believing that one doesn't, one might not have done it in the first place!
RB: [He responds with various explanations of fatalism, but comes eventually to this clear statement:] It is not God's will that human beings think in those terms. It is not God's will that the human being be perfect. The difference between the sage and the ordinary person is that the sage accepts what is as God's will, but—and this is important—that does not prevent him from doing what he thinks should be done. And, what he thinks he should do is based on the programming. [Emphasis mine]
Q: But why would the sage "do whatever he thinks he should do" if, as you've already explained, he knows that it is not he who is thinking in the first place?
RB: You mean, how does the action happen? The answer is that the energy inside this body/mind organism produces the action according to the programming.
Swami Dayananda interview:
Q: One of the subjects I'm very interested in is the relationship between the nondual realization that you've been describing and action in the world of time and space. For example, in the empirical world, in empirical reality, even the realized soul who has no doubt about his true nature finds that he still must take a stand against, in opposition to the forces of delusion and negativity operating there.
SD: We need not impose a rule like should and must--he may take a stand.
Q: May take a stand?
SD: Yes. Because once he's free, who is to set rules for him? You see, if he is free enough to do, then he is just as free not to do--that is what I say. [End of interview excerpt]
Lao Tzu:
He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.***
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*2003 issue. Web site no longer extant.
**See Daniel Dennett and Choice Machines on the difference between fatalism and determinism.
*** 1) Invoked only for the determinism/fatalism issue. 2) Because he said, "The world is everything that is the case," this by Ludwig Wittgenstein, would not fit: "Of that which we cannot speak, we must be silent."