A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.s1.7

c9.s1.7

20. We next come to the treatment of the problem of the Freedom of the Will. It may be easily admitted that a proper discussion of this problem requires a very high stage in the development of moral philosophy; hence there is not much wonder if the treatment of the problem of the Freedom of the Will in the Upanishads is but scanty. There are, however, a few remarks showing a rather acute insight in regard to the problem, and we must not fail to give the credit for them to the Upanishadic philosophers. The Bṛihadāraṇyakopanishad tells us that man is merely a conglomeration of desire, will, and action: "as his desire is, so is his will; as is his will, so is the action that he performs; as his action is, so is the fruit that he procures for himself"(S. 23). There is here a very clever discussion of the relation between desire, will, action, and the effect of action—a contribution indeed of the Upanishadic sages to the Psychology of the Moral Self. In the Kaushītaki Upanishad, again, we have the enunciation of a theological determinism, inasmuch as we are told there that man is but a puppet in the hands of God, who makes him do good actions if he wishes him to rise, and bad actions if he wishes him to fall (S. 24. a). This is a regular denial of the freedom of man, and we are told that man does not possess true freedom at all as moral philosophy understands that expression. On the other hand, in the Chhāndogya Upanishad, we are told that even though true freedom cannot be said to belong to man before the realisation of Ātman, still we can say that it does belong to him after that realisation. Man in the foolishness of the contemplation of his small success regards himself to be the lord of all he surveys; he believes that he may be the master of any situation in which he may be placed, and that he may compel nature any time to bend to his sovereign will; but events in life prove that these are after all false expectations, and that even though a little freedom may be granted to man in small matters, he is yet not free in the highest sense of the term. Pent up within the gaol, he thinks like a prisoner that he is free; but he is free only to drink and eat and not to move about. Like a falcon to whose foot a string is tied, he can only fly in the limited sphere described by the length of the tether, but he is bound beyond that region. Similarly, man may vainly imagine that he is free to do any actions he pleases, but his freedom is the freedom of the tethered falcon. The Chhāndogya Upanishad tells us that it is only when we have known the Ātman that there is freedom for us in all the worlds; but if we have not known the Ātman, there is no freedom for us at all (S. 24. b). The same Upanishad tells us again a little later, that when we have known the Ātman we can obtain any object we please, thus testifying to the sovereignty of man’s will over nature, which proceeds from the realisation of the Ātman (S. 24. c). Finally, even though there is no discussion in the early Upanishads of the conflict of motives which leads to the moral choice, still in the Muktikopanishad we have a passage where we are told that the river of desire runs between the banks of good and bad, but that, by the effort of our will, we should compel it to move in the direction of the good (S. 25)—a contribution, though a belated one, to the psychological aspect of the problem of freedom.