Destiny-Are we destined(5)

Prof. Mohanan Nair: The concept of destiny controlling man’s life was there from time immemorial. Whenever some unfortunate thing, beyond man’s capacity to explain, happened unexpectedly he attributed it to destiny. That was the easiest and most convenient way to explain the inexplicable.
Greek mythology tells us of the three Goddesses who determined human destiny, known as Fates. They were depicted as three old women, Clotho, the spinner, Lachesis, the allotter and Atropos, the inflexible. Clotho spun the thread of human life, Lachesis dispensed it and Atropos cut the thread. They determined the length of each person’s life as well as his share of suffering. This concept of destiny is reflected in Greek tragedy. The great Greek tragic heroes are all the victims of an implacable destiny. Their doom is decreed beforehand, and they cannot escape it.
This Greek concept of fate was alien to Elizabethan drama, especially to Shakespeare. The Shakespearean tragic heroes bring their fate down on themselves by some error of their own known as the fatal flaw. Hamlet had ‘the courtiers, soldiers, scholars. Eye, tongue, and sword’ but suffered from the habit of procrastination. Othello, ‘a noble and valiant general’, was a slave of sexual jealousy. Macbeth, ‘a peerless kinsman too full of the milk of human kindness’ was ruined by his black and deep desires. Lear who was every inch a king suffered from a violent temper and lack of judgement.
In India the theory of cause and effect was very much in vogue. It was inextricably linked to the process of reincarnation. If the cause and effect are static, then the future is already established. Men can sit back and wait for their destiny. The theory will look all the more illogical when large number of people is involved or calamities like the tsunami swallow the lives of thousands. A hundred thousand including women and new born children were killed in the bombing of Hiroshima. Could it be attributed to destiny? It was the callousness and cruelty of Man that brought about the disaster. Was it the cruelty of Hitler or destiny that was responsible for the merciless genocide of the Jews in the gas chamber? Is it because of destiny or the exploitation of man that millions die of starvation in African countries? How could a whole nation like Iraq be destined to suffer? Will any super intelligence allow such cruelty though the victors reiterated that God was with them? The answer is evident – destiny has not played any part in these.
Emerson has said, ‘the bitterest tragic element in life is the belief in the brute fate or destiny’. Belief in destiny as in the case of any blind belief is the denial of truth. It is a sort of cowardice which helps one to hide the absence of the will to act persistently in spite of failures. In each one of us the good and evil are at war. All through our lives the fight goes on, and one of them must conquer the other. But in our own hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be, what we are. In other words what we do and what we are, are inextricably linked together. Man is master of his own fate. We have plenty of illustrious examples. Christ could have escaped crucifixion. But he willingly courted crucifixion for the salvation of humanity. Socrates – not destiny – had the courage to stand by his convictions. Louis Braille, who had gone blind at a very young age challenged destiny, overcame not only his affliction but also helped the blind people all over the world to empower themselves by reading and acquiring knowledge. Helen Keller who had gone deaf and blind when she was 19 months old challenged destiny and became a distinguished writer and lecturer.
There is a Chinese saying:
Sow an act and you shall reap a habit.
Sow a habit and you shall reap a character.
Sow a character and you shall reap a fate.
An act is something done or the aggregate of things done, the social implication of which is clear to the doer. A habit is a constantly shown tendency to act in a certain way. Character is an aggregate of the most stable psychic traits of a personality manifested in his acts. But ‘fate’ has been invented by the weak, it has been invented to justify their failures, bad acts, offensive character, and to be able to shift the blame for things on others.
Life on earth is wrought with misery often and the tendency is to blame it on destiny. But if we remember that Man is born to give and not to grab there would be undiluted joy. Life flowers when you realize that you are useful to others. There is the story of the old man who was planting trees on the road side. He was almost bent double with old age. Someone who passed by asked him, ’why do you work so hard to plant these when you may not live to enjoy their shadows?’ the old man replied, “The shadows of the trees which now I enjoy were not planted by me.”
To day there is an accumulation of destructive forces resulting in a feeling of insecurity and mutual distrust. If the world is pushed on to another war and humanity goes back to the Stone Age it is only man made destiny. It is our duty to avoid such a catastrophical fate for humanity. Our duty is to make this world a better place to live in. the world abounds in facilities and amenities that have come as a result of accumulation and application of scientific knowledge. Man should make right use of the facilities and amenities and to live in harmony with nature. In such a case Man is destined to live, as held by H.G.Wells, in a universal palace making the whole globe our garden and play-ground.


Sri K V. Kunhikrishnan: From what we see around us we perceive that for every cause there is its effect and for every effect there is a cause, or several causes behind it. There has been no doubt about this fact. We have discussed the destiny of individual and also the destiny of Man in general. For what is happening today the causes may be spread out to several years, may be decades or centuries in the past. But whether such causes created by a man in a previous birth can affect his fortune in this life is very controversial as we have no means at present of knowing whether there is a previous birth at all, and whether any consequences of actions could be thus passed on. But we do definitely know that actions in this life have their consequences, good or bad.
Therefore there can be no dispute that an individual’s destiny depends to a large part on his own choices, effective efforts, talents and perseverance. But when unexpectedly some untoward outcome turns up, man is naturally confused. When a tree falls on the head of a person walking along the road, it would look absurd to attribute it to his actions of the past in this life unless the timing of his walk at the exact second could be blamed on him. Thus there are many unknown things beyond explanation. Explanations given by seers, masters, and spiritual leaders are also very contradictory, and cannot be verified unless one experiences them oneself.
It is in this context and in the context of the evolution of Man that the question posed in the beginning by Dr. Sadanandan becomes relevant, whether a mutation is possible in the evolution of Man wherein he becomes absolutely free of the cause/effect chain? The question has been answered by the Seer Aurobindo, as explained in the talk of Prof. Sankarankutty. The mutation has already started in the evolution of Man, and what is called the “Supramental Manifestation’ of Man is now happening in a wider scale than earlier. It will speed up faster and faster hereafter.
Going beyond the cause and effect can happen in two ways. The first is being free of it, mentally. Being free does not mean eliminating the effect or altering the effect. One goes beyond the effect, meaning that he is consciously free of the result of the actions, whether it is good or bad. The second is by a willful alteration of the effect or result. If the possible future is known beforehand, any danger can possibly be altered, or avoided. Here again we have no way of knowing which of the ways one can be free of the outcome of one’s actions. Until one becomes super-conscious, there is no way of knowing whether any future is predestined or preordained.
Ultimately, the only way is to acquire the necessary intuitive faculties to understand and comprehend this life and the Reality. For that, the mutation is necessary in all of us. It would appear that each man has to fend for himself in this regard, clearly discriminating whatever advises and suggestions that comes bye while going through one’s life.

Comment:
ALL SAID AND DONE, THE QUESTION STILL REMAINS: WAS IT THE WILL OF THE CRIPPLED AND THE DEAD, OR THEIR DESTINY THAT BROUGHT FORTH THE TSUNAMI? OR MERELY THE RELENTLESS DESTRUCTIVE FORCE OF PURE CHANCE?