A Web of Interdependence – Cutting through the False Division of Free Will vs Determinism

Osho,
Does determinism exist or not? Is there free will in life?
“In fact, it is meaningless to ask this. It is meaningless because we are not able to see this nor is this in our understanding. We only feel determinism – destiny – or free will – freedom? We have broken them into two whereas they are two sides of one thing. If man is separate from life only then he can be free, and only then he can be determined.

But if he is one with life then what is the meaning of freedom and what also is the meaning of determinism? There is no meaning at all.

“What I am saying is that if I am separate from life, then both the things are possible – either I am free or I am dependent. In both independence and dependence, my separate existence is accepted. But I am asking, where is my separate existence! So, from whom to be independent and under whom to be dependent?
“Do you understand me?
“Is this hand of mine independent of me or dependent? Is this hand of mine independent of me or dependent? If I say it is independent, then too it is separate from me and if I say it is dependent then too it is separate from me. But in the hand also it is me only. It being independent or dependent does not have any meaning because it is not separate from me that it can be called dependent or independent. I am not separate from it that I become independent of it or dependent on it. The hand and I are one.
“So, in my view, both are wrong. The people with the idea of free will say that everything is independent, and the people with the idea of determinism say that everything is in bondage, everything is destined.
“Both are wrong, because the standpoint of both is the same, that man is separate; that the soul is separate from the whole.
“The feelings of both are based on that. Then they have two interpretations for it.

But I do not accept that view that man is separate. I say, all is one. Hence, the truth is: interdependence – neither independence nor dependence.

“They simply cannot be two things. To divide interdependence into two is those two things. It is like dividing life and death as two things.
“There is interdependence and we belong to it – so should we say.

The whole existence is one interdependence in which we exist.

“A wave has arisen in the water; it is very difficult to say whether the winds have caused it or the moon has caused it, or a child has thrown a pebble at some corner and the wave has arisen. The opposite is also possible that because the wave arose the wind had to blow. The opposite is also possible that the wave called out to the child, and he had to throw the pebble. All this is possible.
“Do you understand me?
“It is not that the child threw a pebble, and the wave arose. The wave called out to the child and the child had to throw a pebble – this too is possible. Many a times the wave makes you throw pebbles – even the wave. It is not only so that you throw the pebble and make the wave rise, many times the wave makes you throw the pebble. You are sitting by the bank of the river and the pebbles begin to get thrown. It is not a work and there is no basis for it [to happen].

The whole universe is so interdependent that one can say that the flower which has bloomed in the garden, had it not bloomed today we would not have been here.

“There is nothing inconsistent about it. There is nothing inconsistent. It is all so interdependent that the flower that has bloomed in the garden and we haven’t even seen it yet, haven’t been to it yet, had it not bloomed today then perhaps we wouldn’t be here. Because in the flowering of that flower all the situations of the universe are as inclusive as in our being here.

And that web is so vast – the web of interdependence – that our brain will be shaken and shattered. Hence, we have made a convenient arrangement that either dependence or independence.

“Only two things whether man is free or dependent are convenient. The matter is thus solved very cheaply. But matter is not to be solved, it is to be known.
“I am not so eager to solve it. The eagerness to solve it has been going on since five or six thousand years in the world that we must solve this matter once for all. Thus, in order to solve, we get concerned with only making clearcut concepts.
“I am not concerned about that. If there is some matter, then we have to know it. And there can be a matter which cannot be solved – that too has to be known. What is it that all matters have to be solved!

And finally, the matter that is the whole matter of life cannot be solved. It cannot have a theoretical solution.

“Then there remains only one way that we take that whole matter as ‘so it is!’ And in knowing that ‘so it is’ one solution will be attained which will be the solution of life, not of a concept. If we can know only this much that we are interdependent…and it is not that only human beings and human beings are interdependent; and it is not that the stone lying by the side of the road is not related to you in any manner.

We are related in very deep sense and the stone lying by the side of the road is also affecting you.

“It is not necessary that only you hit the stone, the stone also hits you. So, the web becomes so frightening that we create convenient theories. And the convenient theories cause us difficulty. All around we have managed like this, that this is the soul, and this is the body, and have turned it into a concept, because it feels convenient.
“And the reality is completely opposite.

The reality is that it is very difficult to decide where the body ends and where the soul begins!

“It is difficult to say that a thorn pierced in the body doesn’t pierce the soul. And it is difficult to say that a hurt to the soul doesn’t become unbearable to the body. The truth is, that all those are your calculations, which you have divided.

So how I look at it is: the part of the soul which is visible is the body, and the part of the body which is invisible is the soul. More than that there is no other sense.”

END
Excerpted from Kaha Kahun Us Des KI (What Can I Say Of That Land), Talk #1
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