Destiny, Freedom, and the Soul: What Is the Meaning of Life? (Osho Life Essentials) by Osho

Author:Osho
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312595432
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-04-09T22:00:00+00:00

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Destiny, Fate, and Karma

Existence gives you birth as tabula rasa. No fate is written; there is no destiny such that whatever you do, it has to happen.

Existence is freedom. Fate is slavery. Freedom means it is up to you to decide what is going to happen. Fate is a bogus hypothesis.

Trust is a totally different thing. Trust is not fate. Trust simply means that “Whatever happens, I am part of existence, and existence cannot be intentionally inimical to me. If sometimes I feel that it is, it must be my misunderstanding.”

Are our lives predestined or not?

This is not a personal problem; it is a philosophical question.

Our lives are both predestined and they are not. Both yes and no. And both answers are true for all questions about life.

In a way, everything is predetermined. Whatever is physical in you, material, whatever is mental, is predetermined. But something in you constantly remains undetermined, unpredictable. That something is your consciousness.

If you are identified with your body and your material existence, in the same proportion you are determined by cause and effect. Then you are a machine. But if you are not identified with your material existence, with either body or mind—if you can feel yourself as something separate, different, above and transcendent to body–mind—then that transcending consciousness is not predetermined. It is spontaneous, free. Consciousness means freedom; matter means slavery. So it depends on how you define yourself. If you say, “I am only the body,” then everything about you is completely determined.

A person who says that man is only the body cannot say that man is not predetermined. Ordinarily, those who do not believe in such a thing as consciousness don’t believe in predetermination, either. People who are religious and believe in consciousness are ordinarily those who believe in predetermination. So what I am saying may look very contradictory, but still, it is the case.

A person who has known consciousness has known freedom. So only a spiritual person can say there is no determination at all. That realization comes only when you are completely unidentified with the body. If you feel that you are just a material existence, then no freedom is possible. With matter, no freedom is possible. Matter means that which cannot be free; it must flow in the chain of cause and effect.

Once someone has achieved consciousness, enlightenment, he is completely out of the realm of cause and effect. He becomes absolutely unpredictable, you cannot say anything about him. He begins to live each moment; his existence becomes atomic.

Your existence is a riverlike chain in which every step is determined by the past. Your future is not really future; it is just a by-product of the past. It is only the past determining, shaping, formulating, and conditioning your future. That is why your future is predictable.

B. F. Skinner says that man is as predictable as anything else; the only difficulty is that we have not yet devised the means to know his total past. The moment we can know his past, we can predict everything about him.

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