The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
~ Albert Camus
“There’s always been war, But people quickly get accustomed to peace. So they think it’s normal. No, war is what’s normal.”
~ Albert Camus
Questioner: Acharya Ji, which ‘war’ is Albert Camus referring to?
Acharya Prashant: The questioner has asked that Albert Camus has said that ‘war’ is what is…
We leave a talk moved, and by evening it has faded, so we ask how to stay aware every moment. Yet one glance at a report that says cancer is never forgotten; even in our dreams we remember it, and no one has to remind us. We remember what we truly want to save. The mirror is held up once, and a teacher can do no more than that. Sunlight pours through every window, and we can still crawl under a rock. What are we choosing, each time we forget?
We have all put down a book that could have helped us, or dozed off halfway through something that mattered. A man who could not keep food down was given medicine, and he threw that away too, since it went in by the same route. Most of us strike a similar deal: we move into a place that stinks and, within a week, call the smell normal. Show our fifteen-year-old self the life we lead now and they would scoff. What would change if we admitted we do not like our condition?
If there is work to do, how do I say that my routine necessitates going to bed at 11 pm. When you say routine that means, these are the hours I will study, these are the hours and I’ll do this, do that and these are the hours when I will have my spare time for leisure etc. So, a routine is some kind of luxury, you require a discipline beyond a routine. A successful life, in some sense, is about dancing to somebody else's tune. Who’s tunes? Something bigger than yourself. Something bigger than yourself.
Freedom is often assumed to be the ability to choose, yet most decisions arise from conditioning, biology, social influences, and habit. Real freedom begins by seeing how mechanical and unconscious life usually is. As awareness deepens, confusion and endless options gradually diminish, making life simpler and more direct. Liberation lies not in imagining freedom, but in recognising and understanding the forces that keep one bound.
Neuroscience says there is no free will. Vedanta also comes to the absence of free will, but through the route of choiceless understanding. It says that the right action will never be a product of your choice because there's no such thing. The right action happens when you just don't see options — not because you're an idiot, but because you're in love with the right one. So, you don't require choice. You require observation. And then, you don’t have to choose. It’s an effortless flow.
