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.
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Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. My name is Tanish Gupta, and I'm a second-year MBBS student. I have been listening to you for a couple of months, and I always had this question about free will and fate. Now, you have explained this topic a lot in your videos, but I always had this itch in my mind, and it's this question: What exactly is the extent of free will, and where does fate take over in our life?
Acharya Prashant: See, we exercise anyway, don't we? Let's start from where we are. We exercise choice. We assert our will, don't we? We all do that, right? You chose to ask this question. But there is a choice. If there is choice, irrespective of whether it absolutely exists or not, let the choice be free.
One part of the question is whether free will exists absolutely or not. Keep that aside. For you, everything is with respect to you. And as far as you are concerned, you are choosing all the time, no? And if you're choosing, won't you want your choices to be rather free, free of influence, free of fear, free of ignorance?
