Acharya Prashant addresses the concept of free will, explaining that what people commonly refer to as free will is devoid of any real freedom. He states that we falsely believe we make choices after careful consideration, but in reality, these choices simply happen through us. The ego's fundamental nature is to claim doership, to say, "I did this," for events that merely occurred to it. This is an illusion born from a lack of self-knowledge, where one fails to see that most of life is a series of events happening to them, rather than actions they consciously perform. To illustrate this, Acharya Prashant uses several analogies. He compares the ego's claim of doership to a sleeping man who turns over and later says, "I turned over," when it was an unconscious act. Similarly, a stone on the road might claim it "lifted a car" that simply ran over it. These events happen to the entity; they are not done by the entity. He explains that the ego doesn't have the self-awareness to recognize that it hasn't truly done anything throughout its life; rather, things have just happened to it. Acharya Prashant clarifies that true freedom is inextricably linked to knowledge or understanding (Bodh). He offers a formula: Freedom equals Knowledge, which means Free Will is an Illumined Will. A decision can only be considered truly yours if it involves your conscious understanding. Any action taken without this understanding is not your own but a mechanical, natural event. To mistake the natural for the spiritual is the essence of illusion (maya). The purpose of this explanation, he says, is not to hurt the ego but to help one realize the necessity of attaining true freedom. To achieve something, one must first acknowledge its absence. If a person constantly claims to possess free will, they will never attain it. If free will were a reality for someone, it would manifest as joy, radiance, and fearlessness in their life. However, most people are puppets of their fears and desires, controlled by nature. Therefore, their claim of having free will is merely a false expression, not the reality of freedom itself.