Free will and the six `I’s of the mind

The ineluctable truth about all material existence is that life is an endless wheel of birth, death and regeneration. Everything on this planet, is a reminder of this cycle. The passage of day, the seasons, and epochs, in itself, is a symbolic representation of coming to life, dying and reincarnating.

Life always renews, and death always culminates, albeit to flower again. We experience this cycle a million times in one lifetime, through hope and achievement, and through sorrow, defeat and humiliation. And then renewed hope. We experience the four seasons in one lifetime as well as we experience them physically every 12 months. We go through infancy, youth, old age and death, the representation of spring, summer, autumn and winter. We metamorphose on a daily basis from dawn, the infancy of spring; to noon, the youth of summer; to dusk and night, the maturity of old age and approaching wintry death, when our bodies and minds begin to give way.

Civilisations rise and fall, they attain maturity and degenerate. New powers rise, with the youth to flourish or the bellicosity to bring about destruction, before they mature and, finally, become decrepit. The sun takes its course of precession from one constellation to the other, and transmutes a spiritual change in the ages.

In the material world, everything is in flux. In the spiritual world of the initial state, everything was static and eternal. There was no death. It is the purgation of souls that made the flux imperative. For, those that fell away from the supreme being, have to go through a seemingly incessant and everlasting cycle, before they purify and become one with the divine source again. We, as travellers in time, are trapped in this endless cycle.

As we proceed on our journey back to the divine source, transmigrating from life to life, we either climb our way uphill through suffering and sacrifice or good deeds, or we fall deeper into the karmic chasm by acquiring the burden of the concupiscence, crime and evil that we partake in. The only way is upward, by being good and attempting to be God-like, or else we inherit the baggage of previous lives and are worse-off in the next life.

Here is where we make our choices. To be filled with propriety is never simple or easy. We have circumstances that inhibit goodness, and invoke evil. We have predicaments that test our moral obligations and integrity at every stage of our lives. While, who we are, and our circumstances are predetermined, what we will be in future lives impinges on the choices we make in the current one.

Free will is limited to these choices. Possibilities are not infinite. It may be a pessimistic view. But we are bound by the gravity of our circumstances, and we can only be what we can be, within these limitations. Those that achieve great fame and fortune, to whom circumstances or providence are not that exacting, are generally younger souls on the pathway of the spiritual journey, who have not inherited much baggage from past lives. They are vested with a freer will.

Our free will is, in fact, an opportunity to arrive at the ultimate destiny, the union with the divine source. It is an opportunity to purge ourselves of inequity. It must be our endeavour, each time we live anew, to learn new lessons, and demolish incorrigibility.

When we enter a new life, we are equipped with certain spiritual possessions, inherited from past lives. These can reflect in judiciousness and goodness or evil and vice. We do not recollect our past lives, but we inherit memories at the sub-conscious level. Consciously, we are blind to the calling of the divine source, but our piety works at the sub-conscious level. Some of it is innate at birth, and some of it is acquired. However, in spite of our conscious blindness, we are gifted with the ammunition to deal with the vagaries of life.

Some of this ammunition is constituted in the six `I’s of the mind – impulse, instinct, intelligence, intellect, intuition and inspiration.

Impulse is the sudden urge to act without thought for the results. Instinct is an inborn tendency to behave in a certain way, a natural ability or skill. Intelligence is the ability to gain or apply knowledge and skills. Intellect is the ability to use the mind to think logically and understand things. Intuition is the ability to understand or know something immediately, without conscious reasoning. Inspiration is the process of being filled with the feeling or urge to do something, a clever idea.

It is these six `I’s that help you plough your way through the trials and tribulations of life, and capitalise on its opportunities. How we use these six `I’ s – the insouciance of impulse, the canniness of instinct, the astuteness of intelligence, the prudence of intellect, the perspicacity of intuition, and the percipience of inspiration – will determine what befalls us in our current lives and in our subsequent lives. It would be judicious to discern, at this point, that material windfall should not be our only governing motive, but spiritual benefit as well.

The seventh `I’ – initiative – the ability to act on the above six, and the seizing of the opportunity to do so, should be based more on the spiritual premise, than on the material one.

For it is this initiative that will compound or alleviate our spiritual pathway. It will open the door to where we go from here; and it is a mighty disaster to have initiative fall prey to avarice, corruption and impropriety.

The mythic journey that involves the heightened spirit, however, will involve the transcending of the six `I’s and the opening of the gateway to the imponderable, imperiousness of revelation – the voice of the supreme being. In ancient times, great wisdom came from revelation. Later, this revelation, that could not be uttered, was transferred to disciples in signs and symbols. Still later, it resulted in an oral tradition. And today, the written word is commonplace. However, the greatest secrets can never be put down in writing They can only be revealed. For, there is never a sweeter sounding euphony than revelation.