In the discussion on fate and free will, there have always been extreme views that exclusively focus on absolute predetermination or absolute free will. “You create your own reality” is a slogan mostly used in New Age circles. This view often ignores the role of fate totally and does not take into account the complex and interconnected web of Karmic factors that influence the unfolding of our individual lives within the context of the collective consciousness of humanity and Earth.

On the other hand, some perspectives are on the other extreme claiming “your fate is written on your forehead,” and rule out any means of free reality creation, asserting that we are mere puppets of destiny. Some also see the Law of Karma as the source of an unchangeable fate, which determines every event of human life and the Universe itself.

Such views forget to look at the big picture in an integral way and do not have a balanced understanding of fate and free will. Reality is never black or white. Reality has infinite dimensions interconnected integrally by an underlying unity.

What is Karma?

The Sanskrit word Karma means ‘action,’ which involves not only physical action, but also mental and emotional action. Action denoted by the Karmic Law includes the actions of your current lifetime and previous lifetimes, your actions at present and your actions in the future during your current life and your future births. Karma is not a ‘law’ in the conventional sense of the term either. Karma is actually a dynamic process that balances and harmonizes the evolution of the Cosmos.

Karma is not a tool of retribution or a law of linear cause and effect, but an agent of individual and collective evolution for manifesting advanced and integral levels of consciousness. This evolutionary process is a combination of linear, nonlinear and multidimensional causes and effects operating in a web of interrelationships and feedback loops. The strands of an individual’s personal Karma are interwoven with Karmic strands of our family, culture, society and the planet. So everything affects everything else! It is similar to what Buddha meant when he introduced the concept of ‘interdependent co-arising.’

Fate and Free Will in the context of Karma

What is the significance of Karma in the context of fate and free will? Before we explore that, we need to get some clarity about what we actually mean by the much misinterpreted and misunderstood terms ‘fate’ and ‘free will.’

The pop culture view of fate pictures it as a rigid and unchangeable deterministic force from which there is no escape. Actually fate itself is a multidimensional phenomenon. The negative and habitual Karmic predilections resulting from the egoistic actions and desires of past births make up only one aspect of fate. Another aspect of fate is the Divine plan that the true soul of an individual chooses consciously before birth for the next lifetime, for the advancement of the soul’s evolution and life purpose.

The Karmic conditionings of one’s own previous lives in combination with the true soul’s Divine plan take us to certain situations and circumstances in the current lifetime. In addition, there are also the family, group and planetary Karma that might impact the conditions one finds oneself within the current life. For example, in an interconnected world, the bad Karma created by the polluting lifestyles of the industrially developed countries have worsened the ecological crisis, which affects even people from other regions who might not have lived a life harming the Earth!

However, Karmic factors do not govern an individual’s life completely. We are inherently free to choose how to act under the given circumstances and create our reality. Anyway, we need to ask a crucial question. How free is what we call free will? Ironically, what is often seen as free will is not free at all! Most of the time, the conditionings created by the parents, teachers, one’s own particular ethnic culture, political ideologies, nationality, peer group influences and nowadays even the commercialist consumerism subconsciously determine how an individual acts in a given situation. Such actions arise from an illusion of free will rather than real free will!

Real free will can be exercised only when we go beyond the surface ego-self and access the deepest authentic self, the true soul, which is an aspect of the Integral Divine consciousness that encompasses all manifest Universes, infinite dimensions and the Emptiness from which manifestation emanates. Only this Divine Self can integrate all the aspects including the ego into an integral whole. That is where the role of integral spiritual evolution comes in.

Humanity is an integral part of the Gaia consciousness of Earth. Earth is a living organism with a superconsciousness that encompasses us. In fact, humanity and all the other species that co-exist with humanity on Earth are immersed ‘within’ Gaia. Our evolution and destiny are interconnected to Gaia and all her beings. Gaia surrounds us and Gaia is within us and ‘We’ are Gaia, the Earth. The Earth exists in Communion with the Solar energy that sustains life on Earth. The Sun and the Earth are aspects of the Galactic consciousness, which is embedded in the Cosmic consciousness, and the Integral Divine consciousness that is both immanent in the Universe and transcendent to the Universe. When we realize this, we can understand that the separation between a subjective world within and objective world outside is an artificial duality imposed by reductionistic thinking.

When you connect to the Divine within by manifesting your true soul consciousness, you can attune yourself with the Integral Gaia consciousness and go beyond the restrictions of any negative Karmic influences and become truly free to manifest your life’s purpose by co-creating with Gaia consciousness, the Cosmic consciousness and the all-pervading Integral Divine Consciousness. This can be done through mindfulness and integral meditative practices that integrate the body, mind, spirit aspects of our existence. By manifesting an Integral Multidimensional consciousness, it is even possible to alter the past through non-linear retroactive causation because at the level of the Integral Divine consciousness, the past, present and future exist simultaneously!

Acting from ‘fake free will’ coloured by egoistic conditionings can have disastrous consequences. For example, an individual might decide to lead a completely materialistic lifestyle of unbridled consumption with luxuries like private yachts, jets, fancy cars and what not, triggering ecological destruction. When a large number of people start living like that, the larger holistic ‘free will’ of the Gaia consciousness will assert itself to restrict the narrow ‘ego-will’ that masquerades as free will from running riot and endangering the whole!

Simplistic misinterpretations of the ‘law of attraction,’ which say that the universe mindlessly brings to you whatever you desire, are catching the fancy of popular imagination through books and films that claim to reveal the ‘secret’ of manifestation. But the Universe is not a dumb entity that exists to satisfy the limited egoistic desires of human beings. The law of attraction is real and an aspect of the law of Karma. Actually, the law of attraction serves as a tool for Karma to create balance and order in the Universe. The Earth and the Universe are superconscious living organisms, aspects of the Divine, and can restrict the manifestation of human desires if those desires are imbalanced and endanger the soul’s evolution and the evolution of the collective consciousness. An excellent example of this is how humanity is now being forced to acknowledge the existence of the ecological crisis caused by human greed and take measures to avert disaster.

The law of Karma is often misinterpreted to justify social, economic, political or ecological injustice by saying that those who suffer such injustices created their own reality through their bad Karma and nothing could be done. This is a skewed view. Even if the soul plan or previous lifetimes of the oppressed people and the oppressors might play a role in predisposing them to such scenarios in their current lives, it is still not a justification or excuse to avoid corrective action to challenge and prevent coercive injustice to pave the way for a civilization based on compassion, co-creation and communion. Injustice in any form indicates imbalance in the cosmic order and our present actions must be used to restore balance and harmony by dissolving injustice through proactive transformation arising from the integral Divine will.

Fate and free will are not mutually exclusive, but complementary aspects of the One integral multidimensional process of individual and collective evolution. You don’t create your own reality in isolation. We co-create the reality we experience whether good or bad. When a significant number of people co-create reality unconsciously by acting from the conditioned will of the surface ego-self, we face situations such as global warming! If a critical mass of individuals can manifest the truly free will of our innermost Divine souls, we can manifest Heaven on Earth through integral co-creation of our reality.