Is Destiny Pre-Determined or do we Control our Destiny? The Mystery of 'Karma'

Speaker A [00:00:00]: Do we control our destinies, or is our destiny predetermined? This is a question that will come to each one of us at some point in time during our lives. Do we actually have any control over our lives, and do we control the situations and things that we do in life or is everything predetermined, and is everything fixed in our lives? This is an important question for each and every one of us. So let us find an answer to this. Now this is a very tricky question, and the answer to this is not straightforward, and I myself have had this question for a very long time. Now before we go ahead with this topic, first, we need to understand the concept of karma because the concept of destiny is very much linked with karma. Karma is a concept which is talked about in the eastern twin teachings in Vedanta and in various instances of Vedas and Upanishads, karma is a concept that is elaborately described. So let us understand karma. Karma in Sanskrit means action. Speaker A [00:01:19]: So every kind of action that you perform is karma. The physical action that you do through your body, the mental action that you do through your thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and energy action that happens at a subtle level. All of these constitute karma. So let us talk about what exactly karma is and how does it work. Now, basically, you have a mind, and the nature of your mind is that it remembers every action it performs and every impression that it takes in, and your mind has various levels to it. You're only familiar with the surface level of mind, which is your conscious mind, and there are different deep levels to your mind. There is subconscious mind, there is something called as the unconscious mind, and there are various layers to your mind. Now what happens is whenever you perform an action or you think a thought or you feel a feeling, there is a subtle residue of that action that goes into your mind, and it is impressed at the deepest levels of the mind. Speaker A [00:02:34]: And in this way, your mind remembers everything. Your mind in itself has the evolutionary memory from when it was a plant and an animal and then an ape. And also as per the teachings of Hinduism, we live different lives as different people. We are all familiar with the concept of rebirths and incarnation, which sees that this mind goes through various cycles of life and death. We are born and reborn again and again in different physical bodies, and whatever actions that we perform during those lives is also impressed upon the mind at the deepest level. Now within this karma, there is something called as the sanchita karma, prarabdha karma, and agami karma. So we will make a future episode talking just about karma. But for the sake of this video, we will keep it simple. Speaker A [00:03:29]: Basically every impression that you have taken from all of your lifetimes is all present right here, right now, and it is at a deep level, and it has formed a karmic memory, which lies deep within your unconscious mind, this memory is responsible for the way you are right now and this memory that you have within your system has resulted in a certain kind of a personality which you have right now. Your personality is nothing but your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and your belief systems. So all of these things constitute your personality, and your personality is a result of your past karmic memory. Because of your personality, you behave in a certain way. You take different kinds of actions, and all of these things bring a certain kind of results in your life. And this is how your life has been going on. So the way you are right now is because of the karmic memory that you have, and the personality that you have right now is because of your karmic memory. And because of your personality, you take certain actions, and you respond to life in a certain way because of which you create certain results in your life in terms of your health, relationships, money, etcetera. Speaker A [00:04:57]: So based on your karma, the destiny for your life is fixed. But this is just one part of the answer. The next part is interesting. Now we are familiar with the western teachings of, positive psychology, law of attraction, manifestation, etcetera. But what the western teachings miss is the concept and the teaching of karma because karma is extremely important when we talk about destiny. To answer the question whether our life is predetermined or whether we have control over our lives. The answer is both, we can take the control of our lives. At the same time, the destiny for our life is fixed. Speaker A [00:05:49]: If you're wondering how can it be possible, let us now go deep into this subject. What we need to understand here is that our personality creates our personal reality. The way we think, the way we are, and the various feelings that we experience and go through every single day are creating and manifesting different situations and events in our lives, and our personalities are responsible for the lives that we live. Now let us take an example. You are sailing the boat. Now the water currents that are in the river have a certain momentum, and they push the boat in a certain direction, and the winds also push the boat in a certain direction. Pressure that is caused because of the water currents and because of the wind will sway your boat in a certain direction. But since you are holding the steering, if you hold it tight and if you steer it in the right direction, even though the boat wobbles a little bit here and there, it will eventually reach the right destination. Speaker A [00:06:57]: But what happens if you let go of the steering? What happens if you just let go and simply sit on the boat? The boat will then end up wherever the currents take it. It might go to a place that you wanted to go or it might go to a place that you didn't want it to go or it can go anywhere, wherever the wind and the currents take it. So this is exactly how we need to understand destiny. If we take charge of our lives, if we become conscious of our personalities, and if we start to live consciously, only then we have control over our destinies. But if we let go and if we live our lives unconsciously, like most of the people in this planet, we will not have any control over our lives, and our karmic memory and our karma, which has given rise to this current personality that we have will take us in a predetermined direction to a predetermined destination. If we do not want that to happen, we need to take charge of our lives. We need to be conscious of the way we think, about the way we feel and about our belief systems that we hold at the deepest levels. The good news is our personalities are malleable. Speaker A [00:08:18]: If you think about your own life, your personality, the way you are right now is probably different from the way you were a decade back. A lot of things would have changed. You would have had different belief systems then. You would have the different belief system now, and you will have different belief systems in the future. Now whether you're conscious about your personality and whether you are consciously thing, the right kind of personality is the important question. We need to, first of all, take an account of our personality the way it is right now, we need to make note of the positive things and the negative things. We need to look at the positive belief systems that we have and the negative belief systems that we have. And then we need to determine where we want to go in life. Speaker A [00:09:08]: We need to go deep and contemplate and come up with a purpose for our lives, which helps ourselves, our family and the society as a whole, and we need to see whether the personality that we have right now is compatible to handle that goal and to take us there. If not, we can go about to change this personality. And, of course, there are various methods types and techniques that we can use to do it, which we will discuss in the future episodes, but first of all, we need to be conscious of our personalities. Only then we can change the personality that we have in a way that it is compatible with our goals that we have for our lives. And by doing so, we can take charge of our lives, and we can become the master of our destiny. I hope this was valuable to you. If you find concepts like this useful, and if you want to learn more about creating your life consciously the way you want by using different methods and tools in order to do that, then we have created a special program, and we call it the conscious creation program. Ramp. Speaker A [00:10:19]: If you're interested in this, you can find the details at advaita.com. That is athbaitha. Com. Thank you, and I'll see you on the next one.