Does Consciousness Control Matter?

By Ashish Dalela - 2.6 2025

Table of Contents 

1 The Misconception of Control
2 The Controller and the Controlled
3 The Abrahamic vs. the Vedic Soul
4 How Demigods Control the Soul
5 Decline of the Vedic Understanding
6 The Emergence of False Ideologies
7 A Semantic Description of Matter
8 Semantics Through an Analogy
9 The Necessity of the Demigods
10 The Rise of the Demonic Mindset
11 Choice is Acceptance and Rejection
12 The Working of Consciousness
13 Benjamin Libet’s Experiments
14 The Vedic Realization of the Self
15 The Vedic Realization of God
16 Prescription for a Degraded Age
17 Liberation Can’t Deny Demigods
18 Free Will is a Difficult Subject

The Misconception of Control

There is a common misconception about the soul controlling matter. The fact is that most of us have no volitional control over our bodies and minds. We don’t control our blood circulation, digestion, or neural activity in the brain. Anyone who has tried to control the mind meets with great difficulties, and concludes that the mind is not controllable. This leads many to suppose that we have no free will. That we are living in a simulation, controlled by some gigantic computer producing our experience.

And yet, there are yogic practices by which we can gradually gain control over the mind and body. While we, indeed, have no volitional control over most bodily and mental activities, we can control some of these activities, such as regulating our life with a routine, sitting in a specific posture, controlling our breathing, and focusing our mind on certain things. This is a fraction of all that could be controlled but is currently not in our control. By way of this limited control, we can gain full control over the mind and body. The situation is therefore neither absolute control nor the absence of control. In this post, I will describe why both misconceptions (about control or its absence) arise and why they are wrong. I will then describe how the alternative method of control exists and is used to gain greater control.

The Controller and the Controlled

In Bhagavad-Gita 3.27, Lord Kṛṣṇa states: The spirit soul bewildered by the influence of false ego thinks himself the doer of activities that are in actuality carried out by the three modes of material nature.

Our bodies are not in our control, nor are the senses (of knowing and acting), mind (thoughts), intellect (beliefs), ego (goals), and the moral sense (values). They work automatically like a machine, but it is not a mathematical machine; it is a machine of guna (qualities) and karma (activities) governed by the cosmic law of choice and consequence. We think we make choices, but they are mostly made by matter. This leads some to ask: If there is no choice, why are there consequences? The answer is that while matter indeed controls us, it is we who allow this control, which makes us responsible for our choices. We could prevent matter from controlling us, but the process of gaining control is harder than allowing it.

Some of you might have seen the British TV series Yes, Prime Minister. In it, officially, the power is in the hands of the Prime Minister, but he is in fact being manipulated by the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats instill in the Prime Minister fear of outcomes, scare him with the complexity of the procedures, and thus keep him under their control rather than doing what he wants done. These days, the Prime Minister is called the “state” while the bureaucracy (in some descriptions) is called the “deep state”. Officially, the “state” is in control, but unofficially, the “deep state” is in control. People outside the government think that the Prime Minister is making all the decisions that are actually made by the bureaucrats.

This is a good analogy for understanding the relationship between the soul and matter. The soul is the “state” and the body, senses, mind, intellect, ego, and moral sense are the “deep state”. From the outside, everyone thinks that the soul makes the choices, but on the inside, the body, senses, mind, intellect, ego, and moral sense control the soul. Just as the Prime Minister, deluded by a false ego, pretends to the public that he controls the government, similarly, deluded by the false ego, the soul pretends to be in control of the body, senses, mind, intellect, ego, and the moral sense. The Prime Minister’s speeches are written by a bureaucrat, which the Prime Minister vocalizes to the public. What we hear are the words of the bureaucrats writing the speeches, but the Prime Minister pretends (and the people think) that they are the Prime Minister’s thoughts. Similarly, matter controls the soul, who pretends to be in control.

The Abrahamic vs. the Vedic Soul

Thus, in the Vedic tradition, material life is called bondage, and exit from this life is called liberation. These two concepts are quite different from the Abrahamic concepts of damnation and salvation. In the Abrahamic description, God damned Adam and Eve to material life and God will deliver salvation. But in the Vedic texts, the soul chose to come to the bondage of material life, and it can choose to attain liberation. Since the soul was not damned to enter the world, bondage is caused by its choices. Since the soul will be liberated by its choices, salvation given by God is not liberation attained by the soul.

The Vedic and the Abrahamic ideas of the soul, world, entry, and exit are opposite. In the Abrahamic story, God gave Adam dominion over the world, so man is fully in control, especially if that man accepts the religious covenant with God. But in the Vedic story, Adam came to this world thinking that he would get dominion over the world, but in actuality, he became a prisoner. To prove that he has dominion over the world, Adam pretends to be in charge of the world, which is periodically disproved by his reality, but still he is unable to give up his desire to be the controller and just tries and fails to get dominion.

Thus, Abrahamic religions talk about how the soul has free will—i.e., control over the body and the world. But the Vedic tradition talks about how the soul is living in bondage—i.e., without control over his life, body, senses, mind, intellect, ego, and the moral sense. Accordingly, Vedic liberation is escaping the prison by giving up the dominating mindset, while Abrahamic redemption is the fulfillment of the dominating mindset by gaining full control over the prison. The fact is that everyone pretending to be in control of the world is already controlled from within by material nature. He is a prisoner of his body and mind, pretending to be the overlord of the world, and hence, in a delusion. Thus, the soul has dominion over matter in Abrahamic religions, and matter has dominion over the soul in the Vedic texts. Abrahamic religions talk about God-given freedoms, and the Vedic tradition talks about self-inflicted bondage.

How Demigods Control the Soul

The body we think is ours is not actually so. Every part of “our” body is a part of some demigod’s body, who controls it like we think we control our body. Our blood circulation is due to Vāyu, our digestion is controlled by Agni, our mind is influenced by Chandra, and our intellect is under the regulation of Surya. Due to this dominion over every aspect of our life, it is said that the demigods live in our body, like many tenants living in a single house. They control different parts of the house and manipulate the supposed “owner” of the body into thinking that he is in control, while that “owner” is just one of the millions of tenants in the body—by and large, the tenant least in control. We have no privacy, confidentiality, or secrecy. Every moment we are watched, recorded, supervised, and controlled by the demigods.

Vedic astrology reflects this idea of a controlled life. Our life is divided into 12 aspects called houses, each pertaining to a different facet of our life. There are native lords of each house, whose position in the astrological chart decides how, when, and where that aspect rises or falls. As the lord of one house enters another house, it influences the working of the native lord of that house. As the lords of different houses influence each other, our life changes with a minor change in the position of these lords. How is Vedic astrology able to predict terrestrial events based on celestial events? The answer is that our life is controlled by the demigods. Each lord of each house is a demigod ruling over some aspect of our lives. But he or she is not the only controller in the body. Our body is a puppet controlled by many strings.

Decline of the Vedic Understanding

This idea of the heavens controlling the earth was indeed the idea of science in all ancient civilizations. The heavens were plural, organized in a hierarchy, and doing science meant knowing this hierarchy of heavens, along with the aspect of life they held sway over. Almost all ancient cultures that enunciated this idea of science are now gone; only the Vedic tradition still continues. Meanwhile, a materialistic idea of science in which the heavens don’t exist, and the earth is controlled by mathematical laws, has replaced the ancient science. In fact, this materialistic ideology calls all ancient civilizations inferior to itself.

This change is the result of two key shifts in thinking. In India, impersonalism claimed that demigods only exist in our minds, and religiously minded men had anthropomorphically projected the orderly workings of the mind and the body into the control of heavenly personalities. In the West, Abrahamic ideologies claimed that demigods were false gods, and the world was controlled by mathematical laws. Thus, both impersonalism and Abrahamic ideologies rejected demigods. Abrahamic ideologies also rejected rebirth and karma, but impersonalists did not. Of course, impersonalists couldn’t explain how karma and rebirth work without demigods, so their rejection was devoid of both mathematical laws and the demigods.

This rejection was then picked up in Western psychology by Carl Jung as archetypes. He claimed that ideas of truth, beauty, justice, ideal mother, ideal father, ideal teacher, and ideal ruler were immanent in all minds, and they had historically been projected anthropomorphically into heavenly deities. Jung claimed that the commonalities among deities across ancient civilizations were a side-effect of all minds having the same archetypes, with each civilization projecting them into a heavenly deity. This was Jung’s way of rejecting Abrahamic ideologies in which the human mind (or the soul) is sinful by birth, and that truth, beauty, and justice could only be known through a revelation given by a messiah. Jung was inspired into his archetype theory after reading the works of the impersonalists in India. He outlined a path in which one could reject revelatory religions and pursue truth, beauty, and justice within ourselves.

The Emergence of False Ideologies

And thus, impersonalism in India, Abrahamic ideologies all over the world, and more recently, Jungian archetypes, produced the false idea that we are in control of our minds and bodies. It goes against the discoveries of neuroscience (that we will discuss later in this article) and of practical realization, in which we are not free, making it an anti-science and anti-commonsense worldview. The currently suggested resolution out of that discovery is that we are living in a simulation, and notions of good or bad exist in us to the extent that the simulation shows us those things. And yet, nobody really knows how to escape the simulation. The centuries of talk about man being free have now ended in man living in bondage.

Impersonalism and Jungian archetypes depersonalized demigods into ideas, while Abrahamic ideologies rejected them completely. After that rejection, they are left either with mathematical determinism or, worse, mathematical indeterminism. Under determinism, you have no choice, but at least your life is ordered. Under indeterminism, life isn’t even ordered, and you can’t blame the chaos on anything. In this chaos, New Age religions following impersonalism and Jungian archetypes talk about order created by the human mind. Consciousness and free will are now the gods of the gaps created by science.

The problem is that everyone doesn’t have the same idea of truth, beauty, and justice, so there is no basis in saying these ideas are equally and pervasively immanent in all minds. The commonality across ancient civilizations existed when demigods were factually present in the heavens, although partially understood by different cultures. After the Abrahamic religions rejected these demigods, each of them came up with their own covenant under which different ideas of truth, beauty, and justice were upheld by them. These ideologies then went to war with each other because they couldn’t prove that their ideas of truth, beauty, and justice were factually correct. The fact is that different covenants were created by different minds with different ideas of truth, beauty, and justice. If they could not reconcile their ideas in the many intervening centuries, what is the basis of thinking that it will happen in the future?

A Semantic Description of Matter

The Vedic texts provide an alternative. The demigods are not just our ideas and ideals. They are persons living in the heavens. And yet, they live both inside and outside our bodies and minds, because their body is idea-like, not substance-like. The perfect form of truth, beauty, and justice lives in another world, and their imperfect forms may exist within our minds. However, the perfect reigns over the imperfect, to bring the imperfection to perfection. Thus, we are not free to anoint our imperfect truth, beauty, and justice to the perfect truth, beauty, and justice—as the liberal conception of the world claims. The real question is, how does something exist both inside and outside, as partial and complete perfection?

Answering that question requires us to rethink matter as ideas. The perfect form of the idea exists outside us, and either perfect or imperfect forms of the same idea may exist within us. As the imperfect is a part of the perfect, hence, we are all part of perfection. And yet, we are not free because the idea exists in us in an imperfect form. We are neither fully enlightened nor completely ignorant. Our freedom depends on the extent to which we are enlightened. If we remain ignorant, we also remain unfree.

If a person’s body is conceptualized materially, the demigod must always be outside. If a demigod is depersonalized as an idea, the demigod must exist only in a mind. However, if the demigod’s body is an idea, then it can exist both inside and outside, and what is inside is controlled by what is outside. This alternative is presented in the Vedic texts as the philosophy of guna or qualities. Each demigod embodies a particular quality in perfection. The same qualities exist partially and imperfectly in us. The imperfect is a part of the perfect, and the imperfect is controlled by the perfect. The whole doesn’t reduce to its parts because many imperfect things don’t automatically aggregate into a perfect thing. Those parts have to be organized in a specific way for them to be perfect, which is done by a perfect person. Thus, the world is organized by persons, not ideas. Even ideas live in a person, not in some imaginary idea-world.

Semantics Through an Analogy

The situation could be analogized as many mirrors reflecting a reality—the reality is both inside and outside the mirror, but each mirror sees a part of that reality, and the image within the mirror cannot be equated to reality outside it. Instead, changes to reality change the reflection, and so, the reality controls the reflection. Thus, the mind is described as a (clean or unclean) mirror in the Vedic texts. However, this is an imperfect analogy because even as one mirror is reflected in other mirrors, the mirrors don’t control each other; the reflection is controlled, but the mirror is not. Thereby, if we treated ourselves as mirrors and the demigods as reality, we could not explain how they control us through a reflection.

Therefore, we have to say that the mirror, the reality, and the reflection are all ideas. Then, there are distinct entities, but they are also within each other. A perfect embodiment of some quality resides in heaven, and imperfect embodiments of those qualities exist on earth. Moreover, the perfect controls the imperfect because the imperfect is a part of the perfect, and the perfect holds sway over the imperfect. And thus, the perfect is free while the imperfect is controlled. Even if we cannot see the perfect outside, we aren’t free because that whole exists within each part since the whole and the part are ideas.

For instance, the idea color exists inside all shades, such as yellow, red, and blue, and yet, the shades don’t exhaust the idea color, and so, the idea is both inside and outside. Each shade is an incomplete and imperfect representation of color, and yet, each shade is a part of the complete and perfect. Thus, even if someone doesn’t see a demigod, he can still know that he doesn’t control his mind or body. He has to now find an explanation of how and why his mind and body work against his volitional control.

The Necessity of the Demigods

Demigods can’t be reduced to ideas (as in impersonalism, Jungian psychology, or a liberal conception of the world). Demigods can’t be rejected (as in Abrahamic ideologies). They are persons that exist both inside and outside because their bodies are ideas. The hands of truth, beauty, and justice control parts of truth, beauty, and justice. By the legs, the truth, beauty, and justice come and go. Through the eyes, the whole truth, beauty, and justice see their parts. Through the power of speech, truth, beauty, and justice express their nature. To know truth, beauty, and justice, we have to know how they control, move, see, and express. The capacities of truth, beauty, and justice are just like those in our body. Hence, when we speak of demigods, we are not anthropomorphically projecting what only exists in our minds. We are rather expressing a complete understanding of all that knowing truth, beauty, and justice entail.

And yet, the body of a demigod is not like our body because it is the form of some idea, such as truth, beauty, or justice. That idea is the essence of their mind, from which a body is expanded to hear, touch, see, taste, smell, hold, move, express, and reproduce that idea. Even our bodies are produced from our minds, but our minds are impure. As our mind is filled with lies, injustice, and ugliness, the body becomes more different from a demigod body. The fact that our body appears to have the same shape as that of the demigod body doesn’t mean they are the same type; the type is decided by the ideas in the mind, not by the shape of the body. Even demons can have the same bodily shape as ours. They are not human, even as they seem to have a human shape, because a person’s type is decided by the mind. Likewise, even God can appear in an animal shape; He is not an animal since the type is given by the mind.

To know the mind, we have to know the activities of all the senses because the mind expresses itself through these senses. Someone can lie through speech, but their actions reveal their true intentions. Someone can speak harshly for a moment, but their kind actions reveal their mind. Thus, a demon or a demigod is not decided by one activity; we have to get a comprehensive understanding. We don’t anthropomorphically project good and evil in us as demigods and demons in the overworld or the underworld; instead, we know them by the type of their minds. Whatever good or evil exists partially in us, it exists in a purer and concentrated form in demigods and demons. They are the versions of “purer good” and “purer evil”.

The Rise of the Demonic Mindset

However, when truth, beauty, and justice were depersonalized as ideas by the Greeks, they became deaf, dumb, and blind. Ideas became static and impotent fixtures in an imaginary Platonic World with no influence on the present world. In fact, the Sophists claimed that Man is the measure of all things, which means he is free to define the meaning of truth, beauty, and justice. Greeks effectively transferred the power of demigods into the hands of mankind. From the denial of demigods and their replacement by humanity stemmed Abrahamic religions, Western philosophy, and modern science. They have lived under the delusion of mankind’s prowess to define their own truth, beauty, and justice, and they keep inventing new religions, philosophies, and scientific theories under the belief that mankind is free to speculate and invent truth, beauty, and justice. That supposed freedom is based on the denial of the actual controllers of the world, and hence, the whole enterprise is just an elaborate delusion.

In fact, since demons try to deny and destroy the demigods, the denial of demigods in philosophy, religion, and science is indeed the demonic mindset. It spreads in society via the ramparts of religious, educational, political, economic, and social institutions. We can see the effects of that demonic mindset in the centuries of killing of nature, animals, humans, cultures, and civilizations that were earlier living in harmony. Indeed, the Vedic texts talk about how the world is a family. But we can’t have a family in which some members kill other members to get exclusive dominion. Those who can’t read the mind and just see the body can’t understand that demons and demigods cannot be family. They may foolishly talk about making a family of demons and demigods, but they can never succeed. Their foolishness is trying to define a person based on their bodily shape rather than their mental ideas.

Choice is Acceptance and Rejection

With the semantic view of matter, we can understand that we are neither fully in control nor absolutely without control. Our body is a part of other bodies that we don’t see, and yet, we are still one of the tenants in the body. We falsely claim to be fully in control, like the Prime Minister pretends to hold power. The bureaucrats don’t want to be in the limelight. They like to control everything, but they want the Prime Minister to take responsibility. Thus, the job of the bureaucrat is permanent, but that of the Prime Minister is temporary. The bureaucrat gets the best of both worlds—job security and total control without any responsibility. The responsibility of the bureaucrat’s choices is transferred to the Prime Minister. Similarly, the demigods control our lives, but transfer the responsibility of their control to us.

That is because we are fools to want to be the Prime Minister. We work hard to get elected, then we are controlled, and finally we are blamed. Meanwhile, the actual controller remains unaccountable and invisible. The material world is the delusion of wanting to be in control, being misled by the actual controller, and then suffering the consequences of being misled. Factually, everyone is misled in the way they want to be misled. If a Prime Minister wants to be flattered, the bureaucracy flatters him. That is the way the bureaucracy sustains its grip on power. Similarly, the way the demigods mislead a person is the way that person wants to be misled. To get out of this deception, one has to reject the proposals of the bureaucrats and compel them to make a new proposal. In so doing, he could regain control.

The Prime Minister’s power lies in selective rejection and acceptance. The Prime Minister loses power if he always accepts the proposals from the bureaucrats. To gain power, he must sometimes reject their proposals. The Prime Minister is not expected to do the job of the bureaucrats. But he has to make the bureaucrats do their job as per his wishes. They are interdependent realities, and yet, the Prime Minister holds power over the bureaucrats. That power doesn’t mean the bureaucrats are mindless machines, nor does it mean that the Prime Minister is a mindless machine. Exactly like that, neither the soul nor the mind-body is a mindless machine. They are just like the Prime Minister and the bureaucrats.

The mind says: “Do this,” and the soul mostly acquiesces—“Yes, of course”. To gain control over the mind, the soul has to sometimes say, “No, of course not”. Then the mind will make another proposal, and the soul could potentially accept that. Thus, there is a power of choice which is exercised by rejecting what the mind says. If the soul always accepts the mind’s dictations, the power of choice is not used.

And yet, since the soul has the power of choice, not using the power is also a choice. The Prime Minister, controlled by the bureaucrats, chooses to remain weak, subservient, and obedient. He was not elected to his role to do so. But if the Prime Minister doesn’t exercise his power of choice, that itself constitutes a choice, after which the Prime Minister (and not the bureaucrat) is responsible even for things that the bureaucrat may have done based on the Prime Minister’s approval, acquiescence, or compliance.

Going against the bureaucracy is hard because the bureaucracy always plays with the Prime Minister’s fears, anxieties, ignorance, hopes, and desires. The bureaucracy makes the Prime Minister think that it is working in the Prime Minister’s interest, when it is only working in its own interest of sustaining its stronghold over the power centers. Similarly, going against the wishes, demands, and whims of the body and mind is very hard. But if we accept these whims, we are in bondage. Liberation means we can go against these whims. Thus, liberation is incredibly hard. At every moment, the body and mind will show their wishes, demands, and whims. If we accept, we are bound; if we reject, we are liberated.

The Working of Consciousness

Acceptance and rejection operate by consciousness moving inward and outward.  Consciousness moves inward during sleep, and it moves outward during waking. The choice of consciousness exists as inward and outward movement (there are actually five kinds of movement—upward, downward, inward, outward, and around, but we will restrict ourselves to just two to keep the discussion simple).

New Age impersonalists talk about a consciousness without will because their idea of consciousness is wakefulness. However, yogic traditions talk about yoga-nidra, the yogic sleep, in which a person is awake from a first-person viewpoint and asleep from a third-person viewpoint. A person sitting in a class, but staring into the blank, is said to be sleeping or daydreaming by the teacher because waking is not really waking if we don’t pay attention to the reality entailed by waking. If we are lost in our imaginary world, we are dreaming while waking. If our minds remain blank while waking, we are actually sleeping.

Consciousness is never devoid of will because it moves, which is called attention. We move our attention from one thing to another, attending to different sensations, thoughts, judgments, and emotions. Even while eating food, our consciousness moves between taste, touch, smell, and sight. Within sight, it moves between color, shape, and size. Within touch, it moves between hardness, heat, and roughness. The consciousness is always moving, never static. And yet, unlike the physicalist conception of matter, it can control its own movement. The movement and the ability to control it constitute will. Denying the will to consciousness is simply ignorance of what consciousness is. Just because the denial is common these days doesn’t mean it is true. Every person can introspect and understand why the claim is false.

The acceptance of the mind is consciousness moving outward and attaching itself to the thoughts created by the mind. The rejection of the mind is consciousness moving inward and detaching itself from the thoughts created by the mind. Since consciousness can attach or detach, there is a power of choice. If we learn to control our conscious movement, we gain power over matter, because regardless of what the mind or the body says, consciousness can withdraw and not listen to what they are saying.

Here is an experiment everyone can do with themselves—withdraw from a thought, and you will find that the thought disappears. If you had stayed with the thought, it might have developed into an action. But if you withdraw from the thought, the thought disappears, and the action never appears. Thus, the power of will is the inward and outward movement of consciousness. We always hold sway over the mind and body if we know how to withdraw. That doesn’t mean we can always control what the mind or the body is doing, but it means that we will not be aware and responsible for those actions.

Benjamin Libet’s Experiments

The principle of choice as rejection was proven by Benjamin Libet in neuroscience experiments when he showed that the brain creates a proposal several milliseconds before the person reports accepting it. Under the Abrahamic concept of free will—i.e., the soul having dominion over matter—a person must report having an idea before it is measured in the brain. Since the opposite was observed, most people interpreted it to mean that the soul has no free will. But Benjamin Libet clarified that we don’t have free will, although we have free won’t, which means the (rarely used) power of rejecting the proposals. We are compliant, subservient, and obedient to the proposals made by the body and the mind, so it seems we have no choice. But the power of choice exists as the capacity to reject the mind-body proposals.

Libet’s experiments pose challenges to the Abrahamic conception of soul and matter, under which the soul controls matter, because they show that our brain produces thoughts before the conscious person becomes aware of them. They pose no challenges to the Vedic conception of soul and matter under which matter controls the soul and matter proposes to the soul which the soul mostly accepts, although in principle, it could also have rejected by withdrawing from that proposal. Therefore, the experimental denial of the Abrahamic conception of free will is not the denial of the Vedic conception of free will. Instead, the experiment proves the basic fact that we are living in bondage rather than freedom.

The Vedic Realization of the Self

Once the basic fact about our bondage is confirmed empirically (through introspection or experiment), we can move toward understanding the spiritual path. The Vedic tradition always teaches how to control the body and mind by rejecting their urges, demands, and proposals. That is called tapa or austerity. The mind-body scream—”I can’t live without this!”. But the sober person says—”Sure, you can; you are living as long as I (the soul) am with you”. By rejecting the demands of the mind-body, they are toughened. They don’t scream as much as before. Over time, they become silent. They know there is no point in screaming to one who doesn’t listen. This sobriety is called dhīra, and the disturbance after the mind-body screaming is called adhīra. Almost everyone at present is adhīra, but through gradual practice, everyone can become dhīra. Becoming sober instead of disturbed is a basic goal of spiritual practice.

Everyone who claims to have free will doesn’t have willpower, which means the capacity to reject the mind-body screams. The mind screams, “Do this!” and we say, “Of course, what choice do I have?” And out of false pride, we say, “I chose to do this,” although deep inside we know we are not in control. We are slaves, puppets, and prisoners of the mind-body, but we pretend to be the masters. The real mastery is to gain control over the mind-body. Before you conquer the world, try to conquer your mind-body. One who has gained this mastery becomes peaceful, satisfied, calm, equipoised, and contented.

Śrīmad Bhagavatam 1.2.21 states: Thus, the knot in the heart is pierced, and all misgivings are cut to pieces. The chain of fruitive actions is terminated when one sees the self as master. The Sanskrit words are dṛṣṭa evātmanīśvare, which means always seeing oneself as the lord of the mind-body. It comes after a long time, which means we become the lord by practice, although we are not the lord right now.

Many people say that we are Brahman, although they cannot tolerate the screaming of the mind and body. We are indeed Brahman and superior to matter, but we have forgotten what we are, and this remembrance has to be attained through practice. In that state, one becomes free of distress, fear, and death. I am the lord, so I will do as I please, which means I will choose whether to be in the body, leave the body, or which body to go to next. The body doesn’t control me. I control the body. If the body screams, I will just leave it for another body.

The Vedic Realization of God

This is liberation, self-realization, or self-mastery. It is the beginning of spiritual understanding. As one realizes how he is free of lust, anger, greed, pride, envy, and confusion, he realizes the true nature of the self, and then he slowly realizes the true nature of God, in analogy to himself, i.e., free of lust, anger, greed, pride, envy, and confusion. Without self-realization, there can be no God realization. Instead, those under lust, anger, greed, pride, envy, and confusion impute these attributes to God. For example, they hypothesize that just as they are envious of others, God must be envious of other gods. They postulate that just because they have lust and greed for worship, so God must be lusty and greedy for worship. The religion created by a soul under material bondage always increases material bondage, which means one following it becomes more lusty, greedy, angry, proud, envious, and confused.

God is always happy in Himself, but He wants the pleasure of living with other self-satisfied individuals. That is because happiness and pleasure are not the same thing. Happiness is about what we are, and pleasure is about what we have. Happiness depends on the self, while pleasure depends on others. When we are happy with ourselves, we don’t need others. We may interact with them for their benefit, but it is not long-lasting. The eternally lasting interaction is when others are also self-satisfied.

The self-satisfied person serves others, while the self-dissatisfied person dominates others. Those who try to dominate the world are unhappy with themselves. They try to compensate for their unhappiness with pleasure. However, those who serve are served, and those who dominate are dominated. By associating with the self-satisfied, we learn the meaning of self-satisfaction—i.e., being happy with who we are, relishing our own existence, and working for others’ benefit. If we can become self-satisfied, then we can understand God—happy with Himself, relishing His own existence, and working for the benefit of others. Without the association of the self-satisfied, there is neither self-realization nor God-realization. Instead, one projects his ideas of imperfection onto the self-realized and God-realized personalities, but because he remains self-dissatisfied, his projections also keep changing, which is called evolving religions.

Prescription for a Degraded Age

In this age, we cannot control our minds and bodies. We can’t even fathom the meaning of yoga-nidra, or awake from the first-person viewpoint and asleep from the third-person viewpoint. Hence, it is advised that we become a selfless servant of God through His selfless servants. Some might say that we don’t know a selfless servant of God, so how can we become a selfless servant of God? The answer is that when we sincerely want to become a selfless servant of God, we automatically find other selfless servants of God who teach us how to become a selfless servant of God. We have to show the inclination and desire to be a selfless servant of God before we will find other selfless servants in proportion to our selflessness.

We prefer what we are. Hence, if we are selfless, we prefer those who are selfless. Then the vision of the selfless servants of God also comes automatically. In proportion to our selflessness, a genuine person automatically comes into our life, and we recognize that person as genuine because we are genuine. If we are fakers, the mind prefers a faker just like oneself, and is misled by the fakery. Therefore, change in the self is always the cause of lasting change in our world. The change in the world is seldom, if ever, a cause of the change in the self because we reject changes in the world contrary to our own nature.

To bring that change in the self, we have to understand how we are living in bondage, how that bondage is controlled, what real freedom is, how to attain that freedom, and the state of the individual living in that freedom. In short, everything begins with education. Without education, there are a million false alternatives, but none of those persist. Or, they simply pretend to persist by continuously evolving and modifying themselves. They were self-dissatisfied before, and they will be self-dissatisfied after.

But if one finds a selfless servant of God, he must become a selfless servant of that servant. In that mood of servitude, one humbly associates with the selfless servant and understands how he is self-satisfied, and by analogy, how God is self-satisfied. By service, the selfless servant of God reveals to his servant the nature of God. It is not a theoretical idea; it is practically seen in the teacher’s day-to-day life. Thus, it is said that by the grace of such devotees, God is known, and without the grace of such devotees, God is never known. The yogic process of self-mastery is very hard. But someone else can lift us, if we agree to be controlled by them. The choice is either to be controlled by a servant of God or to be controlled by the mind and the body. There is no freedom, as a fool imagines. The choice is to serve the servant of God, or stay in bondage of the mind and body. God and His servants are not interested in the so-called freedom-loving self-serving individuals. They can figure out their life’s problems on their own. If one wants to be lifted from their condition, they have to selflessly serve the selfless servants of God.

Liberation Can’t Deny Demigods

There are misconceptions about the role of demigods for the liberated person, too, perpetuated by the impersonalists. They claim that for a liberated person, the demigods are simply illusions. This false claim never explains how our bodies and minds were working while we were in bondage, so they have no clue how they keep working after we are liberated. The fact is that the demigods never give up control over the body. However, their reign over our mind-body can be serving or dominating. The demigods serve the self-satisfied and dominate the self-dissatisfied. The reign of the demigods is neither good nor bad by itself. It depends on whether that control serves or dominates the soul. Demigods can do both.

Those who serve God selflessly are served by the demigods because they, too, are servants of God. The mind-body of a pure servant of God is his servant. The pure servant of God doesn’t feel oppressed by his body and mind because the demigods are serving rather than dominating him. Therefore, it appears that the pure servant of God has conquered his body and mind. But it is not a conquest because the mind-body still works under the control of demigods, who are empowered to control the body and the mind. And yet, because the demigods become his servants rather than masters, it appears that the devotee of God has conquered the mind and body. The devotees of God realize free will, i.e., absolute autonomy over the mind and body. And yet, they are never proud of their achievement. Others, who try to gain control over the mind and the body, are always in a battle against demigod control. They sometimes gain control, and that makes them proud, which often becomes the cause of their eventual downfall.

Most people who talk about yoga at present think that they will gain mastery over their mind and body. They don’t know that their supposed mastery means the subservience of the more powerful demigods. Why would a more powerful person become subservient? There is one answer—the person becomes an unalloyed devotee of God. And thus, yogic mastery is attained only by the servants of God. Everyone else pretending to control the mind-body is fighting a losing battle. They have no idea how powerless they are in contrast to demigods. Impersonalism, Abrahamic ideologies, and Jungian psychology have made them believe that they can be masters of their mind and body, or that they are the only tenant living in the mind-body, although they cannot explain how this mind-body works without their intervention.

Free Will is a Difficult Subject

Thus, the question of free will is quite involved. It begins by realizing that we have almost no control over the mind-body, and it culminates in the realization that the only way to gain that control is to become a pure servant of God. The former is bondage and the latter is liberation. There is no damnation or salvation. Freedom is not a birthright. In fact, almost everyone at present is born a slave, lives as a slave, and dies a slave, unless he becomes a devotee of God. The slave thinks that his freedom means others’ slavery because he has no idea about real freedom. The slave invents fictions about being born free, endowed with God-given rights, while he spends his life denying the same fictions and rights for others. The true devotees of God have no business with these man-made fictions or their lifelong denials. They begin by teaching how everyone is a slave and then enunciate the path of freedom by serving God.

All these ideas were quite well-known earlier. The present confusion on free will is created by Abrahamic religions, Western philosophy, and modern science, under which man is born free to rule the world. Thus, free will means man controlling nature, animals, and other men. Then the impersonalists imagine that they can get out of this controlling mindset through renunciation, but they have no way to lift themselves. The formerly practiced yogic processes are too hard for this age. And yet, they imagine that by philosophy and yoga, they will attain liberation. Their failure is entailed by the preeminence of the demigods over the mind and body, and by their rejection of the selfless servants of God as people living in the delusion of giving the formless a definite form. Then there are New Age religions in which truth, beauty, and justice exist within us, and everyone is free to create their own version of these. Some New Age religions try to separate consciousness from free will; for them, consciousness means observation, including of will, as will is not a basic trait of each person. They think that they shall become free of the mind and body bondage simply by observing how they are working. Their failure is entailed by the fact that if we keep observing, the consciousness is sucked into the observed, and comes under its control. Finally, there is materialism in which nature is governed by deterministic laws, and if these deterministic laws prove inadequate, then nature must be random. Either way, we can’t do anything about it. It’s very hard to count all the misconceptions.

Undoing all these misconceptions is hard, but it can be done by each individual undertaking a deep study of the central problem of life, namely, that we are living in bondage of the mind and body. Instead, most people spend their time perpetuating the bondage by obediently serving the mind and body, or thinking that they were born to rule the world, or that they will get out of bondage by some bodily exercises, or that they will attain liberation simply by observing the bondage, or if these are not possible, life must be lived helplessly under material control. Ignorance is the root of all bondage; we believe in falsehoods, and that perpetuates the bondage. It is not that knowledge is impossible. It is just that we perpetuate our bondage by rejecting or neglecting the process of knowledge.