Don’t Bet on Results (Take 2)

We have no choice actually! We can never know enough to bet on the results (of our actions)….

We had already talked about this very topic under Karma yoga, but let’s take a look from a different viewpoint.  Earlier it was more about the incompleteness of the information available, but here we look at all that needs to happen, information-wise, to be able to see future.  In a way, to know the result is to be able to see the future…  

The second word from the fifth niyama – Īśvara Prāṇidhāna – ties into this tenet of don’t bet on results.  The word, Prāṇidhāna, itself means support, foundation or drawing support from, …, surrender at our beginner level.  Basically,  surrender to Īśvara is the means to not obsess about the results;  something as simple as that.    

Under Karma Yoga (Tenet 1) contemplation, we focused on how the business of forecasting and predicting results is dangerous; in that connection, Krishna tells Arjuna not to hark upon such futile exercises.  Turning it around, can anyone, even an adept or a rishi, see the future completely and accurately?  The simple answer is a NO, but their intuition would be a lot lot better than mine at least. 

Also, to see future accurately is to preclude free-will. Because future results include our future actions, and if the result is given, actions of all the subjects involved between now and then are fixed!  Then, where’s free-will?  Yoga philosophy subscribes to free-will.  Even though Karma dominates through unconscious automated responses, awakened subjects can overcome through directed effort.  Vasistha describes the importance of self-effort to Rama in detail, in Yoga Vasistha.

Let’s take it a step further – why didn’t Krishna simply tell Arjuna that he is going to win, and therefore he should get up and fight?  Wouldn’t that have saved a lot of energy for everyone?  Krishna makes a very insightful statement in that – I have no favorites, but even I am participating in this war for the sake of my own dharma… 

Let’s take a look at it from a different point of view:  from a physics perspective,  at any given time, the possibilities for the future are distributed among infinite pathways, in a probabilistic sense.  This is famously described by Schrodinger as a paradox – Schrodinger’s cat or Cat in a (closed) box thought experiment; in that example, a hypothetical cat is enclosed in a box with no food or water.  In that scenario, we wouldn’t know if the cat is dead or alive for sure, at any moment.  Hence, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time in the present moment, and remains like that until the box  is opened to make an observation.  For simplicity, those are two possibilities (quantum states)  that exist simultaneously until an observation is made.  When the box is opened, these quantum states collapse into a single state (observation of live or dead), which gets entangled with the observer.   That’s a simple case with just two possibilities (bifurcated), while reality is multifurcated.  Fundamental particles such as electrons are like that proverbial Schrodinger’s cats – they act in superposed states until a measurement is made. 

Now we have an uncountable number of sentient and insentient beings, in boxes of their own, waiting to be observed, one moment at a time…  Not only that, each observation (quantum state collapse) impacts all other observations and future events, through entanglements.  Now we can see the enormity of what it takes to be able see the future.  Knowing that future itself impacts that very future ~ a slightly more bizarre way of saying it.  In a nutshell, it is this entanglement aspect that makes it impossible to see the future completely and accurately – even for adepts. 

Here’s a simpler example  – let’s say a psychic tells me that I am going to drop a hammer on my foot on Monday of the next week.    Now, I completely avoid even opening my tool box on that day, and stay away from anything that even remotely looks or feels like a hammer.  Even better, I don’t even leave my sofa that day.  At the end, let’s say no hammer fell on my foot.  Now, was the future prediction itself wrong (because there was no hammer-accident), or the prediction was right, but I changed course of the future? How did this changed-future of mine impact others? Hope it didn’t impact those near and dear adversely! Can never tell…  Hence, it is not worth worrying about that which cannot be known.  Hence go do what strikes us as right, preferably for the goal of common good, without worrying about how the results turn out.  It’s the intentions that matter (Tenet 3). 

Each decision/event results in choosing a definitive path among numerous possible paths, and also, my current decision impacts me and others near and dear to me, in the future.  Rishis called this network “Indra-jaala” or “mahendra-jaala” (Indra’s net).  Each node is reflected in all other nodes; we are all nodes in that net.  

Rishis further illustrate this complex aspect by telling stories that demonstrate the futility of “boon seeking” and prayers for I-centered wants.  That is because the boons we seek also reflect all the knowledge gaps we have in our mind.  Looking at another way, our boon would be nothing more than our śānti mantra (sarve jana sukhino bhavantu – may everyone be happy), if we had all the information, including future.  Can you imagine if every thought of ours came true? Scary!

The stories of Hiranyakashyapa and Ravana are the most popular of all that illustrate these points.  For example, Hiranyakashyapa tried to address his own deepest of deep fears, which is his own non-existence (death), through boon-seeking.   His idea was that if he is immortal he can win every war, and world domination is guaranteed. Through meditation/tapas, he achieved those powers that apparently allowed him to overcome the most natural causes and forces of death that he knew of and could think of while asking for that boon.   There are two critical points from that Bhagavata story – what he could not account for are the interfaces for one.  When we say not black and not white – there are infinite shades of gray  in between.  One such intermediate state (a life-form that is between a human and an animal, at the threshold, which neither inside nor outside) brings about his end.  The second aspect is the collateral damage.  In that story, to realize his goal, he even tried to kill his own son…  That is the collateral damage aspect, the second part.  A very instructional story.  Such stories that teach us the futility of I-centered prayers and boons are numerous in Bhagavata – indeed a great compilation of Kundalini stories.  

So knowing the future or having a complete control of it is impossible, and it is not even that important when we look at it from “I am brahman” viewpoint.  Neither is all this commentary – according to yogis, it’s the question asked that is important.  That’s why we don’t discuss too much.  Instead, in yoga tradition, we contemplate…  Yogis implore us to KNOW OUR QUESTIONS, very clearly, by heart.  We don’t necessarily need to have all the answers right now.   But we have to make sure that the actions we undertake are helping us answer our own questions in some way.  It is the questioning that churns our foundation of “lower” knowledge, eventually leading to the “higher” knowledge  – I-to-Self transformation, mortality to immortality (mṛtyor mā amṛtaṃ gamaya)  – through churning-  the path of sāgāra manthana_/\_     

May we all be blessed with a “churned and contemplative” mind_/\_/\_/\_

(bhadraM no apivAtaya manaH)