It is strange how, in spite of many well-meaning human beings and their impact, there is widespread unhappiness and lack of care towards people of low economic status, not to speak of the social callousness and violence. There is also the abominable destruction of the environment. One of the basic causes for this sorrowful state of humanity is the unconscious living driven by the conditioned mind. Realizing its poison and freeing oneself from that robotic functioning can produce wonderful life for the individual and so for the humanity at large. It would be interesting to explore into it and so, in the process, discover each one for oneself the richness of life ensuing from inner freedom. As the child grows in an atmosphere of its family and society, two primary emotions govern the child’s psychology, namely desire and fear. This, coupled with the fact that people around are already functioning in a conditioned state, results in the child’s mind being pulled into the vortex of similar conditioning. That has been the human situation from time immemorial. Two other factors, subtler than the one considered above, also cause conditioning:
Genetic conditioning: The neurological factors that worked in the minds of one’s forefathers (and ‘foremothers’ too!) get transmitted to the child and influences the child’s thinking.
Past-life conditioning: The soul carries with it memories of past-lives in connection with the individual’s psychological evolution. This also influences thought at the neurological levels.
The conditioned mind may have fantastic experiences but it remains unaware that those are all merely its own projections. They have nothing to do with the truth at the source of all things. That is why people who have a glimpse of truth by going through NDE or OBE are unable to give proper verbal expressions to it.
All these bring us to the question: Where does free-will play a role? The only psychological state that is free and untouched by the past is the simple self-awareness. It is the state of mind that can be referred to as the non-interfering witness. That state is free from being influenced by any conditioning. When that aliveness is there, the conditioned reaction is modified and one’s response is imbued with compassion rather than be merely controlled by the past. To think that free-will implies that one can take any decision one wants, uninfluenced by one’s conditioning, is to be ignorant of the secret powers of past residues.
As awareness deepens, it begins to dissolve the conditioning thereby allowing the Inner Being to permeate one’s daily life. When this process is complete, the conditioning does not interfere except in purely practical affairs, and that is the state of Enlightenment. It is then that the illusion of being a separate individual ( the ego) vanishes. Connectedness with all beings is realized. This connectedness is often experienced by people who taste the universal consciousness for a short time under NDE. We become less disturbed by others' faults and shortcomings, and by our own too.
For those to whom the puzzle of freeing oneself from the mental conditioning is an intriguing one, life offers circumstances to discover the truth that remains forever unknown to the conditioned mind.
Related matters are covered in the website http://spirituality.yolasite.com