Volume
Vol. 14, The Smiling Forehead
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Free Will and Destiny
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Personal Will
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Vol. 14, The Smiling Forehead
Free Will and Destiny
Personal Will
The power an individual is acquainted with is the power of his free will -- or he arrives to experience that his free will is clashing against the free will of another individual. Then he begins to see the clashing between the free will of two persons. If he happens to be powerful he gets the better of the situation; if the other happens to be more powerful then the other gets the better of it. And when they come to think about destiny the one who is slow in believing will say, "I do not know..." but a man with some belief in things of the abstract will say that there is a destiny. He has every proof to convince himself of it.
There are many clever and qualified people in business, in professions, in politics, but their cleverness or qualification is not always the reason why they are successful. Very often we will find that a simple person, a person lacking cleverness or lacking qualification is successful. It is not always the rule but very often it is so: a most innocent person in a very high position, and a most clever person perhaps working as his waiter. People in high offices may have a secretary who knows more than they themselves -- if not always, very often. And when we ask, "Why does that person stand here with all his cleverness while the other sits in the chair of honor? What is the reason?" The answer is that destiny is working behind it all, fixing them and adjusting them in their places. There is a saying in the East: "The feet of the infant are to be seen from its cradle." In other words, what it is going to be you can see from the cradle; it shows signs which promise its future.
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