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Law of Karma
It may be asked that if human nature and character are formed by the Karmas of the men, than, what is the mcaning of saying that the soul is free. The question arises : Is not man bound under the iron grip of his Karmas?
Karma and Freedom
According to Vivekananda, the nature of real man is freedom. But, here freedom has not been conceived as a character or a quality belonging to the soul. It constitutes the very essence of the soul. A quality is something different from that to which it belongs. but freedom does not belong to the soul. The soul is freedom.
Vivekananda also believes in the Law of Karna. He, like ancient thinkers, believes that man performs his actions out of ignorance. He, somehow or the other, forgets his own real nature and fails to discriminate between the real and unreal nature. Consequently, he acts under the dominance of wrong and false notions. Such actions, according to Swami Vivekananda, creates tendencies or Saṁskārās, which determine man's future nature. Now, a doubt arises as to how man's determining character and freedom can exist at the same time? If man's entire personality and actions are determined by his own Karmı tendencies, then nan should be undoubtedly determined. Hence, how can we say that freedom constitutes man's real nature ?
Vivekananda is aware of this problem. So, le solves this problem in a number of ways. Firstly, he says that freedom does not mean absence of all kinds of determining factors. In that case freedom would be a state of chaos. Truly speaking, freedom does not mean ‘no determination'. It means 'selfdetermination', which means that a free agent is determined not by anything else but by himself. If karma and freedom are understood in such a way, these two do not remain incompatible with each other. Man's karmas determine his nature but they are his own karmas. His own actions create tendencies that bear fruit for the future.
Secondly, karmas do not contradict man's freedom, because final escape of man rests upon man's own actions again. By his
