Page 33 - All India Magazine Jun-2026

Ways of the Supreme Wisdom

The double illusion
"The Supreme Consciousness... gives to the individual in the
active life of the world his sense of freedom and independence
and initiative. These things in him are Her pragmatic tools or
devices and it is through this machinery that the movements
and issues planned and foreseen elsewhere are realised here."
Questions and Answers 1929-1931 (28 April 1929)

These "things in him", that is in the individual, are: the sense of
freedom, independence and initiative. You know what indepen-
dence is? It is precisely the freedom of choice. Independence
means the freedom of choice and initiative means the fact of
choosing. First of all, one feels that one is free; and then one
feels that no one can prevent him from choosing; and finally
one uses his freedom to choose and one decides. These are the
three stages. So these three stages: the feeling that you are
free, the idea that you are going to use your freedom for choos-
ing and then the choice — these three things I call the pragmatic
tools and devices.
I am sorry, my children, all this is said in a form a little too
philosophical which I do not now approve of very much. I was
obliged to speak a language which now appears to me a little
too complicated. But what is to be done, it was like that. I was
saying that these three things, the feeling of freedom, the will to
choose and the choice made are the devices that Nature uses in
us to make us act, otherwise we would not move.
If we did not have this illusion that we are free, this second
illusion that we can use our freedom for choosing and the third
illusion of choosing, well, we would not move. So Nature gives
us these three illusions and makes us move, for she requires us
to move.

All India Magazine, June 2026 33