Ramesh Balsekar, drawing from the Advaita tradition, offers a profound perspective on the nature of free will. He asserts that free will is ultimately an illusion, a notion arising from the mistaken identification with a separate self or ego. According to his teachings, the sense of being an independent doer—the one who makes choices and directs actions—is itself a conceptual overlay, born from the belief in personal agency.

Balsekar emphasizes that all actions and events, including human decisions, are manifestations of the totality of existence, sometimes referred to as cosmic consciousness or divine will. The body-mind organism, shaped by genetics, conditioning, and environment, acts as an instrument through which this cosmic functioning unfolds. What appears as personal volition is, in fact, the spontaneous response of this mechanism to circumstances, with no autonomous “person” inside making choices.

The analogy of a river flowing is illustrative of Balsekar’s view: just as water follows its course according to the terrain and natural laws, so too do human actions arise naturally from the interplay of circumstances and conditioning. The belief in free will is sustained by the ego’s sense of “I-ness,” which assumes authorship over actions, yet this is a misunderstanding of the true nature of reality.

Recognizing this, Balsekar points out, dissolves the burden of personal guilt, pride, and responsibility. When it is seen that life is simply happening through the individual rather than being controlled by them, the illusion of personal doership falls away. In this light, the individual is not separate from the universe but is an inseparable expression of the totality, with all actions predetermined by the impersonal flow of existence.