Does Man Have Free Will?

Let me help you find an answer to the question through this exercise.  Imagine you are in one of your dreams.  Within the dream, let us say, you decide to drive your car to pick up a friend to go for hiking in a nearby mountain.  So in your dream consciousness you make a decision to drive your car, you make a decision to pick up your friend, you  make a decision to go to this particular mountain, and you make a decision to go for hiking.  while hiking you come across this ferocious tiger, who starts chasing you until you decide to jump off this cliff.  Knowing that death is near, you wake up and thank God that it was just a dream.  Now, let me ask you if you really made all those decisions witin the dream or the dream story was played upon you, and you were merely a witness.  Did you have any free will during the dream?  Of course you did.  You took all those decisions out of your own free will.  But only when you stepped outside of the dream realm, you realized that you really did not have any free will as the story was unfolding from your subconscious impressions and you did not have any choice in any of those decisions.  That said, within the dream if you did not exercise your "free will" nothing could have happened.

In the holy Bhagvad Gita here is one verse that supports my above assertion:

प्रकृतेः क्रियमाणानि गुणैः कर्माणि सर्वशः ।
अहङ्कारविमूढात्मा कर्ताहमिति मन्यते ॥ ३-२७॥

Modes of material nature are doing all the actions but due to the delusive false ego, the individual soul thinks he is the doer.  Here is a second verse:

ईश्वरः सर्वभूतानां हृद्देशेऽर्जुन तिष्ठति ।
भ्रामयन्सर्वभूतानि यन्त्रारूढानि मायया ॥ १८-६१॥

Sitting in the heart of every being, God causes all beings to move about as if they are mounted on a machine.

However, until you wake up from this dream or attain self realization, if you do not take right decisions, and are not engaged in right actions in a selfless way, your actions will be the cause of your pain and pleasure and you will have to undergo its consequences.  However, exercising your free will to act without attachment to the fruit (karma yoga) will purify your mind and will lead you toward liberation or freedom is the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita.