FREE WILL VERSUS DIVINE WILL : Part 1 of 4

FREE WILL VERSUS DIVINE WILL

The following is an imaginary no-holds-barred Conversation IN FOUR PARTS among three people, namely,

‘DFW’, standing for ‘Disciple who holds Free Will is everything’,   ‘DDW’, standing for ‘Disciple who holds Divine Will is everything’ and  ‘TD’, standing for a ‘Third Disciple who holds that it is neither this nor that exclusively’.

But as the conversation proceeds, one will find their original convictions gradually change.

Part 1 of 4

DFW: Free will is essential for reward and punishment; otherwise anyone would do anything they wish and say "it was God's will, don't blame me!"

DDW: Ah, but that is not quite a correct viewpoint because, you are cheating. God's will has been expressed in the various Shrutis, Gita, Upanishads, Bible and what have you, and if you follow those actions, you can claim to be doing God's will, otherwise you cannot claim to act in God’s way.

DFW: Hold on, even my acting contrary to the scriptures is being done by God, right? So I don't understand your distinguishing some actions from others.

DDW: True, but even the consequences of the actions against Him will have been described in the scriptures. They are available for all to see.

TD: I think you are both taking extreme positions. If man did not have free will to attempt to do his will, Veda statements like ‘satyam vada’ (Speak the truth) and ‘dharmam cara’ (Act according to dharma) would lose all their meaning. So I am not prepared to agree with DDW. But what DDW says that it is finally Divine will that expresses itself is correct.

DDW. Then how can you also agree with DFW?

TD: That is the tricky point. Without the implied choice of action implied in statements like satyam vada and dharmam cara we can go nowhere. Man is free to act in the way his tendencies (vAsanAs) take him. Man is also free to resist the bad vAsanAs and act in a way which will purify his mind and rid it of the dirt accumulated therein.

DDW: Then why are the scriptures repeatedly professing that it is all divine will? “mayaivaite nihatAH pUrvameva ..” (‘All these people have been killed by me already ...’) says Krishna in the eleventh chapter of his Gita.

DFW. That quote is exactly what confuses me.

TD: Maybe Krishna is talking to an enlightened person!

DFW: But Arjuna was not enlightened – at least, at that point. But wait. What do you say to such expressions in our shAstras: “Neither Hari (Vishnu) nor Hara (Shiva) can erase what is written on your forehead”? (hariNApi hareNApi brahmaNApi surairapi; lalATa-likhitA rekhA parimarshTuM na shakyate) Does it not say that the so-called fate that overrules you is dominant? And is not Fate the same as Divine Will?

DDW: Are you, DFW, arguing for me now?

TD: Both of you are confusing me now! Let us go about it systematically. That Fate you are talking about is the prArabdha karma. It is the portion of our past karma which has started taking effect in this birth of ours and it is this facet of our life where neither God nor anybody can  intervene.

DDW: But that would limit the Almighty’s all-mightiness!

TD: Here I am with you. To limit His own all-mightiness is His own Will!.

DDW: Let us come back now to Free Will and Divine Will. If prArabdha is so dominant again you come only to my view. Nothing can change God’s Will!

DFW: But we have still to answer the question about the choice of action that TD raised.

TD. That is why I said we have to proceed systematically. The choice of action is there so long as you believe ‘I am the doer’. Krishna says “Only the man overpowered by his ego thinks he is the doer” (B.G. 3rd chapter).

DFW: You have now brought in a third belief – namely whether one is the doer or not. But if I am not the doer and God is the doer, then is He not responsible for all my bad thoughts and bad actions?

TD: He is not responsible even for your good thoughts and good actions.

DDW: Wait, wait. You are contradicting my theory of Divine Will totally and I thought you earlier said that you agreed with me.

TD: There are stages of evolution in a man’s life – in fact, several lives. There is a stage when we have to grant free will. That is the stage when you are either a growing child either in the physical plane or in the spiritual plane. You cannot tell a high school student that it is all divine will; then there is no purpose in asking him to make effort at his education.

DFW: But even assuming that at the adult stage of a better spiritual evolution, to believe it is some other Power within us, other than our egoism, that it is the doer and the experiencer, is only fatalism. I would not like to grant that Hinduism or Vedanta is all fatalism.

TD: Your equating the fact that there is another Power within us with Fatalsim is not correct. The recognition of this other Power within us is the first step towards our spiritual evolution.

DDW: What can this other Power within us be except God?

DFW: But that contradicts your earlier statement that God is not responsible for any of our actions either good or bad!

TD: This other Power within us is not God. It is our own individualised PrakRti (SvabhAva – our own nature) for which we are ourselves the architect, by means of the way we thought and lived in all our past lives and also in this life up to the present.

DDW: But I have never heard of this concept of ‘individualised prakRti’ that you are using.

TD: In Gita Ch.3, shloka No.33 the Lord says that even the wise man does work according to his prakRti. Acharya Shankara, in commenting on this, writes: ‘PrakRti is nothing but the accumulated samskAras of our past lives individualised and earmarked for this life of ours’. The sanskrit word ‘prakRta’ (from which ‘prakRti’ is derived) means ‘currently in vogue’.

DDW: But why is God causing people to behave the way they do in these times? How can you account for the fact that the world is in such a mess? Why is every one now immersed in thinking only of themselves and not the greater good? Why is this play?

DFW: You said it right. It all looks like a deliberate play. In fact, I would say that if the theory of play is right, then God must be a sadist!

TD: No, no. Not that way. It is a play alright, but that is what is termed in the PurANas as God’s LeelA. That requires a lot of faith to go in that direction. Let us pursue the trend of our conversation in the way we started it. First God is not causing people to behave the way they do. It is the people who behave that way. That itself tells you that people have the freewill to do what they want to do. This free will God has granted man.

DFW: At last you are veering to my viewpoint!

TD: Don’t be too assured. Of course God has granted freewill to us both to obey His orders like ‘satyam vada’ and ‘dharmam cara’ and also to disobey them.

DDW: That is what I call the play of the Divine.

DFW: But then God must be foolish to play that dangerous game.

DDW: Your choice of words ‘dangerous game’ reminds me of what Sathya Sai Baba once replied to a devotee. The devotee asked him, while they were walking along the shores of the Arabian Sea, ‘Lord, if you are capable of doing all those miracles for which you are known, why don’t you change this entire sea into a sea of petrol and thus solve the problem of scarcity of oil-fuel in the world?’. Sathya Sai Baba immediately replied: ‘But then I cannot guarantee that no crazy human being like you would not throw a lighted cigarette into that sea!’.

TD: The moral of the story is: Even God cannot guarantee that man will not behave in an animal way. And that proves that Man has free will!

DFW: Oh Good! Daniel come to judgement!

DDW: But then where does all this lead us?

TD: It leads to our starting point. It is not all black and white. It is a spectrum of colours. The answer to the dilemma depends upon three factors. 1. The situation or the action that we are talking about. 2. Level of spiritual evolution of the individual concerned. 3. Degree of willingness to stand apart and surrender the ego.

DDW. I am sure on the third factor the generality of us may be taken to be at the base level.

TD. To simplify the discussion I am willing to assume, for the present, that with respect to the second factor – spiritual evolution also – we are almost at the base level. Once we do that, we come back to the child level of spiritual evolution, which we have already discussed. At this level, it is Free will that is considered to be dominant in the psychology of the individual concerned. But this is only the beginning. But when we start moving up the ladder of spiritual evolution, our factor levels get a gradual relaxation.

DFW: Do you mean then that what is dominant is different at different times of the life of an individual?

DDW: If I heard TD right, I thought he said: ‘in the psychology of the person concerned’.

TD: Yes, when we start moving up the spiritual ladder our mental make-up changes.

DDW: Yes, we gradually begin to understand how when a jnAni is acting, actually he is not doing any action because he has no identification with his body, mind and intellect. But such understanding also generates new confusions in one’s mind. The Gita verse which specifically refers to this ‘inaction in action’ also in the same breath refers to ‘action in inaction’. While not acting how can one do action?

DFW: When the train moves, the landscape moves in the opposite direction. The child thinks that it is the landscape that is moving and the train is stationary. Even we adults get this mistaken feeling when two trains are in adjacent platforms ready to move in opposite directions. Suddenly we feel that the other train has already moved, but on examination of the changing landscape between the two trains we understand that it is our train that has started moving and not the other train. This is the understanding of action in apparent inaction. To attribute non-action to the Self which stands still as it were is only to comprehend it relatively. It is the Self which permeates everywhere, it is the substratum of everything and it is the prime mover par excellence. The Self is therefore the chief agent of action, as it were, though it appears to be only a silent witness. Thus the wise man sees action in non-action.

DDW: Hey, DFW, Are you not advocating my cause that it is all God’s will that is taking place?

DFW: Well, TD has said just now that our moods change. Maybe my mood has changed! But shall we get back to the earlier trend of the conversation? TD, you said that as we move up the ladder of spiritual perfection, our factor levels change. Can you continue that thought a little further?

TD: As we move up the ladder of spiritual understanding, for some of us the first shock arises when we begin to realise that, in addition to the limitations of parentage, sex and environment, there are other limitations also. Very often we blame it on our ill-luck if, after all our efforts, we don’t achieve what we want to achieve. Slowly it dawns on us that what and how we will, there is something else that wills it otherwise. If we can find a scapegoat of an earthly person or cause we blame it on them. But when we don’t find such a cause, we are at a dead end for explanations. And then it is that the concept of prArabdha karma seems to make sense. And we realise that prArabdha could also be another name for ill-luck. Why ill luck? Even for good luck also, on which we put so much faith, prArabdha could be the other name!

DFW: But when we reach, as you say, a stage where we look upward for the hand of God to help us out of our problems, do we really believe that God can change things for us?

DDW: What else does it mean to look upward for the hand of God?

TD: I think DFW is asking “Shall we trust God totally? Or shall we take it that He gives just a hand?”

DDW: That is a dilemma that I have never got through.

TD: I think almost all of us go through this dilemma most of our lives vacillating between extremes. The intensity of this vacillation depends on our mood and environment. It is also a function of the company we keep and the amount of pressure from our peers.

DDW: Oh yes. It also depends on what somebody just said to me and walked away. You allow this DFW to be talking to you continuously, your mood will change.

DFW: Hey, DDW, it is the same thing with me when you keep reeling off your quotes from authorities and scriptures!

TD: Well, it is nobody’s fault. It is in our nature. The company we keep, our kith and kin as well as the attachment we have to all of them influence largely the opinions we have and only magnifies the dilemma about whether to believe in God totally or not.

DFW: In fact, I have a fundamental question in that connection. If you believe in a supernatural interventionist God who comes to your help when you pray to Him, how do you explain the umpteen situations when He does not intervene?

DDW: Oh Boy! That is a deep question. May be we should sit back and think about it.

(To be continued)