Isvara's Omnipotence and freewill

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Dear Friends,

 

"f. maiello" <egodust wrote

 

" here's a compelling way to push the question to its

limits...provoking a radical discovery:

 

abandoning the question whether man has free will,

what about God (brahman)? does God have free will?

 

free will for God implies the responsibility of

having to choose on infinite matters--could this

signify a state of freedom? conversely, the lack

of free will would inevitably deliver the prison

of boredom.

 

if God were truly all-knowing, He couldn't be all

powerful, simply because He wouldn't have the power

to alter the course of what He knew would eventuate.

thus omnipotence and omniscience are incompatible.

 

therefore the attempted resolution of the matter of

fate vs free will, becomes the dog chasing its tail.

 

true freedom therefore can only lie in mystery.

liberation is liberation from the need to reduce

the wonder of Life to a manageable reasonableness."

 

I would like to clarify a few things here. In our shastras Isvara's

omnipotence is not talked in terms of the capacity to do what one likes and

to not do what one does'nt like. If Isvara also is subjected to likes and

dislikes he will also become a Samsari. Thats why the shastras say that

Isvara created this world in keeping with Karmas of the Jivas. There is no

like or dislike involved here. Where there is no like or dislike there is no

necessity of freewill. One spontaneously does what is to be done. Thats what

Isvara does by creating the world.

 

Then why do we say that Isvara is omnipotent? Since Isvara is capable of

creating, sustaining and destroying this world we say that Isvara is

ominpotent. Not because he can do whatever he likes. If one understands this

then there is no conflict between Omniscience and omnipotence.

 

My Guru would say

 

'To give up your free-will is real freedom,

Freedom is not achieved by free-will,

Freedom is inspite of free-will'.

 

I think this whole discussion of whether there is free-will or not is going

on because people confuse the absolute reality with day to day life. In day

to day life as long as individuality is there free-will has to be accepted.

Otherwise there cannot be any responsibility and there need not be any

courts and laws. We dont accept that animals have free-will like we have.

Thats why when a dog bites someone, the owner of the dog is sued and not the

dog itself. Also if freewill is not accepted all religions which talk about

going to heaven based on the good deeds done in this life will become

meaningless. Further even the effort to gain Moksha cannot be there and we

have to say Isvara bestows goodies to people arbitrarily or that he is

subjected to likes and dislikes, both of which we cannot accept. So on the

basis of this we have to say that freewill is as real as our individuality

is.

 

Now in Vedanta when we are examining the reality of the individuality,

freewill has to be understood as mithya along with the individuality. So

when bhagavan talks about karma, Karta and Purushartha (Free-will) in the

Gita we have to see the context and understand the meaning accordingly. We

cannot conclude that the Gita is contradictory by taking statements out of

context. This is why a Guru who knows the traditional teaching methodology

is required if one has to study texts like Bhagavad Gita.

 

with love and prayers,

 

Jaishankar.

 

 

 

 

 

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