A Sweet Paradox - Free Will and God’s Will

suchandra · January 29, 2008

Looks like the Vaishnavas are gradually reconquering the internet from the demons and use it to spread transcendental knowledge. Wise decision - using the internet for sinful activity should be banned.

A Sweet Paradox - Free Will And God’s Will

By: H. Tadeu Souza

http://hsouza.com/?p=81

Haribol!

Dear friends, Krsna is so merciful to me that he has brought me to your association so you inspire me to dig deeper into the scriptures and understand Krsna from different angles.

This morning I opened the Gita and I read a verse (not by coincidence) that perhaps might be the answer to your unanswered question, the purport is very beautifully but I’ll only copy part of it because it’s too long.

B.G: 13.23

“Yet in this body there is another, a transcendental enjoyer, who is the Lord, the supreme proprietor, who exist as the overseer and the permitter, and who is known as the Supersoul.”

Purport:

The fact is that every individual living entity is eternally part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, and both of them are very intimately related as friends. But the living entity HAS THE TENDENCY TO REJECT THE SANCTION OF THE SUPREME LORD AND ACT INDEPENDENTLY IN AN ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NATURE, and because he has this tendency he is called the marginal energy of the Supreme Lord. The living entity can be situated either in the material energy or in the spiritual energy, the Supreme Lord, as his friend, the Supersoul, stays with him just to get him to return to the spiritual energy. THE LORD IS ALWAYS EAGER TO TAKE HIM BACK TO THE SPIRITUAL ENERGY, BUT DUE TO HIS MINUTE INDEPENDENCE THE INDIVIDUAL ENTITY IS CONTINUALLY REJECTING THE ASSOCIATION OF SPIRITUAL LIGHT. This misuse of independence is the cause of this material strife in the conditioned nature.

——

According to the verse in the Gita, I think this is pretty self explanatory and we could understand this padarox we where discussing last night, of free-will versus god’s-will is there and exists simultaneously, because, within our own bodies, this paradox lives, according to the sastras (vedic scriptures) there are 2 souls simultaneously living within one’s heart, our own soul called “atma” and the Supersoul called “Paramatma” sometimes they are compared to 2 birds living within a golden cage, the cage being the heart, one bird, the atma, is constantly looking outwards, away from the Paramatma bird, thus ignoring it, and singing it’s own song, therefore unable to listen to the other bird, the Paramatma bird is constantly looking at his friend the “atma” and constantly chanting one song, “hare-krsna” hoping that his beloved friend will one day turn to him and chant with him so they can rejoice together.

So, if this 2 birds live in our hearts, then both of their wills are constantly interacting, God’s-will and free-will, it was god’s will to give us free will to begin with, and it was in our exercising of this own free-will that we decided to turn away from him, and become the “enjoyer” so we landed on this planet to “enjoy material nature” but Krsna is our friend, and he never abandons us, so he comes as Paramatma in our hearts and is constantly making the arrangements so that we might make the conscious decision to become his servants and therefore achieve spiritual liberation, he point to the right path, by introducing us to his Devotees, but we decide to take this path or not, he will keep on trying, over and over again until our stubborn minds surrender unto him.

Today when I went for “Japa walk” at the beach, I experienced a Paradox in nature, when I left the house I looked outside the window and it was sunny so I did not bring my jacket and umbrella, then, once I was at the beach, I felt on my face some rain drops and the heat of the sun, both simultaneously, How can I experience sun and rain at the same time? Has this ever happen to you? a sunny rain? it is puzzleling but sometimes it happens, most of the time, when it rains we are not aware of the sun because it is covered by the clouds that could be compared to Maya, the clouds are there, Maya is there, it’s all we can see, but beyond the clouds there is the sun, there is Krsna, but just because we can’t the sun it it does not mean he is not there. But our mind is tricked by the perception of the senses in many ways.

Another paradox example came to my head after the rain, I remembered a solar eclipse I once experienced as a child, It was noon and then the moon covered the sun and it became as dark as midnight, the birds where so disturbed by this they started chanting as if it was sunset and then sunrise, but it was mid-day and mid-night simultaneously, so 2 contradictory things could manifest at the same time, it is just completely puzzling to our minds to understand this, like the birds, we get confused, How can day and night, sun and rain, god’s-will and free-will coexist and interact at the same time?

This is all to complex for our minds to understand, and so we dwell constantly upon the subject, going around and around in circles, using our brains and the ways they where trained to analyze things from a scholar point of view, from a scientist point of view, How can we explain this? how can our mind understand the existence of a soul or a Supersoul within us? The Baghavad-gita states this, but a scientist could argue that Because you don’t see the soul, how can it exist? Can you make an autopsy and find 2 birds in a dead body’s heart? Or can you see 2 birds flying away together at the time of death? Can you see them in an x-ray? No, you can’t!, here is where you have to close your mind and open your heart to understand Krisna.

My Guru Maharaja wrote a book commenting on a beautiful poem called “Vaisnava Ke?” (What kind of devotee are you?) originally written by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Takura (Srila Prabhupada’s Guru), this poem is all about the science of controlling the mind and in the 14th verse it says:

———

“My dear mind, due to your false pride you sometimes think; “I am liberated from all attachments to this material world!”, and other times you think, “I am the expert enjoyer of material sense gratification!” You must reject both these mentalities as both outlooks are totally “non-Vaisnava” Instead you should remain fixed in your relationship as an eternal servitor to Lork Krsna performing unmotivated devotional service. This pure devotional service belongs to the spiritual world which is far beyond the influence of this material world of birth and death. While thus purely engaged in Krsna consciousness it is not possible for the material illusion or material contamination to remain”.

My Guru makes a long comment about this verse, here is a tiny part:

“This verse demonstrates how the devotee must train his mind to recognize there two enemies to devotional service, namely the desire for liberation and the desire for material enjoyment. Purifying one self from such non-devotional desires, one should simply desire to serve Lord Krsna in pure devotion. This is how the mind should be trained, One should never allow the mind to be preoccupied with thought of liberation or sense gratification, through the method of constantly engaging the mind and senses in Radha-Krisna’s devotional service. One should not make the mistake of thinking that such devotional service is material because it employs one’s material mind and material body. Such service is transcendental because it is in connection with Krsna the transcendental Lord.”

—–

Last night you said that you wanted to become “brain warriors” for Krsna, by studyng all the sastras and becoming experts to debunk any argument from scientist or non-believers so they too can understand Krsna; but then I remembered, the top-most expert I know in scriptures, Srila Prabhupada and how he debunked all arguments from that French Cardinal in the video, remember? well, he could actually do that very wisely and calmly, his goal was not to demonstrate to the Cardinal that he was smarter than him, but that maybe he could actually listen to him and open his heart to Krsna, now, I don’t know how the story ends because I’ve only seen the video, but I could bet, that even after Prabhupada’s expert arguments, this scholar priest did not became a vegetarian or a devotee… why? because Prabhupada could not “convert him”? no! because he was arguing with his mind, instead of opening his heart to receive Krsna. So we have to be humble and realize, that sometimes, such heated arguments, even if leaded by the top-most scholar, are not going to change the outcome of people’s nature, only Krsna can change that, only chanting the holly names can melt one’s heart, not us and all of our studied scriptures.

It is said in the Bhagavad-Gita that we should follow the example of Arjuna, Krsna’s dearest friend and devotee, who also was a warrior and in a key moment of the battle decided he would not fight because his was blinded by his mind and it’s speculations, then Krsna reminds him all this transcendental knowledge so he could drop his mind and follow Krsna with this heart to the battle field, this is the perfect example of surrendering to Him. As devotees we should aspire to become “love warrior’s” for Krsna, he lives in our hearts so naturally we should love him with our hearts and try to understand him with our hearts, if we listen closely, you can hear Krsna whispering to you from your heart, people say listen to your intuition, but they should say “listen to your Paramatma”…

Anyway, please forgive me for taking so much of your time with this looooooooooong email, but since you inspired all this ideas to come to mind, I had the responsibility of sharing them with you.

If you feel your question still has not being answered I recommend you ask my Guru Maharaja, but if you feel satisfied in your heart, then perhaps you can still ask him another question about Krsna, Radha or Lord Caitanya! just sent them to me and I will send them to his personal email, otherwise it can take months to receive an answer from the regular email…

Looking forward to hear back from you,

Haribol!

y.s

H. Tadeu Souza

Sarva gattah · January 29, 2008

We only have two choices. We have the free will to serve Krishna or be controlled within the mahat-tattva by Maha-Vishnu and His demigod parliament, made up of 33,000,000 embodied personalities who control everything within His flickering creation.

The demigods are also under that control due to having a ‘mahat-tattva vessel’ themselves, made of ethereal material energy. This material 'ethereal' containment is also known as the subtle body that can be further covered by another layer of material energy called the biological body, or gross body.

Maha-Vishnu and liberated souls can see the past, present and future of all universes in the Maha-tattva. It is because we are not liberated, we cannot understand how fate, predestination of bodily material vessels and 'free will' actually work?

We only have two choices. We have the free will to serve Krishna or be controlled within the mahat-tattva by Maha-Vishnu.

suchandra · January 29, 2008

We only have two choices. We have the free will to serve Krishna or be controlled within the mahat-tattva by Maha-Vishnu and His demigod parliament, made up of 33,000,000 embodied personalities who control everything within His flickering creation.

The demigods are also under that control due to having a ‘mahat-tattva vessel’ themselves, made of ethereal material energy. This material 'ethereal' containment is also known as the subtle body that can be further covered by another layer of material energy called the biological body, or gross body.

Maha-Vishnu and liberated souls can see the past, present and future of all universes in the Maha-tattva. It is because we are not liberated, we cannot understand how fate, predestination of bodily material vessels and 'free will' actually work?

We only have two choices. We have the free will to serve Krishna or be controlled within the mahat-tattva by Maha-Vishnu.

Something similiar is confirmed in Srimad-Bhagavatam, 1.3.2 where it says:

"But those who cannot catch the constitutional truth are again merged into the mahat-tattva at the time of the annihilation of the material creation. When the creation is again set up, this mahat-tattva is again let loose. This mahat-tattva contains all the ingredients of the material manifestations, including the conditioned souls. Primarily this mahat-tattva is divided into sixteen parts, namely the five gross material elements and the eleven working instruments or senses. It is like the cloud in the clear sky. In the spiritual sky, the effulgence of Brahman is spread all around, and the whole system is dazzling in spiritual light. The mahat-tattva is assembled in some corner of the vast, unlimited spiritual sky, and the part which is thus covered by the mahat-tattva is called the material sky. This part of the spiritual sky, called the mahat-tattva, is only an insignificant portion of the whole spiritual sky, and within this mahat-tattva there are innumerable universes. All these universes are collectively produced by the Kāraṇodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, called also the Mahā-Viṣṇu, who simply throws His glance to impregnate the material sky."

new---new · January 31, 2008

Found this interesting explanation......for those who are interested......

source http://www.vi1.org/amrita/writings/karma.shtml

<table border="0" cellspacing="1" width="550"><tbody><tr><td align="justify" valign="top" width="405">Question: Guruji, What is Karma? Is it not deciding everything every one does? If everything is predetermined, how can there be freewill?

Guruji:

This question is very simple to ask, but complicated to answer. It is a very good question. I don't think I know the answer even partially. But let me try to tell you what little I know.

What is Karma? It says, you reap what you sow. If you sow good thoughts, say good words and do good deeds, you get things which makes you happy. If you sow bad thoughts, say bad words and do bad things, you get things which makes you miserable. It is true, you reap what you sow. But does it say you do not reap what you did not sow, but other's sow? That does not follow. That is very important fact to remember.

Does it also say anywhere that because of Karma, every thing is pre-determined? Is Karma a law of predetermination? Is it like the flow of time, which goes on inexorably from past to present and into future. Even if it was a flow of time like an arrow, it is still not clear how everything including the will to think, speak and do are completely determined.

What about the Karma which you do for the sake of others? Don't the others reap what you have sown for them? If you hit someone, that person feels the blow. The farmer has sown seeds of rice and vegetables; I enjoy the rice and curry. We have to get clear about our ideas: not only do we enjoy the fruits of our own actions, but also the fruits of other's actions impinging on us, making us happy or miserable. I am not the sole reason for my state of being. The world has a great say in that. In fact I owe my very existence to the act of love between my father and mother; when I was not even in their minds, nor did I have much of a choice in getting the spark of life. I was an accident. I won a luck dip in which a billion of my possible brothers or sisters who were dead but trying to get a chance to live. How can we say everything is predetermined even in a classical sense?

In me there are billions of living cells. Like our Sun, there are billions of Suns (called stars) in in our world. Roughly, I as a human being stands somewhere as a harmonic mean between the very large and very small systems. Very large systems are about 24 powers of ten times larger than me; I am 24 powers of ten larger than the smallest constituents of matter. I and Universe share the properties of large redundant systems.

One of the significant properties of large systems is the arrow of time. It seems to be irreversible, even though the equations of motion of individual particles are not sensitive to the direction of flow of time. In the equation: force equals the product of mass and acceleration, you can replace "t" by minus "-t"; yet the equation merrily remains the same because (-dt x -dt=+dt x +dt). What it means is that considered as an individual particle, you are perfectly free to move forward or backward in time. Nothing stops you from that. Only in a collective sense, you cannot do it.

This means that even in a classical sense, you have a freedom. You could go forward or backward in time. An individual can do that. A person is free to think, speak and do what she wants. However, the rules change, if a collective is involved. Statistical rules come into play. It is very easy to mix up two distantly colored handfuls of sand masses. To separate the mixture it is very hard. The ease with which we can create disorder and the difficultly in creating order puts the arrow on time. We say that time flows in the direction of increasing disorder. There is a collective Karma, influencing how you tend to behave or ought to behave.

But listen. A particle has two modes of existence; one in which it looks and acts like a particle, and another in which it looks and acts like a wave. These are two ways of looking at the reality. Any one way is not superior or inferior to another. Now we are moving away from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics.

A particle supposedly exists at one place and time. A wave exists at all places at the same time. There is a very interesting relationship between the speeds of a particle and its wave. The product of the two speeds is c x c , where c is the speed of light. It follows that if the speed of the particle is v , which is less than c, then the speed of the wave has to be larger than c so that their product remains the same. Now another very interesting point comes up.

Any thing going slower than the speed of light has to go forward in time, into future. And, any thing moving faster than light has to go back in time, into past.

So now we have a dilemma. A description of the particle is saying, the particle is moving slower than light and going into future. Another equally valid description says the wave is going into past. Both are same, both are valid representations! One is moving into disorder; this is the material part. The other is moving into order; this is the wave part. The funny thing is that both are happening at the same time. Are we confronted with conservation of entropy, another form of energy?

Now I am venturing into uncharted waters. I am leaving science which is concerned only with an objective reality independent of any subject. I may not be right; I may be quite wrong in fact. From this point on, you may believe or disbelieve. It does not matter; because a fact cannot be reduced to a belief. Go by facts, not by faith in me. I repeat, I am fallible. You are warned.

I wish to think that the wave representation corresponds to consciousness, or awareness. Since waves have the property of superposition, they can interfere with each other constructively or destructively at different points. When many waves interfere constructively there is a very high degree of order generated. Coherence creates, manifests high degrees of order which seem to violate behavior of inert matter ( which prefers disorder), described so well by science which has not taken the subject into consideration.

I suppose this is what Krishna is saying to Arjuna in Gita: whenever disorder increases largely in the world, I come again, to reestablish order; to protect the pious and destroy the confusing. What we are witnessing is a pendulum swinging between order and disorder, between time going back and forth.

Consciousness has power over matter. If I tell you, get up, you simply get up. Your physical body by itself cannot do that. It is inert; it cannot violate gravity. But your consciousness controls that and allows an impossible event of levitation to become possible. This is a daily miracle, going unnoticed.

Now let us work with these ideas. Through my awareness, I can really go back in time; and through my physical body I can come back to the present moment. Let me do a thought experiment.

Suppose I become coherent (some how, kundalini may help perhaps) wave, I move faster than light, go back into a time when my grandfather has not given birth to my father. And I shoot my Grandpa. Now I come back to the present time with or without my physical body. Now I ask the question, do I exist or do I not exist?

Logical time based reasoning (shall we call it popular view of Karma?) states that since my father never was born, how could I be born to my father? So I don't exist. Then who is asking the question? I. So I exist. So we see that my ability to use my two representations wisely has enabled me to define two equally valid and opposite states of my being; namely, 1. it is true that I don't exist, and 2. it is true that I exist. I have created a new possibility, not determined by the irreversible flow of time, which I call Karma. In fact I have changed my destiny; I now have two bodies. One that exists and one that doesn't. How clever! What happened in the time after I shot grandpa and now? May be, because my father was not available ( he was not born), my mother could not, and so did not marry him, but found some one else. There might have been progeny, a different scenario altogether. My ability to go back into the past and act there has affected not only my destiny, but of so many other people as well, creating a tremendous confusion like a miracle does to us now. We know it is there; we don't know how it happened.

If we can move in time, many impossible things can be done. Put your thinking caps on. You can walk through walls. A wall may be a wall for a particle, but is not a wall for a wave. So an alpha particle, being a wave, doesn't have to climb a wall; it can simply leak out through the wall. We call this radio-activity. You can read other's minds. Your coherent waves can interact with the thought waves of others. You can see through other's eyes. You can go to the next galaxy and comeback without a space ship before I can blink my eye. A space ship would be an obstacle. Your going there is tough enough; carrying it with you will be tougher. You will be able to see time like you can see space; you develop a 4 dimensional vision. The concept of distance vanishes for you. You can become small, like an atom and so vanish from vision; or become huge like a tower. The notions of before and after lose their meaning. Is the nose of a dog earlier or later than its tail? The only thing that survives perhaps is the topological connectivity. In this sense, Karma has to be redefined as connected-ness of proximate areas in space-time. What is disjoint can't be connected; what is connected can't be separated. But one can kill both (disjointedness and connectedness) and start afresh. The freewill not only exists, but exists absolutely.

What appears impossible now may become ordinary in future, when people manage time like they manage space. This is the promise of investigating into knowing who you are.

The next question: What is a particle? That which behaves like one, not like many particles; even if it did consist of many. In my present state I don't look or function like a particle, because all the waves constituting me are so wide apart, separate. I behave like a conglomerate, to which this simple approach doesn't work. But suppose I work myself into a trance, a hypnosis, where all my thoughts are focused on one single thought, " I am " , then, I become a particle and a coherent enough wave to which statistical thermodynamic laws will not work. I eat up all time and space; they are in me. Distance in time or space matters little, if I can move with infinite speed. I am everywhere at the same time. I have an " oceanic " awareness. In such a state which people call "Samprajnata Samadhi" , situations are created just by a thought. The thought is so powerful; it searches every nook and corner of the space time world, and manifests it taking care of all consequences. I think coherence is the key for bringing order back into our world; to wind the clock back and start afresh. We don't have to lament, time lost is gone for ever. Ever reformatted a disk and wrote it all over again?

Am I there? No, definitely not. Am I trying to be there? Yes I am trying. So I can't teach you all the things I am talking to you about. May be they are just guesses; you may be better in finding the truth about Karma, than I found. If you do, please teach me.

I can't help you much in this matter. I am a blind soul trying to grope in darkness. Please find some one who is a Siddha; not one who is trying to be.

Sorry if I could not be of much help. This is all I think I know about Karma.

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*

* Draw a SriChakra - PPT * Meditation

* Karma and Freewill

* Worship of Lalita

* Diwali message 2003

* Maha Siva Ratri

* Durga Saptashati (PDF)

* Stilling Thoughts (PDF)

</td> </tr> </tbody></table>  <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="730"><tbody><tr> <td height="8"></td> </tr> <tr> <td> <table> <tbody><tr> <td> 2005 Vi1.org</td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table>

Sarva gattah · January 31, 2008

<TABLE cellSpacing=1 width=550 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=justify width=405>But listen. A particle has two modes of existence; one in which it looks and acts like a particle, and another in which it looks and acts like a wave.

These are two ways of looking at the reality. Any one way is not superior or inferior to another. Now we are moving away from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics.

A particle supposedly exists at one place and time. A wave exists at all places at the same time. There is a very interesting relationship between the speeds of a particle and its wave. The product of the two speeds is c x c , where c is the speed of light. It follows that if the speed of the particle is v , which is less than c, then the speed of the wave has to be larger than c so that their product remains the same. Now another very interesting point comes up.

Any thing going slower than the speed of light has to go forward in time, into future. And, any thing moving faster than light has to go back in time, into past.

So now we have a dilemma. A description of the particle is saying, the particle is moving slower than light and going into future. Another equally valid description says the wave is going into past. Both are same, both are valid representations! One is moving into disorder; this is the material part. The other is moving into order; this is the wave part. The funny thing is that both are happening at the same time.

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Everything is NOT predestined on one level and IS predestined on another.

For example, Maha-Vishnu is the creator of the maha-tattva or material world, He can see past present and future. He sees the journey of the arrow from where it begins, how it travels and where it ends - In the meantime we experience free will where everything 'appears' to be NOT predestined on another level of mundane time and space in the mahat-tattva