Any earnest seeker of God in quest of the ultimate truth will always pose this question to his Guru and seek an explanation.
Hinduism is quite forthright in stating that God is all knowing and all pervading. At the absolute level, God is Brahman and is sat-chit-ananda – existence, knowledge and bliss. He alone exists in all the perceivable names and forms, he is the quintessence of all knowledge and is bliss, unblemished by sorrow.
Brahman and Maya
But everything in the relative plane – the world, the creation, human beings and all the living things -- is Maya, God’s divine play. Creation, sustenance and destruction happen at His will and God does them through his Yoga Maya (his union with Maya).
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886), a great religious master, who brought every religious concept of Hinduism into the practical realm of comprehension even to the common man, asserts that Brahman and Maya are one and the same, like fire and its property of burning. Man is deluded by Maya and this maya makes him identify himself with his body, mind and ego. This maya makes him think that he has the free will.
Ego, Free Will and Karma
In proportion to a man’s dependence on his ego, he thinks he has the free will to act as he likes. On the other hand, a truly theistic person, who is more and more dependent on God, who is able to increasingly grasp the evil of egotism, comprehends vividly based on personal experience that it is God’s will that is done.
Ramakrishna says that as long as a man thinks that self effort is required, the free will also has its role to play. If you engage in actions based on the whims of your free will, you have to own up the consequences or results or fruits of your actions. This is one of the basics of the Karma theory of Hinduism. Other religions, too, in some way or other concur with this concept. That’s how the proverb “thou shall reap what thy sow” exists.
This belief, that doing good will bring you good results and doing bad will bring you bad results, is very much a needed one and existence of such an idea, too, is part of the divine will, according to Ramakrishna. If this belief were not to be there, anarchism will become wide spread, says he. Without this fear, people will commit all sorts of evils and then claim that they are doing it as per divine will!
Karma and God's Will
But Hinduism does not, in reality, say that the law of karma is water-tight. That good actions will bring good results and bad actions, bad results is not entirely true. In other words, Karma is not self-propelling. The fruits of all human actions are controlled and dispensed only by God’s will.
Ramana Marharishi, a hard core Gnyani par excellence, asserts that it is God, the all-doer, who commands the deliverance of results to the actions done. He asks, “Can you ever equate Karma itself to God?” Never. It means that all actions done out of free will get done through the invisible scrutiny of God. Thus the statement “man proposes and God disposes” is very much an accepted concept in Hinduism too.
Understanding Divine Dispensation
Is it possible to get an idea about what the God’s disposal is like? Ramakrishna gives an example. A person wants to go Varanasi (a holy place of pilgrimage for Hindus) and he does lots of preparation for it in advance as it is a long and arduous journey. He spends several days in planning, arranging money, gathering materials, transportation and so on. Everything was falling in place neatly and the day of his planned departure arrives. When he was about to start from his house, a messenger comes from his native village and announces that his elder brother has died. The man has to cancel everything and proceed to his village.
Ramakrishna explains that the arrival of the messenger just at the nick of the moment leading to the cancellation of the pilgrimage indicates God’s will.
The above is just an example where a clear analysis has been possible. But it is not always easy to comprehend God’s ways. Maya has lots of confusion, asserts Ramakrishna. His advise is: Don’t waste your time in trying to understand all these through intellectual analysis; simply surrender to God and be content with His dispensation.
Renunciation and Free Will
Is it really possible for any human being to totally relinquish free will?
A self-realized soul or a God realized person who continues to live in this world is called a “Jivan Mukta” – “liberated while being alive” in Hinduism. Such a person has no “sankalpa” (self will) whatsoever on his own. His will and God’s will are one and the same. He is quite clear that even when he engages in action, he is not the real doer, but it’s God who acts through him. At that exalted stage, the person has conquered Maya and he transcends all dualities of the world – the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the clean and the unclean, the pleasure and the pain. If he eats, he eats not; if he does, he does not; if he kills, he kills not. He is in full unison with God’s will.
To conclude, according to Hinduism, the existence of free will is only in relationship with ego. The more egotistic a person, the more he asserts the existence of free will. At the other extreme, God realized persons are the ones who have totally surrendered their ego to God and they assert there is nothing like free will and whatever exists is nothing else but God's will.
