Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

20. Determinism versus Freedom of Choice

(Darshan given on March 4th, 1997.)

A visitor: How much of our lives is predestined or decided by fate as opposed to how much do we have control or choice?

Swamiji: The nearer you go to God, the greater is the freedom of choice, and the farther away from Him you go, the more determinism works. The determinism works more and more the more you run away from God, and freedom of choice continues more and more the nearer you go to God. Finally, only God can be free, nobody else, and so the nearer you go to God and feel the presence of divinity in you, the more you feel a sense of freedom of choice.

Now what is your practical problem? You are asking some theoretical question. What is your practical problem? Are you feeling that you are determined by somebody? What is your practical difficulty?

Visitor: I wonder whether it's worthwhile to worry about choices.

Swamiji: Unless you know the structure of the whole universe and your relation to it, you will never be able to answer this question. Are you outside the universe or are you inside the universe? First of all, you find out. If you are inside the universe, you must know if you are one with the universe or you are not one with the universe. If you are one with the universe, who is going to determine you, because you have become one with that which is going to determine everybody. Okay? But if you are not one with the universe, if you are outside, the universe will determine you thoroughly and you will have no freedom.

Anybody who is considering oneself as outside the universe is not having any freedom of choice because, like the law of gravitation, everybody will be controlled by it. You know what is the law of gravitation? Do you know what is gravitation? Who can have freedom of choice to violate it? It is determining you wherever you go. Likewise, every law will determine you because the law of gravitation is the law of the world, and you are not one with the world. You are outside it. Therefore, it is pursuing you and making you feel miserable. But in meditation, in the practice of yoga, if your soul unites itself with the whole structure of the cosmos, slowly you will feel a satisfaction inside that these laws are not your enemies. They are your friends.

This is a theoretical question. I don't think it is worthwhile bothering about it. Do your spiritual practice, if at all you are doing any. Are you doing any spiritual practice? Don't ask theoretical questions. Are you doing any spiritual practice?

Visitor: Meditation. I am doing Goenka.

Swamiji: Breathing, breathing.

Another visitor: Vipassana.

Swamiji: You are doing Vipassana? Okay, you do it. It is all right. Now you don't worry about this determinism and all that. Actually, only God is free, and the more you become godly, the more are you free. The more you are away from God, from the universe, the more are you controlled.

Another visitor: How to be together?

Swamiji: Two people cannot join together.

Visitor: Nothing?

Swamiji: No, very difficult, but it is possible. It is not impossible, but it is very difficult because two is always two only. Two cannot become one. If two is one, then you should not say there are two. You accept that there are two, and then you want to deny that there are two and make it one, so you are trying an impossible thing. But it is possible. You want to merge two people into one person. It is a very good idea. And then, why two? It can be a hundred. All the hundred people can join and make one. Finally you can join everything in the whole universe and make it one mass of perception. That is called God-consciousness. Why two, three, four people? The whole universe, bring them together into a cooperative organisation of spiritual fraternity with one principal superintending over the whole cosmic operation. If this can be conceived in anybody's mind, that person should be considered as most blessed.

So why two people? You bring many people together, as many as possible, until you bring all things together, the entire thing – all space, time, cause, everything – under the ordinance of God Almighty, and you also go inside it. You don't stand outside. When you speak of two people, three people, you are not talking of people outside. You yourself are involved in that. You have also to get united so that there is a cosmic configuration of united experience under the principle of one eternal consciousness.

Here is the essence of everything – essence of religion, essence of spirituality, essence of good behaviour, essence of anything worth the while. This idea should get accommodated properly into the heart of a person, and it should be made a part and parcel of deep meditation every day so we get transmuted and transformed into a larger dimension of experience until, by the grace of God, the dimension touches the horizon of the cosmos, and we may become Godmen instead of mortals. Children of God – wonderful!