If God knows the future, doesn’t that make our destiny fixed?

From: Premanjana Das

If God knows future, isnt our destiny fixed? Or atleast from absolute level arent things happening in a fixed manner? Where does the role of soul’s independence fits in? I encounter this question many times but dont have any stisfactory explaination.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question by Premanjan Das If God knows the future, isn’t our destiny fixed? Or at least, from absolute level, aren’t things happening in a fixed manner? Where does the role of the soul’s independence fit in? Answer God’s knowledge of the future is like our knowledge of the past. Our knowledge of the past is knowledge without control, knowledge without interception, knowledge without any capability to change it. In God’s case, it is not that he doesn’t have the capability, but he chooses not to exercise the capability.
That means that God knows the choices that we have before us, and he knows the consequences that can come from exercising those choices. And at the end of the day, he leaves the choices to us. So, does God know which choice we will take? The first thing to understand is that he doesn’t force us to take that choice.
It is we who take that choice. And our great Acharyas like Vishwanath, Chakravarti Thakur and Baldevidya Bhushan, both in their Bhagavad Gita commentaries and in the Vedanta Sutra commentaries, talk about how the idea that the soul’s actions are fixed will make all scriptures redundant and useless. Because scriptures clearly tell us the choices that we have and the consequences that will come from those choices.
And then they urge us to make the right choice, as Krishna tells in 18.63 to Arjuna, Now Arjuna, decide and do as you desire. So, if Arjuna didn’t have any choice at all, what is the point in Krishna speaking this verse, or for that matter, speaking the full Bhagavad Gita? So, even from the point of view of scripture itself, we do have free will. Now, from the point of view of logic, if we try to reconcile God’s knowledge of the future with our knowledge, or with our free will, we will run into a dead end, because our logic has a limited capacity.
You can refer to the article, Is God Omnipotent or Omniscient or Both, to get a clearer understanding of this. I will summarize over here. God and His actions are determined not as functions of logic, but as expressions of love.
So, if we look at Krishna Leela, when Krishna steals butter and tries to hide from Mother Yashoda, or from the other gopis, now he already knows the full story, whether they are going to catch him or not, or when they will catch him, or how he will run away, but still he goes through the whole Leela, because that is a way for him to reciprocate love with his devotees. So, in the spiritual realm, knowledge is not as important as love. Many times, when we are going to watch a movie, our excitement in watching the movie is just suspense of what next is going to happen.
But that is because we are only at a mental or an intellectual platform. At the platform of love, even when we know what is going to happen, that action, if it involves the reciprocation of love, is relishable and leads to the further deepening of love. When a baby suckles the mother’s breast, the mother knows what the baby is going to do, but still every time the baby does that, the mother feels a deepening of her love for the child.
So, here we see that it is not knowledge that is important, it is reciprocation of love that is important, even when it is done through actions that are already known. The same principle applies to Krishna’s reciprocations with his devotees in the spiritual world. And essentially, the same principle applies to this question of destiny and freedom.
One understanding that God is omnipotent, that God can do everything, means that he can even change the future. So, if we express our love for Krishna sincerely, then that expression of love for Krishna will lead to Krishna intervening if he feels appropriate, and even changing our destiny. So, as devotees, even if for argument’s sake we assume that we are going to get liberated and going to return to Krishna after hundred lifetimes, but if we right now choose to intensify our Krishna consciousness and develop our love for Krishna very intensely, then Krishna, because he is omnipotent, can change the destiny and take us back at the end of this lifetime.
And even if he doesn’t do that, still, for our next 99 lifetimes and for the rest of this lifetime, we will be reciprocating love with Krishna here in the material world, and we will be happy here. As happy as is possible in this unfortunate and miserable material world. So, as devotees, we have to understand that Krishna is beyond logic, and we with our intelligence are infinitesimal, Krishna is infinite.
So, the scriptures very clearly indicate that we have been given free will, and we use our free will to serve Krishna. And we don’t bother too much about the whole concept of destiny. See, the purpose of the knowledge of destiny is to inspire us to do the right thing, not to inspire us to give up doing the right thing.
For example, in the tenth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, it is described that when Vasudeva and Devaki, after their marriage, were going along in a chariot to Vasudeva’s home kingdom, Kamsa was driving their chariot, but suddenly, when he heard the Akashvani, the announcement from the sky, that Devaki’s eighth child would be the cause of his death, immediately he caught Devaki’s hair and was about to chop off her head with his sword. At that time, Vasudeva gave him several philosophical arguments about why he should not perform this dastardly act of killing his sister. One of the arguments he gives is, oh Kamsa, ultimately, if it is destiny that you are going to die at the hand of the insane, then anyway that destiny will happen some way or the other.
So, why do you want to commit a sinful activity to avoid that which is unavoidable? Now, Vasudeva is using the knowledge of destiny to try to dissuade Kamsa, but he is not thinking that if Devaki is going to die, if it is destined that Devaki is going to die, then what is the use of my arguing with Kamsa to save her? She is going to die, let her die. Why doesn’t he think like that? Because Vasudeva is a Kshatriya and Devaki is his wife. As both Kshatriya and wife, husband, it is his duty to protect Devaki.
And he is doing his duty irrespective of worrying about destiny. But Kamsa, on the other hand, is giving up his duty to protect a woman, to protect his sister, to protect a lady at the time of a marriage, and is about to do a very horrendously sinful activity. So that is why Vasudeva is using the argument of destiny to dissuade Kamsa.
That means the Vedic culture is first and foremost duty-centered. And the knowledge of destiny is meant to inspire us to do our duty seriously. For example, if a doctor is treating a critical patient, if the doctor starts thinking, oh, if he is destined, he will die, he will die, what is the use of my trying anything? Then he will be failing in his duty.
So at that time, we have to act as if everything depends on us. And we have to pray as if everything depends on Krishna. Why? Because both factors are involved.
Our efforts are involved, Krishna’s mercy is also involved. And at the end, both factors combine together to determine the result. So just like when a farmer is ploughing the field, his endeavor is to plough the field and to sow the seeds.
And then rains coming at the right time in the right quantity is the destiny. And when both these come together, then there is the fruit, the growing of the crops. So there is karma, there is daiva and there is phala.
So when karma and daiva both come together, karma plus daiva will lead to phala. So the Vedic culture recognizes the role of daiva and uses that knowledge to help us to focus on ensuring that we do our karma. So now if the doctor abandons trying to save the patient and thinks whatever is just trying to happen because he is not doing his karma, then he is failing in his duty, he will have to take the karmic reaction.
And even if the patient could be saved, the patient will not be saved if the doctor doesn’t do his duty. Just as if the farmer thinks that if it doesn’t rain anyway, I will not get the crops. If it’s not destined, I don’t get the crops.
Why should I bother to sow the seeds and plough the land? But if he doesn’t sow and plough, then even if the rains come, even if destiny is right, he will not get the fruits. So the knowledge of destiny is meant to be used to inspire us to do our duty. And after doing our duty, when the results don’t come, then we say, okay, maybe it was just trying that the results were not supposed to come.
So after the doctor does his best effort, still the patient is not saved. Then if the doctor starts lamenting, what is the use? I tried my best, everything is a waste. And maybe his medical practice doesn’t work, maybe I should think of something else.
And maybe it’s all hopeless, and he becomes rejected, and he goes into depression. At that time, to re-inspire him to come back to his duty-bound state, it is true that there are some factors, some events, some situations in which the result is not in our hands, it is determined by destiny. So, whatever is his time, it will happen.
But we do our duty. Similarly with the farmer. So therefore, as far as we are concerned, with respect to our bhakti and our relationship with Krishna, Krishna has told us what he expects us to do.
If we do it, we are following our duty towards Krishna, and we are also expressing our love for Krishna. Do we have the independence to do that? Obviously we have. I could have chosen not to answer this question, I could have chosen to answer this question, I chose to answer.
You could have chosen not to ask this question, you could have chosen to ask this question, you could have chosen to ask this question. So at a practical level, all of us see that we do have free will. And this is a very simple and relatively crude example, but the understanding that we have free will, that we are agents of choice, is foundational to our understanding of what comprises a human being.
So, the whole purpose of Krishna conscious philosophy is not to deny the existence of this free will, but to increase our capacity to exercise this free will. Yes, we have certain conditionings, we have certain influences because of which we tend to act in some ways in certain situations. For example, when somebody insults us, we tend to get angry.
So, we still have free will, but because of our past experiences and conditioning, our free will is very less. It is almost forced upon us to react in anger when somebody insults us. But Krishna consciousness will give us more self mastery.
The essence of self mastery is greater ability to exercise our free will. So therefore, the whole purpose of Krishna consciousness is to empower our free will. And that’s why we shouldn’t bother with the translogical aspect of reconciling our free will with God’s knowledge.
Because God is not static. God’s knowledge is not static. God is not a concept.
God is a person. We tend to think of God as a dimension. But God is not just a dimension.
He is a personality. And the personality has emotions, he has reciprocations. And he can change the future for us when we express our love for him sincerely.
Thank you.