When God knows the future is our free will really free?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
if God knows past and future then how do we really have freedom see God’s knowledge of the future is like our knowledge of the past what does that mean our knowledge of the past is knowledge without intervention I can know today morning I wanted to wake up at 4 o’clock but I woke up at 6 o’clock I know that, I can’t do anything about it so it’s knowledge without intervention now in the case of God he can intervene but he doesn’t intervene so that means that God’s omniscience God’s knowing everything that does not mean that he is controlling everything basically there are choices and there are consequences there are choices and there are consequences for example a small child may not know that if I walk off a balcony I am going to get a fracture I will get wounded but a mother knows that rather than pull the child rather the child goes too close to the balcony there is a choice and there is a consequence so choices are associated with consequences now Krishna knows we as we grow we come to know more and more about the correlation between choices and consequences what the child doesn’t know the mother knows so Krishna knows about the correlation between choices and consequences far better than we do and he gives us intelligence, he gives us guidance to make wise choices but he doesn’t control our choices so his knowledge is basically the knowledge which is which is more of the knowledge of a person who exists outside the domain Krishna exists outside the time domain and he observes this way so if I am on a road I can go this way, I can go this way I am not sure should I go this way or that way but somebody who knows the map they know if you go this way you will get here, if you go this way you will get here but the choice which way to go is up to us so Krishna’s knowledge of the future is not see when we talk about future itself, we have to understand that the future is not this was a fundamental problem which Einstein also had Einstein tried to talk about space-time continuum he talked about time as a fourth dimension and in a mathematical sense it worked quite well but in a practical sense it didn’t work because in space I can move ahead, I can move back I can move left, I can move right I can move up, I can move down so I can move both ways but with respect to time I can’t do that in time we can only move forward the standard for paradox in we can only move forward means we cannot undo choices so the future is something which is it’s not that when we talk about the future the future is not like a pre-existing territory in which we enter it’s like say I am here, I am taking this road and then I come to come to Dubai so Dubai already exists I am just taking a road and I am entering into Dubai so the future is not like that, it’s not like the past exists and the future exists and I am simply going on a journey from the past to the future it’s not physical the future is an emergent reality it is not an existing reality always so in that sense when you talk about God’s knowledge of the future it is not that the future is something which is already existing is this point clear? because the future is not something which is already existing the future is something which is emergent so God’s knowledge of the future is the knowledge of the correlation of choices and consequences this choice leads to this consequence but he leaves the choice up to us Krishna gives this example Krishna gives this example in 9.6 he states that if you consider the sky to be like upside down bowl then the wind that is moving in the sky the wind can move this way the wind can move that way, the wind can move in these directions but the wind is limited by the scope of the sky it’s limited by the scope of the sky so like that our choices are limited but within the scope of the sky the wind has choices to move this way, that way, move that way move up, move down, whatever so our capacity to choose is not determined by it but the spectrum of choices, we don’t have unlimited choices so right now you are sitting here, you can sit and hear you can walk out you can tune out whoever is sitting here it’s not that they can just get wings and fly away can’t do that so the spectrum of choices that we have, they are limited and the choices are associated with consequences but as far as the choices themselves are concerned we have choices and the whole purpose of the Bhagavad Gita is to encourage us to use our free will properly see the same scripture which tells us that God is omniscient the same scripture also gives us guidelines do this and don’t do this now Baldev Ji talks about it in the Vedanta Sutra commentary Govinda Varsha, he says that if everything were predetermined then what is the point of scripture telling us anything else when you say do this or don’t do this that implies that we have the capacity to choose to do this and the capacity to choose to not do that so we can’t just take one aspect of scripture and say that God knows everything God knows future and therefore we have no free will the same scripture tells us that God knows everything the same scripture tells us we also have free will so then how do we reconcile these things same Vedanta Sutra says that we cannot just take one statement of scripture we have to reconcile the different statements in scripture and that reconciliation is that understanding that the future is not an existing reality it is an emergent reality and in that future what God knows is the correlation between choices and constants but he gives us the free will to choose does it answer your question?