Is My Life Scripted by God?

Question

It is said that God is Omniscient, which means He is all-knowing. Does that mean He knows what I'm going to do next? Does He decide my next action? If so, then why is it said that I have free-will. And if I have free will and act on my own, how does God know what I’ll do next? 

Answer

Yes, God is omniscient. He does know the past, present. He also knows the some parts of the future. After all, He predetermines some events in the future to be borne by every jeev as a result of the actions of past lives. These parts are called fate or destiny. However, destiny governs only a a very small fraction of the events in a whole life. 

Hitopadesh says

आयुः कर्म च वित्तं च विद्या निधनमेव च । पंचैत्यान्यपि सृज्यन्ते गर्भस्थस्यैव देहिनः ॥
हितोपदेश
āyuḥ karma ca vittaṁ ca vidyā nidhanameva ca । paṁcaityānyapi sr̥jyante garbhasthasyaiva dehinaḥ ॥
hitopadeśa

“Five things are predestined – age, profession, wealth, education and mode of dying.”

God does not pre-decide the whole future. Neither does he decide the future actions of mayabaddh jeev.

This topic is a little abstruse, so it certainly needs a little clarification. So let us think through it.

God knows present

Human mind is inactive only in deep sleep (sushupti) and when one becomes unconscious. At all other times your mind thinks. God dwells in the heart of every living being and observes each thought that crosses the mind.  So, He knows the present actions of all material beings.

7 billion human beings inhabit planet Earth and only God keeps a detailed record of each thought that goes through the mind of each and every person. In your future lives your action of the present will be addressed as actions of past lifetime.

This Earth is in the brahmand created by Lord Brahma with four-heads. In this Sansar-The World, the manifestation of Maya, there are uncountable brahmands (cosmic eggs), with innumerable souls living within each brahmand. He knows the innumerable actions performed by each jeev in innumerable past lifetimes. So, it is also evident that He knows about the past actions of all living beings.

Only Brahm-Supreme God grants the fruits of actions of all past karmas and only He determines which fruits would be borne by an individual soul in the present lifetime. The Sanskrit work for these is prarabdh karm. He does not delegate this responsibility to anyone else. So, He obviously also knows that part of the future. Let it be known that this is a small fraction of our future. Now, let us talk about the other part of our future.

Prior to taking a decision, human beings weigh the pros and cons of that action. Most times the mental work (or that thinking) does not result in any physical action e.g. when you are harmed by someone, you think about it, make plans to retaliate against that, but are scared of being caught and so decide not to act on those plans. We have been given a free-will to decide what we want to do. And in fact, due to Maya we keep changing our mind frequently all through the day. God, who is sitting in the heart, knows and records all those mental actions. These actions performed in this lifetime out of our own free will are referred to as kriyamaan karm (क्रियमाण कर्म​). Though, He doesn't know what thought will cross our mind the next moment, yet before we act on our decision God knows what we will enact next with our Gyanendriyan or Karmendriyan.

So, it is true that God knows the past, present and only a part of the future for all of us. We have the free-will so only we are responsible for our actions; God does not act on our behalf or intervene.

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