Do We Possess Free Will?

This short offering contains some thoughts of Gopi Krishna's about the "free will vs destiny" conundrum.

From Chapter 3 of Reason and Revelation, in Three Perspectives on Kundalini, page 70

At the present stage of our knowledge our discussions on determinism or free will are futile. We still do not know what the relationship is between our mind and the neuron structure of the brain. How do they react and influence each other? How do we reason, calculate, imagine or dream? The basic facts about the mind are still an unsolved riddle to science. All our hypotheses, speculations, logic and fancies about the nature of mind or soul are like the ideas expressed by infants about the moon and the stars, which undergo a radical change when they grow sufficiently mature to study books on astronomy.

It is always good to remember that our body is the temple of the soul, used by Divinity to manifest itself on the earth. It is beyond anything we can conceive
of or reason about. It is a fragment of the Divine Substance which sustains
the universe. It is a drop from the Ocean of the Absolute, an Atom from the world of Eternal Being. It is by the potentiality present in us because of our divine inheritance that all our progress has become possible.

This Atom is immutable and everlasting, the Ground behind all the phenomena of nature. It is the same in the embryo, the infant, the child, the youth, the seasoned individual and the aged. It is the same in man and woman, in the high and the low, the mighty and the weak, the king and the beggar, the cheerful and the sad, the blind and those blessed with sight.

From Chapter 9 of Reason and Revelation, in Three Perspectives on Kundalini, page 123

It should not be construed from the ideas that I am expressing that I claim to have been the recipient of any special favor from Providence. The universe is ruled by immutable laws. In our short stay on the earth, we are never able to form a picture of the colossal time-spans and the incomputable number of planets in space which form the widely scattered Theaters for the Cosmic Play of Eternal Consciousness. Our souls are like solar beams which irradiate the planets, orbiting around the sun, appearing and disappearing with the movement of each globe. The scattered beams of the Unbounded Sun of Life play their parts everywhere in the vast Amphitheater of space through all the time the drama lasts.

Like matter mind, too, is bound by Law. Every human being is ordained for a pre-allotted role. Our actions are free and determined both. It is how you look at them with the eye of Reason. Both free will and predetermination come from the same Eternal Source. This is simple to understand. Every thought we think, every idea we frame, every decision we take and every theory we form comes from the Oceanic Reservoir of Mind. There is no other source of thought. Just as all light comes from the Sun and all our bodies from the earth, in the same way all our thoughts come from the inexhaustible Store of the Cosmic Mind. The thoughts we think of by our own free will or which we are led to think both arrive from the same Ocean.

From the eBook:Kundalini: Questions and Answers, An Interview with Gopi Krishna, page 47

What is your opinion about free will and determination?
If all this universe is the manifestation of one Supreme Existence, then the question of determination does not arise at all, for there can be no other force or will working in contradistinction to the Supreme Will. But the whole universe, from what I have experienced, is a magic play, a drama so bewildering, so amazing and so unique that human intellect cannot find explanations for all the interplay of forces and actions witnessed in it. This question will be answered by other spiritual luminaries in the days to come.