Doesn’t it also violate the infinitude of God. If every type of final spritual realization is already fixed, there can be now new spritual realization apart from already pre fixed one. So , How can we say God has infinite aspect ? It will be best to say God has infinite number aspect but in reality it is finite. Since we can’t count so we are saying infinite.
I always had in mind, regarding free will and destination, There are two steps.
First step, everything is fixed and second step nothing is fixed.
Example : Lets say it is fixed that rain will be there at 11 dec. But at 10 December God can decide , so letβs not make it rain on 11 dec or God could also decide , let me not intervene and let the rain happen.
Infinity implies all these things, that is boundless, immeasurable, limitless etc which means that you cannot reach a final point by adding up any number of finites. Practically it also means that the finite mind cannot know it in completeness from its finite standpoint. I don’t see what it has got to do with realisation as end point. Realisation simply refers to what the human consciousness has so far experienced of God. How can we be sure that these are the only possible relation with God. If we look at the possible experiences and realisations we would say it is limitless. For example the realisation of God in the kshara or the movement of creation, can we limit it to this or that object only. It means that one can have the experience of God through any and every number of elements in the manifestation and in their combinations and even then it would not exhaust given that new elements are always emerging. Take for example in one of Sri Aurobindo’s poem he speaks of experiencing God in the electron, in another in the smile of a boy. You may say that basically it is still one realisation as God in the manifestation. But that is simply a way that the mind is categorising it. How do we know how the gods, the titans, the animal, plants, elements and the earth experience contact with the One Reality? In the end the Reality is One but it is at the same time Infinite. Does Reality being One contradict its being Infinite? Mathematically is One and Infinite the same? So you see Infinite means here endless possibilities of manifestation.
From this comes the second part. Everything is fixed in terms of the ultimate realisation. But the route it will take, the process it will go through, the number of times it will be made and remade, the time it will take move through relative degrees of freedom. Obviously to conceive of an absolute freedom is a non-starter. It means that God or whatever else, the One Infinite Reality is simply throwing out things randomly as a magician from his hat leaving them to their fate, jostling, colliding, collapsing, with no determining power inherent in them that would arrange, organise, order, secretly push them from behind towards their destiny. The idea of free will is an illusion from the highest standpoint but one still uses it even if one stops believing in it! We are as if compelled to think and feel and act in certain ways including the impression that it is we who are choosing and deciding! This is where the ignorance and its relative usefulness lies. The beauty is that in the infinity of the One Reality there exist the possibility of completely denying and opposing it. And yet the secret compulsion uses even this denial and resistance for Its purposes.
Of course in the highest truth there is no you, me and God. It is the One playing with Himself or Itself.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
