My dear RL friend Orion asks:

Why did God give us Free Will? He is self satisfied so you could never call Him lonely. He can do anything conceivable and inconceivable. If we existed before Free Will then we couldn't have asked for it, unless he asked us to ask for it by His own Will, assuming we had no choices before Free Will. Did He never give us Free Will to begin with? Are scriptures correct when they say He gave us Free Will? No disrespect to the Authors of coarse! This is something i've contemplated lately. Feel free to post this if you wish.

~Orion

My reply:

Hi Orion,

This is a very important question that must be approached careful lest it be misunderstood.

As you say, "[God] is self satisfied so you could never call Him lonely." This being a given, why bother creating life at all?

The nature of Ek Devata (the One beyond all conception) is the clue we need here.

Ek Devata is "acintya bheda abheda tattva," which is say, Inconceivably One and Different in Form and in Formlessness from all else.

If one says, "I am God!" one is mistaken or deluded (or both). Only God is God and this will never change.

We are God's creation: eternally separate beings from one another and from God, utterly distinct: we are eternally bheda, different from God.

However, since God is God, all things originate in Him (understand that God is neither male nor female but English lacks gender neutral pronouns and as "God" is a male term, "Goddess" being the female, I will use the term "He" here for clarity.

In Him we live and move and have our being:

Acts 17:27 That they [everyone] should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

In scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita this understanding is clearer:

Bhagavad Gita 9:4, 5: All the material universes are pervaded by My unmanifested form. In Me all beings exist, though I am not situated in them.
And the beings do not dwell in Me, behold my divine [mystic] ability! Although I am the maintainer of all beings, I do not dwell in them, My Self being the Source of all beings.
9:6: As the mighty wind always dwells in the Akasha, moving everywhere, even so know that all beings dwell in Me.
9:7: O child of Kunti, at the end of every age all material beings enter into My nature and again, at the beginning of every age, I recreate them.
9:8: Supported by My material nature, I dispatch the multitude of beings again and again. All these act instinctively in material nature as if by constraint.
9:9: O conqueror of riches, I am not bound by these activities; as if indifferent, I am sitting unattached to them all.

We individual souls or jiva atman exist "within God" and yet we are not God, we are individual beings even as God is an Individual Being. It is inconceivable (acintya) but we, like Ek Devata our Creator, are acintya bheda abheda, inconceivably one and different from God, our Source. In the east this sometimes worded as being "part and parcel" of the Whole, as a drop of water in the sea is "like" the sea, of the same substance and essence, but yet is utterly different from the sea.

This understanding is supporting in the Bible as follows:

Psalm 82:1 A Psalm of Asaph. God standeth in the congregation of the mighty [The One God stands in the center of the creation]; he judgeth among the gods [His Children].
2 How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.
3 Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.
4 Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.
5 They [these fallen gods of humanity] know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course [ie because we walk in darkness instead of coming to the Light of our true natures].
6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
7 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
8 Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations [in the coming Kingdom].

This is our natural state. We are not "God" but we are "gods" as was Master Y'shua:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.

Master Y'shua, Sri Krsna, Mahavira, Tatagatha Buddha, Guru Nanak, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and other enlightened masters attained this level of full enlightenment or God consciousness and became "one with God." They did not "become God" but they did completely harmonized their natures with God's nature. This was Master's Y'shua's prayer for his followers:

John 17:20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

This section bears re-reading:

20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

Note the Master's humility!  "...the glory which thou gavest me I have given them..." Master Y'shua, like everyone else, was totally dependent on God's gifts and grace to him and like any good guru or teacher he shared these gifts with the Jews that followed him and the Gentiles who followed them (the Master never taught Gentiles).

So then, free will...

How did Master Y'shua and the other masters receive their enlightenment?

They chose to accept God's gifts through their free will.

Without volition we are only slaves and yet as "gods," children of God, we are constitutionally free beings even as God is free.

Does God "need" us? Of course not, as you say, "He is self satisfied so you could never call Him lonely," however... what are we? We are inconceivably one and different from God's Person (acintya bheda abheda tattva) and the natural inclination of "god" is for Oneness, union with God.

Romans 8:16 The Spirit [ie the indwelling presence of God] itself beareth witness with our spirit [our higher Self], that we are the children of God:
17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together ["glorification" being the revelation of our true natures and our subsequent liberation from material bondage].
18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God [See this? All souls inwardly yearn to awaken from this material illusion and receive the Light of Truth. We are driven to this. Some pursue it one way, some another, some through mundane attempts, money, power, sex, etc. some through spiritual methods, but we all "know there is something more"]
20 For the creature was made subject to vanity [or "Maya," "Illusion" as the Hindus would say], not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope [ie through the divine laws of Karma, Marga and Dharma and the inner "Holy Spirit" that drives us forward, For more on this point see my http://www.allfaith.com/Religions/AllFaith/karma.html],
21 Because the creature [all materially manifested beings]  itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
23 And not only they [the unenlightened], but ourselves also [Master Y'shua's followers are not exempt from this simply because they have "accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior"], which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption [or liberation], to wit, the redemption of our body [better read as redemption from our body].

So then, free will is essential. Life is the Eternal Dance of God. This is gloriously depicted as the Rasa Lila in the Puranas, wherein Sri Krsna, in absolute oneness with God, dances with the Gopis (the "Cowherd Maidens") in the Vrndavana forest. Each Gopi believes that she alone is dancing with her Beloved and Sri Krsna has manifested himself into so many forms simply please his devotees. Such is God's loving care for each of us! Each Gopi is "part and parcel of God" and yet Sri Krsna is particularly, especially, attracted by one of them, to Srimati Radharani! His Eternal Love, His Feminine Self.

We catch the same spiritually esoteric trend in Solomon's writings. Here God is again depicted as the Male who the women crave. It is in this sense that we can say that all created beings, all souls, are "females" who ever desire union with our divine Husband, the Ek Devata. As we see in the Krsna lila (pastimes) and here in the Song of Solomon, The Beloved Paramour also desires us, His Beloved!

Song of Solomon 6:1 Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee.
2 My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.
3 I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.
4 Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
5 Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead.
6 Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them.
7 As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.
8 There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number.
9 My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her, and blessed her; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.
10 Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?
11 I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded.
12 Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib.
13 Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies.

Although it is utterly acintya, inconceivable, Ek Devata is our eternal Beloved and we are His. It isn't so much that at some point God chose to bestow freewill upon the creation, it is more that as the creation is eternally part and parcel of the Whole we are free beings yearning for Union with our Beloved.

Hope this clarifies things,

~John

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