Where's the Proof?

In my last two blogs – they are here and here – I suggested that the way you view your life is dead wrong. And this mistaken view leads to the sorrow and pain you experience.

You think you are an independent agent, and you do things and make decisions. You control your destiny, for better or for worse.

You decide which person to marry, which job to take, whether you should start your own business, which country to live in and much more.

Within each major decision are scores of minor decisions. If you decide to start a business, you then have to decide what product/service you will offer, to whom you will offer it, how you will raise your starting capital and so on.

You are always the decision maker. Some decisions turn out great – you married an angel in human shape. Some decisions turn out to be terrible – your business partner embezzled money and framed you.

But it was you driving the bus all along.

You regret the ‘poor’ decisions you made. You agonize at every fork as you strive to make the ‘right’ decision. You lament the past and worry about the future and strive mightily to create that future and become tense as you try to gauge whether you are succeeding or not.

There is a constant undercurrent of stress and anxiety in your life. You try to bury this and you experience flashes of pleasure when you go on vacation or relax with a drink or watch a new thriller on Netflix.

But that undercurrent resurfaces and begins haunting you again.

What if you are amiss?

What if you were never the driver of the bus? What if you are just like my grandson Krish turning the steering wheel furiously in the amusement park ride and thinking that he is driving the car?

What if everything, but everything, is preordained?

The implications of this are profound.

All guilt drops away. There is no anxiety about the future. You don’t have to worry about any decision. In fact, you cannot make a wrong decision. Great success comes your way? It was preordained. Stunning reverses come your way? It was preordained. Your high school classmate achieves fame and fortune while you are struggling? It was preordained.

This is a radical concept. You are pushing back with all your might. But even your pushing back is preordained.

If everything is preordained, then why should you do anything? Why not just lie back and watch TV all day? I have answered this question in my previous blog.

This Fate vs Free Will debate is an ancient one.

Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher-scientist, said "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

Social scientist Robert Sapolsky postulates that there is no such thing as ‘free will’ in his book, Determined - A Science of Life Without Free Will.

In Psalm 139:1-4: King David writes about God's intimate knowledge of our thoughts:
"You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely."

Proverbs 16:9 says, "In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps."

In the Quran Surah Al-An'am 6:59 states, "And with Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them except Him. And He knows what is on the land and in the sea. Not a leaf falls but that He knows it. And no grain is there within the darknesses of the earth and no moist or dry thing but that it is [written] in a clear record."

In the Bhagavad Gita 7:26 Krishna states, "I know everything that has happened in the past, everything that is happening in the present, and all things that are yet to come. I know all living entities; but Me, no one knows."

Reputed scientists are open to the possibility that we are simply a part of a giant computer simulation.

And so we come to you, and you are still combative. Can I prove that everything is preordained?

No, I cannot.

But can you prove that everything is not preordained?

No, you cannot.
They are both mental models. And you can use both to immeasurably improve your experience of life. Begin with “nothing is written” and try like hell to achieve your goals. After you have done what you can, slip into “everything is written” and let regret and anxiety and stress drop away.

Peace!