This is a short summary of the three stages of seeing free will according to Sri Ramakrishna (as described by Ayon Maharaj / Swami Medhananda). Content has been paraphrased and organized in my own way.
This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short summaries and quotes aren’t substitutes for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality by Ayon Maharaj:
Sources:
- Do We Have Free Will? Swami Medhananda (YouTube)
3 Stages of Seeing Free Will from Sri Ramakrishna (Ayon Maharaj Summary)
Stage 1. ajñānī (ignorant / non-realized / unenlightened):
Identity:
- You ignorantly identify with the body-mind.
Free Will & Moral Responsibility:
- You have the illusion of free will (the feeling of doership stems from egoism). You cannot help but mistakenly believe and feel that you are free and therefore morally responsible for your actions. The moral responsibility felt by ordinary people (who have not yet realized God) depends not on the reality of free will but on the feeling of free will. As long as you have not realized God, even if you profess to believe that God alone is the Doer, you cannot help but feel that you are the doer.
Stage 2. jīvanmukta (one who is liberated while living / realization God is the Doer):
Realization & Identity Shift:
- Through direct experience of God, you shed your illusions, eradicate egoism, and gain the salvific knowledge that God is the Doer and all are under the Will of God (you internalize fully the truth of hard theological determinism).
Free Will & Moral Responsibility:
- Although you know that you have no free will or moral responsibility, you ‘will never make a false step.’ Since you are one with God’s will and act as a conscious instrument of God, you are incapable of doing anything evil, immoral, unethical, or sinful.
In the words of Sri Ramakrishna:
- “A person becomes a jīvanmukta when he knows that God is the Doer of all things … Where is a person’s free will? All are under the will of God.”
Stage 3. vijñānī (realization you are God):
Realization & Identity Shift:
- You realize that God alone exists and has become all this (God is all things and beings in the universe). You realize nothing less than your identity with God—that you yourself are none other than God.
Free Will & Moral Responsibility:
- Since you are not different from God, God’s freedom becomes your own—you are, in fact, free and morally responsible for your actions (not as an empirical individual but as God).
Problem of Evil:
- The traditional ‘problem of evil’ presupposes a difference between God and God’s suffering creatures. But, now seeing from the panentheistic standpoint, the problem is dissolved—the problem of evil is only a problem for those who mistakenly think that they are different from God. You see that there is nothing but God and, consequently, that God’s creatures are nothing but different guises of God playfully manifested by God in God’s līlā. God sports in the form of the unenlightened and enlightened, evildoers and their victims, etc. All suffering is actually God’s own self-inflicted ‘suffering’.
In the words of Sri Ramakrishna:
- “The vijnāni always sees God. That is why he is so indifferent about the world. He sees God even with his eyes open.”
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