Free-Will, Choice, and Pre-Destination...

[quote=Space_Man]Poppies: Share your thoughts on how past events shape & influence one

Originally Posted by sashwah

...we choose our life... The puzzle is to figure out what choices you have already made, and what the clues you have laid out are trying to steer yourself towards.

On a very fundamental level, I can see that you and I might never be in agreement on this issue, because I do not believe that we

[quote=Space_Man]

Originally Posted by sashwah

...we choose our life... The puzzle is to figure out what choices you have already made, and what the clues you have laid out are trying to steer yourself towards.

On a very fundamental level, I can see that you and I might never be in agreement on this issue, because I do not believe that we

[quote=Poppies]it appears to me that from your perspective, there is a very straight, level path

I accept what you say... we seem to be pretty well in agreement there....... it's just the pre-arranged... pre-set... pre-chosen... pre-determined aspect that I can't go with! :?

[quote=howiemac][quote=Poppies]

Originally Posted by howiemac

So if God knows what is going to happen, how can it not be pre-destined :?

But knowledge of it does not necessarily imply the presence of influence over it.

You are a fan of the sport ____, but you have to work on the day that the play-off event will occur, and you will be unable to watch it on television. Your best friend actually has balcony seating tickets to the event, and he attends it. He

I'm still with the old Kung-Fu man on this one.

Krishna (God) know's what's going to happen (and other people may also have partial knowledge of this. Lord Shiva is described to have this ability and a number of other sages and rishis), thus it is all pre-destined.

BUT at the same time we are ALWAYS FREE to make our own choices. It's seems like a paradox, but it's not, it just above our ability to understand with human brains.

I met an astrologer once, he told me of a special place in India he had visited which is hidden in a jungle somewhere. Thousands of years ago some powerful sages sat in that spot and looked into the future to see all the people who were going to visit it in the years to come. Then they wrote the life stories of all those people onto leaves in Sanskrit and filed them away.

A team of priests have looked after the record ever since, and if you ever make it there on your travels then you can read 'your leaf' and it will tell you the basics of all that is going to happen in your life. His leaf told him he was going to be a famous Astrologer, which he then later became. I'm not going to mention his name.

Peace, Love & Hare Krishna !!

your servant,

Das

Originally Posted by Space_Man

But knowledge of it does not necessarily imply the presence of influence over it.

agreed

[quote]
My question to you: did your friend

DASA & howiemac: O.K., you two

Originally Posted by Space_Man

Pre-destination: 1.) The doctrine that God has foreordained all things, especially that God has elected certain souls to eternal salvation. 2.) The divine decree foreordaining all souls to either salvation or damnation. 3.)The act of God foreordaining all things gone before and to come. 4.) Destiny; fate.

well i just checked my dictionary and it pretty much agrees with yours, and i had no idea that was what predestination meant - i was assuming it meant something like 'destiny being pre-determined', so apologies for my ignorance... i do not hold with any of that salvation / damnation stuff, and come to that do not even accept that God is fully in charge (i think we all act together as souls to map it all out, but this is just conjecture).

Fore-knowledge: Knowledge or awareness of something before its existence or occurrence; prescience.

this doesn't fully fit the bill either - things can be pre-determined without one being aware (at the lower 'ego' level of consiousness) of the details - as in an actor following a script (s)he has not read before....

[quote]explain to me how