Does Everything Happen According to God’s Will?

The Alluring Power of ‘God’s Will’

‘Everything happens according to God’s will!’ You must have heard this repeated a thousand times. Whenever you are in trouble, your friends will have remarked, rolling their eyes towards the sky (because heaven is up above—despite earth’s rotation), ‘Everything is the will of God’ in English, ‘Bhagavan ki iccha’ in Hindi, or as your case may be. Little John can punch little Peter and say, ‘You were punched because of God’s will.’ A dictator can make decisions as he wishes, destroy families, imprison good people and call these the Will of God. The manager of a company can sack an employee, implicating him falsely, and call it the will of God. So, everything happens according to the will of God indeed. People have decided that nations are run according to God’s will, companies and institutions are run according to God’s will and, what is more, every thing under the sun happens according to ‘God’s will’.

And this means that there is no hope, no option, no future! We are just dolls—helpless puppets in the hands of the so-called ‘God’s will’.

‘God’s Will’, and the Reality

Just as we are mesmerized by miracles and supernatural happenings, we are also equally fascinated by the idea of ‘God’s will.’ ‘God’s will’ is worse than miracles because that will take away all responsibility from our hands—of course of only the unworthy acts we are doing—and give the wicked a grand opportunity to perpetuate evil—blissfully confident that it is all God’s will. To say with Socratic solemnity that ‘Everything happens according to God’s will,’ leaves our listeners spell-bound and they see in us spiritually evolved souls. At least for a few minutes!

There is, however, a small problem with this ‘God’s Will’ notion. Here is a story. Ram and Shyam are walking along a street. Ram is in a difficult situation. Shyam is explaining the reality to Ram: ‘You see, everything happens according to God’s will. It is as per God’s will that you are suffering. Remember Ramakrishna’s words: “Even a leaf does not move without His will.” So, stop worrying. Know that everything happens according to God’s will,’ and so on. Meanwhile, a car rushes by, throws muddy water on Shyam, and soils his dress. Shyam shouts: ‘Stop that car! Someone stop him! Idiots! Driving like mad! Just because they have money should they be so arrogant?’ Ram remarks: ‘It’s a small matter. Just forget it! You can wash your clothes soon.’ And Shyam thunders: ‘This is your problem! You people are spineless and timid. You people have no courage. So you suffer. We should fight. We should protest. . .’

From God’s will to self-effort—all within a few seconds!

Where Things Go Wrong

Does everything happen according to God’s will or not? It may be that one has read about this in sacred books, or heard from others. So the enthusiasts repeat them when others are in trouble. But there is a problem. ‘It is like children’s swearing by God, having learnt the word from the quarrels of their aunts,’ remarks Sri Ramakrishna.

‘Everything-happens-according-to-God’s -will’ enthusiasts miss some other important statements in the same sacred books. For instance, ‘Everything is God,’ ‘God alone is Real and everything else is unreal’. We miss the point that our car, our house, our money, our dear ones, our ambitions—everything is only name and form, and only Brahman is the Absolute Reality. In the final analysis, if the idea of ‘God’s will’ is true, the idea of ‘God alone is Real’ is also true. But do we accept this other idea?

 We are not ready to accept such ideas as God alone being real: not because they are difficult concepts, but because we don’t want to accept them as true. And we cannot accept them as true because we love our car, money, house, family, etc., and don’t want them to evaporate into thin air and become Brahman.

 The Philosophy of Convenience

When do we use the statement ‘Everything happens according to God’s Will,’ then? We use it only when others are in trouble: we use it to teach others. We use it until we are not in the hands of a tyrant or a dictator or a tormenting company manager. When we ourselves are troubled, when we ourselves are unjustly implicated for no reason, the philosophy changes completely.

We participate in study circles and read books like the Bhagavadgita, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda, etc. So Nirvikalpa Samadhi, Absolute Brahman, Turiya, consciousness, and such other words enter into our vocabulary. Some of us live as if in trance, or in a daze, with undigested ideas banging our brain.

We read some religious books like children reading ghost stories and quote sentences. We hear that we must read the Upanishads, for instance, and read the translation of 108 Upanishads in a few hours, like reading Harry Potter, and begin quoting. The fact is this: Sri Ramakrishna says, ‘As long as a man has not realized God, he thinks he is free. But do you know the attitude of one who has realized God? He feels, “I am the machine, and Thou, O Lord, art the Operator.”’ Perhaps the exact opposite of what we think! So there is no point in our little egos talking of God’s will, for we are merely repeating ideas from books, and have no experience of anything.

What Books Teach Us

Now, should we believe in the idea that everything happens according to God’s will or not? Of course we should believe in it. But mere belief is not all. Avatars and prophets teach us so that we may put the truths they teach into practice and not merely use them as quotations. Ideas like ‘Everything happens according to God’s will’ should not be a mere philosophy of escape, a philosophy to teach others, or a ‘utilitarian’ idea to explain away others’ difficulties.

Everything happening according to God’s will is beyond our understanding now, at our state of life. For instance, little John has heard that all matter is energy only. He has also read that this energy can become an atom bomb. He is scared, stops eating, and tells his mother: ‘Mom, if I eat this food, it will enter my tummy, become atom bomb and shall explode.’

Sri Ramakrishna says, ‘There are many people who talk big. . . But with all that their minds are engrossed in worldliness and deeply preoccupied with money, riches, name, fame, creature comforts, and such things.’ Reading books religiously—offering flowers, incense, and so on to them—is a good practice, and saints advise us to read books. But they also advise us to select only such ideas out of the ocean of wonderful ideas, which are for our daily practice. We should read them repeatedly.

What Should We Do Then?

The idea of God’s will is taught to us so that we may surrender our little wills; that we may merge our little wills in God’s Will. This is the true spiritual life that saints teach us: giving up our will totally and letting everything happen according to God’s will. When we completely surrender our little will, when we can live as God’s servants or children on earth, when we can accept every situation with equipoise, when we can let go of ourselves, we may say that everything happens according to God’s will.

Being realistic, with our feet on the ground, is what saints call the beginning of true spiritual life. We should fix our feet firmly on the ground. We simply cannot and should not speak about those things we do not know or understand. Especially, so far as such ‘final’ ideas like ‘Everything happens according to God’s will’ are concerned. Religious books contain many ideas; but we shall choose what we need to practice. When we read, we should choose what we want. For example, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna is a colossal work of a thousand spiritual ideas. We may select chapters which are for us, beginners, and read them repeatedly until they become part of our lives. If we rake our heads because we could not understand the concept of Nirvikalpa Samadhi—well, whose fault is it?

Let alone ordinary people like us, even scholars make this mistake: nowadays they comment about ideas which are beyond them. A little school boy was asked to speak about cardiac surgery. He criticized doctors as cruel because they cut the human being, pain him or her, and shed blood and so on. His brilliance made his classmates clap for several minutes. The only problem was that this little brilliant boy had not seen, not experienced or not read anything about cardiac surgery. There are modern scholars who study the lives of incarnations and saints using such intellectual tools like ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion.’ Other scholars of their own type may be thrilled by such studies, and they laud them to the skies. So far so good, but. . .

So it all boils down to this: ‘One ounce of the practice of righteousness and of spiritual Self-realization outweighs tons and tons of frothy talk… .’ Saints teach us constantly that we must practice. They say that as we continue our sadhana, our minds become purer, the dominant power of our so-called ego lessens, and we shall slowly understand that we cannot do anything by ourselves. As Sri Ramakrishna’s anecdote of the calf says: ‘. . .Then it [our ego] no longer says, “Hamba! Hamba!” [“I”, “I”], but “Tuhu! Tuhu” [“Thou”, “Thou”]!’

Now, what shall we say if someone asks us about ‘God’s will’? We shall say: ‘We don’t know,’ because indeed we don’t know. Or, even when we are in trouble, it is all according to God’s will; let us accept the statement in this spirit.

By Swami Sunirmalananda