Freewill

(written on March 12, 2020)

According to Srila Prabhupada, in the purport of BG 18.63, free will is the “little independence of the living entity.” Free will is the capacity of action which living entities have. At the high level, the living entity only has free will to make one decision every second of their life. They can either choose between Krishna consciousness or they can choose to become the servant of maya. Because of our free will, we choose to become the servant of maya, and hence we are here in this material world. Krishna gives us free will because otherwise we would not actually get the chance to love Him. If Krishna was the only choice, then we would be serving Him mechanically, but if we got to choose Krishna over maya, then we actually get to experience love for Him because we wish to become His devotee.

We have to use this free will to choose Krishna and go back to Godhead. That is the entire point of this material world. We fall down, and Krishna gives us this world as a rehabilitation facility in which we can learn how to become God-conscious again. Srila Prabhupada explains this in a lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam 1.8.42, he says that, “the human life is meant for reestablishing our relationship with God.”