How can the soul be held responsible for its actions when everything happens by God’s will?

[If everything happens according to the will of the Lord, who is the overall controller, there is no independence for any human being in this world. In such case the human being should not receive the fruits of its actions. How do you justify this?]

 The Lord is controlling all the souls as per the Veda “Aatmeshwaram”, which means that all the souls are ruled by the Lord. The Gita also says the same “Bhutanaam Iswarah”. But this does not mean that there is no independence for the soul. When the king rules the kingdom, all the people in that kingdom are independent in their activities, but they are within the rules of the king. Thus a short span of independence in the human life exists, under the control and supervision of the Lord.

Suppose a cat caught a rat in its jaws. It leaves the rat after a bite for a short span of time. In that span the rat gets independence and runs in any direction as it likes. But the cat is watching the rat and catches it again whenever the rat tries to go out of the limits of the cat’s supervision. Similarly the Lord called ‘Kaala’ (death) catches a human being and bites. The bite is the illness that strikes the human being. The repeated diseases are the repeated bites of ‘Kaala’ or the Lord. During the bite the rat looses its independence completely. Similarly any human being, who is attacked by disease becomes a patient and looses his independence completely. The cat plays with the rat for sometime like this and finally swallowes the rat. Similarly, the human being is swallowed by the Lord at the end. The whole creation itself is like a rat for the cat like the Lord, which is told in the Brahma Sutra “Atta Charaachara Grahanaat”. Thus the short span of independence of human beings under the supervision of the overall controlling Lord, creates the full game and entertainment for the Lord.

The entertainment is the basic purpose of creation for the Lord as said in the Veda (Ekaaki Na Ramate) and as said in the Brahma Sutra (Lokavattu). Within the limits of the supervision of the cat, the rat will receive the result according to the direction in which it runs. In one direction there may be fire and the rat may receive heat. In another direction there may be cold water and the rat will receive coolness in that direction. The rat is independent to receive the result according to the direction it chooses and has full independence to go in any direction. The final death of the rat shows that the rat is under the control of the cat even during its choice of direction, even though the cat does not interfere during that span. Similarly human life is with full of independence but the final end proves that this independence too is under the control of the Lord. Yet, since there was no interference of the Lord during the human life, the human being receives the results according to his actions. Thus the whole game is perfectly justified from any angle.