How To Really Worship Kālī | Free Will vs Determinism

In this talk, we develop some the ideas from the Is There Free Will? lecture: if there is no free will, then, what's the point exactly? Isn't spiritual life all about freedom? If freedom is the goal, can such a freedom ever be articulated on the level of the embodied individual if after all, as we claimed last week, there is no freedom in a real sense for the embodied individual since Mother alone is doing everything? What then is "moksha", liberation, exactly?

To answer all of these important questions, we take up Thakur Sri Ramakrishna's definition of jīvanmukti. embodied liberation while in the body and mind (i.e anytime we are not in nirvikalpa samādhi) and also consider what this mukti, liberation looks like in a "videha" sense, when we are fully identified with Mā who is not only Free but is Freedom Itself.

In this talk, we especially focus on God's freedom and why it is an absolute given. We argue for how God's freedom implies Her absolute non-duality. And if I am God, (as indeed I must be since no second reality exists apart from that) then, am I not also free, as God? What then to make of the hard deterministic position we were arguing for in Is There Free Will?

But mainly, this is a talk about surrendering totally to Kālī, having understood her Absolute Freedom. Mā always gets Her way, so like Shiva, one can only smile and watch Her dance!