Free Will vs. Destiny: The Visual Novel of Life

 

Screenshot from a Japanese visual novel showing a branching choice menu — a metaphor for life’s crossroads between fate and free will.

In an earlier post, Ramana and the Merovingian: Two Faces of Causality, I explored how two very different figures — a decadent exile program from The Matrix Reloaded and the silent sage of Arunachala — point to the same underlying truth: everything is caused. The Merovingian revels in this as a weapon; Ramana reveals it as a mirror, stripping the ego of its illusion of control.

That post already felt like an answer. Ramana’s words are as uncompromising as they come: every motion of the body is prārabdha karma, already decided, already scripted. The only freedom is not to identify with the body at all, but to abide as the witness.

And yet, even as I wrote those lines, something in me remained restless. The logic was perfect, but the lived mystery was not dissolved. There have been moments in my life — rare, electric — when the Universe seemed to hold its breath, poised on multiple scripts, waiting for the click of my will. In those moments I have felt both the weight of possibility and the pull of fate as one.

I cannot simply bury that feeling under Ramana’s words. It keeps returning, asking to be integrated: if all is predetermined, why do these crossroads burn with such reality? If the script is fixed, why do some choices feel like tests of the soul?

This essay is my attempt to live inside that paradox, to bring the uncompromising clarity of Ramana together with the visceral truth of those branching moments.

The Ancient Puzzle

This is not a curiosity for philosophers alone. It is the riddle that has haunted humanity from the beginning: Are we free, or is everything destined?

It appears in every tradition, wearing different masks. The Stoics called it fate written in the Logos. Augustine wrestled with it in the language of sin and grace. Buddhists describe it as karma, an endless net of cause and effect binding each rebirth. In India, the debate between schools that exalt will and schools that deny it has never ended — Advaita reducing the self to a phantom in a script already written, Tantra insisting on the power of choice as tapas of the soul.

And still, the circle repeats. Every ashram, monastery, or café of seekers eventually returns to the same argument. It cannot be silenced, because it is not just an intellectual knot — it is a cry from the marrow.

We all know the taste of it. Standing at a threshold in life, trembling, we feel both truths pressing on us at once. One voice whispers: this was written long ago, you cannot escape it. Another whispers: this moment is yours, everything changes if you step through.

That tension is why the question never dies. It is not about logic — it is about the visceral pulse of being alive, feeling the pull of fate and the sting of freedom in the same breath.

And it was only when I tried to put this into words that another image arose — not from scripture, but from the modern world. An image that suddenly made sense of what I could never reconcile.

The Visual Novel of Destiny

There is a genre of Japanese games called visual novels.
On the surface they are deceptively simple. You sit before the screen and read. Line after line unfolds: the hum of the city, the footsteps of a girl on her way to school, the faint tremor of music behind the words. It feels like drifting in a river whose current has already chosen the direction.

Most of the time, you do nothing. You only watch. The story pulls you along as though your presence is almost unnecessary. Breakfast is eaten, conversations drift, the plot thickens by itself.

But then — suddenly — the river stops.
A black screen. A choice.
The cursor hovers over words that could alter everything.
Do you open the door, or turn away?
Do you confess your love, or bite down on silence?
Do you fight, or surrender?

Your chest tightens. The heart begins to pound. Because in that moment, the game seems to lean toward you, asking: What will you do?

And though you know, at least in theory, that every branch has already been written by the programmer, the sensation of freedom is overwhelming. You are not simply reading anymore. You are trembling on the edge of a universe.

Choose lightly, and perhaps the story only shifts tone.
Choose otherwise, and you might tumble into an ending where everyone dies, or where hidden sweetness unfolds, or where the world itself is remade.

This is the paradox:

• All outcomes are already coded.

• And yet, the burning of decision feels more real than the text that surrounds it.

The programmer’s script holds the future like a net, but the lived weight of the moment cannot be dismissed. That trembling before the click is not illusion. It is the very fire that makes the game alive.

When I looked at my own life, I realized: this is exactly how it moves.

Most days are like scrolling through text boxes. Small choices accumulate but do not truly branch the story. You go to work, you buy food, you have the same conversations you had yesterday. Karma unwinds like dialogue that cannot be skipped.

But then, rarely, comes a crossroad. A marma, a pressure-point of destiny. The air thickens, the body trembles, and the Universe itself seems to hold its breath. Everything hangs on a choice that feels unbearable in its gravity.

And though I know — because Ramana has told me, because sages have told me — that all endings already exist, still I cannot deny the taste of those moments. The crossroads are real, even if every road is already in the code.

This is where the two truths finally meet. The determinism of Ramana and the visceral freedom of experience are not enemies. They are two sides of one mystery. The script is sealed, but the trembling of the player is Śakti’s own scalpel, cutting the soul awake.

Kaula Double Vision

Ramana leaves no escape hatch for the ego. His words cut like a blade: “Whatever this body is to do was already decided when it came into existence.” The movie has already been filmed, the reel already spooled. The only freedom is to stop confusing yourself with the actor and abide as the unmoving screen on which everything plays.

That truth is not up for negotiation. It pierces like lightning. And yet — when I stand at the crossroads of my own life, when my body trembles as if the weight of universes rests on a single step — can I dismiss that fire as nothing but a trick of the code? No. Kaula refuses such flattening. It whispers: “Do not run from the taste of your own burning.”

Kaula demands double vision.

With one eye, she gazes into the Absolute (paramārthika):
there is no doer, no choosing, no test.
Every fork is already folded in Śakti’s dream.
Each possibility exists like a branch in a tree that never began.
From this eye, all is already decided. No hand ever trembled.

But with the other eye, she looks into the Existential (vyavahārika):
the burning of choice is undeniable.
The pulse, the sweat, the terror, the trembling before the click — these are not illusions to be explained away. They are Devi’s very scalpel.
The crossroad is not fake; it is an initiation yantra, a karmic marma where destiny condenses into flame.

And the paradox is this:

• The test is real, because it sears you open.

• The test is unreal, because it was never yours.

Both truths burn at once.

Kaula does not let you pick one side for comfort. She compels you to live in the wound between them — to walk with both eyes open. To tremble as if everything depends on you, while knowing all along that nothing ever depended on you. To act as if you are responsible for worlds, while bowing to the recognition that it was always Śakti moving her own limbs.

This is the practice:
not resolving the contradiction, but allowing it to rip you apart until nothing remains but the One who was never bound.

The Trembling Hand

There are not many true crossroads in a human life.
Most days flow like text already written, dialogue boxes you cannot skip.
But once in a while the Goddess places you at a burning fork,
where the air thickens and the universe seems to hold its breath.

In that moment, the paradox ignites.
The path you take is already scripted.
And yet, the weight of your choice is absolute.

The test is real, because it sears you.
The test is unreal, because it was never yours.

This is the Kaula way:
to live as if worlds hinge on your trembling hand,
and to know, at the same time,
that it was always Śakti’s hand moving the mouse,
Śakti’s breath tightening the chest,
Śakti’s fire writing every ending.

Destiny is a visual novel.
Every ending already exists.
But the trembling before the click —
that trembling is where She reveals Herself.

Om.