Reconciling our free will with Krishna's

It seems contradictory that we have free will, yet not a blade of glass moves without Krishna's will. There is an example from the Mahabharata which clears this up. Gandhari had acquired a lot of mystic power due to the voluntary austerity of blindfolding herself. Using such powers, anything she would look at could never be destroyed. She asked her son, Duryodhana, to appear before her naked, so she could keep him alive, by protecting his entire body from ever being destroyed. Duryodhana agreed, but on his way to see Gandhari, Krishna tricked Duryodhana by ridiculing the fact that he was a grown man about to shamelessly go in front of his mother naked. He convinced Duryodhana to cover the upper portion of his legs. Thus, when Gandhari utilised her powers, Duryodhana's legs went unprotected. In this way, Krishna made sure that His will prevailed without interfering with the free will of Gandhari. You can see how hard it is just to organise a retreat for a 100 people, so the fact that Krishna can do this with billions of living entities just shows how inconceivable his potency is. Somehow everybody's free will is fulfilled and at the same time that free will is included within Krishna's ultimate plan.

(Source: H.G. Urmila Mataji - QnA, ISKCON Pandava Sena Retreat

Simhachalam, Jandelsbrunn, Germany, Aug 2005)