Course 6-free will

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Chapter 15. Free will and responsibility

 

The doctrine of individual free will and responsibility is widespread

in both religion and psychology. The traditional doctrine of free

will states that the individual is free to choose his thoughts and

actions, and indeed must so choose. A poor or mistaken choice may

lead to suffering, while a felicitous or correct choice may lead to

happiness. Responsibility as it is conventionally defined means that

one's suffering or happiness are a direct result of choices freely

made. However, no traditional teaching dares to assert that a correct

choice will always lead to happiness, for there is always the karmic

result of past choices which must be endured, not to mention the role

of chance in heredity and environment. Thus, causality and chance

severely limit the fruits of one's choices. Furthermore, no choice

can ever be entirely free because genetics and past conditioning are

always inseparable components. Thus, in traditional thinking, it is

in fact impossible to determine that a choice was ever really freely

made, hence, it is never really possible to assign blame, credit, or

responsibility for any choice. This does not prevent people from

attempting such assignments, however. Indeed, there is usually as

much self-righteous outrage as there is desire to deter or to

condition future behavior when society punishes a transgressor. The

tendency to assign total responsibility regardless of the actual

degree of freedom in the choice places the chooser in a hopeless

double bind. It seems that the only way to escape one's heredity and

conditioning is to assert one's free will, yet free will is never

possible because of one's heredity and conditioning!

In some dualistic New Age teachings, in particular in A Course in

Miracles (ACIM) and in the " Seth " books of Jane Roberts, the double

bind is escaped by simply asserting that all choices are totally

free! Thus, the traditional concept of responsibility has been

expanded to state that everything at all times that happens to an

individual is a result of choices freely made, and that one must

accept responsibility for one's entire life. This implies that one's

heredity and environment are also a result of choice, so the concept

of another self (not the Self) which transcends the individual is a

necessary part of this teaching. The superficial advantage of

adopting this point of view is that there is no room left for any

ambiguity in accepting responsibility, and there is never any

justification whatsoever in blaming anybody or anything else for

one's own lot in life. Since everything that happens to us is our

responsibility, this philosophy does not allow the existence of

separate, autonomous individuals who are making choices. Therefore,

there can be only one transcendent self who is responsible. This is

seemingly an empowering concept, because it requires that one accept

the responsibility of being sole cause of one's destiny. However, the

danger is that it leads to tremendous guilt, regret, and self-

condemnation when the inevitable misfortunes and disasters occur and

one is forced to accept that one's own choices brought them about.

The only way out of this guilt is to realize that one also has the

choice of whether or not to feel guilty, and to regard the event as a

blessing rather than a disaster. A major problem with this teaching

is the complicated and unverifiable nature of the metaphysics. It

must be accepted on faith as a theological truth.

In this teaching, as in the dream metaphor that we used in Section

13.1, the world is a dream and all of the " individuals " are merely

dreamed figures with no volition or free will. In both cases we are

in reality transcendent to these figures. However, in contrast with

nonduality in which we are pure Awareness-Presence, in ACIM we are

the transcendent dreamer, which is a being with form, structure,

intention, and volition. Thus, ACIM is dualistic because in it there

is a separation between the dreamer and God. This separation is more

than a merely dreamed separation, because in ACIM, God is our creator

and knows nothing about the dream. However, if there were really no

separation, God could not be our creator because then we would be

God. In this course, we do not use the concepts of God and creator

because, not only are they not useful pointers to Reality, they can,

in fact, be downright misleading.

Because fear inevitably arises whenever there is a belief in

separation, if we think of God as our creator, we will fear God. In

contrast with nonduality which says that the dream is a completely

spontaneous happening within Consciousness, the dreamer of ACIM has

total responsibility for everything that happens in the dream, as

well as for the dream's (world's) existence in the first place. This

responsibility exists even though the dreamer is asleep, but, of

course, the dreamer has chosen to fall asleep. In addition to giving

us this unfathomable burden of responsibility, ACIM is much more

complicated than nonduality. Important parts of it, such as the

existence of the dreamer and of the choices it made prior to this

lifetime, are intrinsically unverifiable, and are therefore merely

theological assertions. Such assertions make the metaphysics

unbelievable to the incredulous. Because they are made only to

preserve the concept of free will which itself cannot be verified,

there are no grounds for making them.

Both the traditional and the New Age ways of thinking are based on

the assumption that there is an entity who makes choices and who must

accept responsibility for the outcomes of those choices.

Traditionally, this entity is the individual, whereas in ACIM, the

entity is the dreamer. In contrast, we have already seen from

empirical observation, not by ex cathedra pronouncements, that there

is no free will (see Sections 5.9, 5.10, 5.11, 5.12, 5.13, and 10.2)

so there can be no responsibility. Furthermore, the sages of

nonduality never speak of any kind of transcendent entity that

chooses. The dream happens completely spontaneously.

 

An argument often arises in the individual mind in opposition to the

concept of no responsibility. If there is no responsibility, what is

to prevent an individual from being irresponsible, perhaps even

indulging in the desire to steal or murder? If stealing or murder are

to occur, then they will occur, if not, they won't. This will be true

both before and after a person loses the concept of responsibility.

Everything happens as it is supposed to, whether or not the concept

of responsibility exists. It is very clear that this concept has not

prevented stealing and murder from happening in the past. Everything

is part of the impersonal functioning of Consciousness, including

stealing and murder. In addition to producing suffering, the concept

of responsibility encourages a sense of moral outrage to arise when

the event occurs, and a sense of moral retribution when

the " perpetrator " has been caught and punished. Both reinforce the

concept of separation. Of course, there is no perpetrator. We must

clearly understand, however, that the widespread belief in the

concepts of responsibility and retribution is also merely part of the

functioning of Consciousness. It all is just happening as it is

supposed to.

Speaking now within the context of nonduality (Section 10.1), is

there a definition of responsibility? Of course, there cannot be any

responsibility if there is no free-will and no individual. However,

some sages of nonduality, such as Ramana Maharshi, Russell Smith, and

Nome, tell us that we are free at any time to choose to wake up and

be free, since freedom is our true nature. When asked whether there

was free will or destiny, Ramana Maharshi said to some people that

everything is predetermined, to others to find out who it is that has

free will, and to still others that as long as there is individuality

there is free will. Thus, these sages direct their answers to the

level of acceptability by the questioner.

The sense of being a separated individual is necessarily associated

with the concomitant sense of having free-will. Therefore, as long as

we think of ourselves as individuals, we will feel that we are making

choices. Some sages capitalize on this by teaching us that we are

then free to enquire into this sense of individuality and free-will

and thereby to look for the source of the I-notion. But freedom of

choice can only be a concept that may be useful for some people at

some time to encourage them to question their freedom of choice and

to see whether there can be true freedom in a mere concept.

Ramesh, Wei Wu Wei, and their enlightened disciples are the only

western sages of nonduality whose teachings consistently emphasize

the absence of free-will because the sense of free-will is the source

of all suffering. Other sages will at times ask that the disciple

take responsibility for choosing, and at other times will say that

everything happens according to destiny. The circumstances, and the

state of the disciple's ego determine which approach is taken. It is

thus clear that for these latter sages, consistency is less important

than using the most effective pointer to Truth for a particular

disciple, time, and situation. They attempt to avoid the logical

dilemma by saying that, as seen from the dream there appear to be

individuals and free-will, but as seen from Reality there are no

individuals and there is no free-will. (None of these sages refer to

a metaphysical transcendental self that chooses as does ACIM.)

From this discussion, we can see that to question the existence of

free will is only one approach to the problem. Another approach is to

question the existence of the I-entity itself. When sages like Nome

and Russell Smith say we are free to be free, the question must

arise, who are the we? In Ramesh's teaching, there is no I-entity

that can do anything, including questioning the existence of the I-

entity and free will. If questioning happens, it is because it is

supposed to happen. If not, it won't. It is this understanding that

leads to freedom.

 

 

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