Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

Free Will?
Closing in on Fundamentalism

The concept of free will offers a good example of how an idea turns into dogmatic thinking, able to start arguments, if not wars, when people dig in too deeply with their viewpoints and build cosmologies around them. The mere ideas of whether the book of your life has already been printed and just waits for you to read it, or whether the narrative is yours to pen as you wish at any turn, are the matter of philosophical debate that often becomes the fodder of conflict. The differences about whether or not humans have free will illustrate the value of taking the time to look at other perspectives.

A major portion of many religions relates to this very point. Eastern philosophies are known to espouse the nonexistence of free will, whereas the Western mind-set contends that free will is part and parcel of human existence. Whichever viewpoint is valued, the perceptions relating to it are found in the capacity of humans to form subject-object relationships. Humans examine their condition and ask questions like, “If we have free will, what is its nature? How much choice do we have?” This question may be better stated as “Why don’t we choose to act in ways that don’t harm ourselves, others, or the environment—especially when we know our actions are causing harm?”

Notions pertaining to free will summon deeply rooted values of what it means to be human. This requires looking at individuals as unique, as being able to behave independently of the group. It carries that much meaning. In traditional Buddhist thought, free will doesn’t exist because there is no self to have free will. Even some cognitive scientists hold fast to this view. On the other hand, free will is very much a part of Christian traditions. “Sin” is at times viewed as straying from the path, and reconciliation is placing oneself back in a proper relationship with God. Choice, then, or the ability to find redemption, derives from the thinking that we have options to select from, and the power to enact choice.⁹

Arriving at either understanding requires an intense effort of consolidating a number of seemingly disparate pieces of logic into a unified whole, a task no different from any other learning. The point here is that classic traditions expound particular points of view. That is both a blessing and curse.

Jung maintains that will implies having enough energy to act independently of instinct, yet the motivation of will is biological and therefore instinctual. From Maslow’s perspective, free choice doesn’t enter the picture until a person expresses self-actualizing behavior. His hierarchy of deficit and growth needs speaks directly to this.¹⁰ If a person is governed by need, how much latitude for choice does he or she have?

As part of having no free will, we might regard our destiny as being already determined, and perhaps view all time as taking place within a single instant, with life being a magnificent play of perception of moving through time and space. At the same time, we could use this perspective to support free will in that self-determination is part of the nature of things. Both models enable expansion of awareness. The machinery of logic is just different. The resulting forms of consciousness and knowledge are different.

In his book, Psychology of Religion, scholar Paul Johnson argues that choice is evident when one is more conscious,¹¹ a position in line with Maslow’s thinking. The energy body schematic with the interworkings of imagination and learning offers a look at what becoming conscious entails. This is supported with a right-left physical hemisphere model where integrating different functions of the brain leads to being more conscious.

From an energetic standpoint, though, inertia governs all of our behavior and free will corresponds with a sense of movement. Learning allows one to change inertia, but was the learning itself a product of inertia? Isn’t most learning, at least in the early years of life, based solely on participating in a given reality? Free will, from this perspective, is just buying the only thing being sold. As you become more conscious, though, you may be able to manage the process. This could be evidence of free will or another by-product of inertia.

Belief in free will or no free will stems from one’s cohesion, as each perspective represents an assemblage point position. The synthesis of the two ends of the free will/no free will continuum may not necessarily be a blending of models but the development of yet another model; the effect of a Hegelian dialectic where thesis and antithesis collide to create a new synthesis. In this example, the growth may be that of ontological intelligence—the full range of awareness—where the next answer, and the next choice, is found in the enactment of the next, higher order of logic.

According to the Toltec worldview, emanations carry commands. There is a command that humans must eat and another that humans must engage in self-reflection. How the commands are carried out, though, seems open to interpretation and decision-making. Choice then originates from completely surrendering yourself to an emanation in order to step outside of it.¹² By absorbing the energy of a certain level of consciousness, you open yourself to yet another influence. While you may lose a sense of choice in the new emanation, you’ve gained at least some freedom, and therefore some choice, from having become more conscious of the prior emanation.

The further you integrate the human world, meaning the more you command human-world emanations, the more you step into worlds beyond your current imagination; after all, we are multidimensional creatures living in a multidimensional creation. Choice then mirrors aligning with, or entraining to, particular emanations. All major religions and spiritual philosophies offer the possibility of this awareness regardless of whether or not it is related to energetics, or whether or not we have free will.

Both camps and everything in between can conjure up some pretty fancy footwork and we haven’t even scratched the surface. One way or other, the belief you hold about the issue results from your entrainment to a line of thought, an emanation of intellectual energy. Not having free will supports behaving in line with the properties of energy where at a certain level all behavior has already been decided. Having free will offers a connection with energy fields that enable this thing called “choice.”

Any way you look at it, it is all part of infinity’s script. And within infinity, everything is occurring—including the legitimacy of all assumptions about infinity. It is at this point, says don Juan, that we are left with exercising only one alternative: the capacity to serenely face infinity as a result of being filled with awe at the unfathomable mystery we live in.¹³