Human Free Will - Responsibility - Origin of Good and Evil
SPIRITUAL TOPICS > Free Will
Human Free Will 
Why the use of our Will unleashes an unimaginable Power
How our Free Will determines the Course of our Life and thus the Choice between Good and Evil
When we look at it closely, our Will is the cause of all our experiences and of the state of the entire Earth! For without a corresponding will, nothing can happen, plain and simple! It must always precede all thinking, speaking and acting. In doing so, we directly determine our own destiny through our personal decisions, and the diverse decisions of all human beings taken together then determine the fate of large groups, entire peoples and even the whole of humanity, as well as our environment, since we rule the Earth. In this way, we create our own karma and – proverbially speaking – heaven or hell. Our decision for good or evil is also based exclusively on our Free Will. This means that if we understand the nature and effects of our will, we hold the key to a better life and a more beautiful world in our hands!
Free Will and Responsibility
Unfortunately, we live in a world in which we have given our mind, which is merely a product of our brain, almost complete control over our lives. This also means that we more or less leave it to our mind to judge all areas of life, even those that lie beyond its horizon and thus beyond its comprehension.
However, our Free Will lies exclusively in our Spirit that we carry within us as the principle of Truth, and therefore it is no longer comprehensible to our mind, but it is comprehensible to our Spirit. This is why humanity and science puzzle over whether Free Will actually exists or whether it is an illusion.
So let us first examine the question of whether ‘Free Will’ actually exists or not. As early as 1983, scientist Benjamin Libet discovered in experiments that corresponding brain activity in test subjects began about a third of a second before the moment at which the decision was actually perceived. From this, it is concluded that the brain merely gives us the illusion of free will, while in reality the decisions are already made, making us the executors of decisions that have already been decided.
If, like science, we assume that the world is exclusively material, this conclusion would be logical and correct, but it would raise the question of who or what causes the brain to make its decisions.
Of course, the logical consequence of this would be that no human being could be held responsible for their actions if they were merely the executing organ, the puppet of their more or less unpredictable brain. For there can be no responsibility without Free Will and the ability to see and assess one's actions. According to this view, all social rules and the jurisdiction of courts would have to be completely rethought.
Consequently, all criminals would have to be released from prison. Of course, we resist this idea; we also resist the idea of being essentially a will-less, merely executing being, and the pros and cons of this idea have been vehemently debated in the scientific world for over 40 years.
In an article in the German magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ in October 2021, we read:
"For some, it called into question the values of the Enlightenment; for others, it was a reason to rethink criminal law: the experiment by American physiologist Benjamin Libet has been shaking up our understanding of what we consider to be our “free will” for almost forty years: a person makes a decision – and then acts.
Libet turned this belief on its head when he showed in a study in 1983 that there is a gap between the moment when the brain can measure that a certain movement is to be performed and the moment when we become aware of the decision to do so. On average, the brain appeared to be 330 milliseconds faster than its owner. So who is in control here?"
But where is the logical error? It lies simply in not recognising all higher levels of Creation and considering them non-existent. In reality, all our decisions come from our Core Being, the non-material Spirit. Our consciousness also lies solely in it! However, most people will not easily accept this and will expect tangible proof, which is not possible in this case. This is easy to explain, because something immaterial cannot be proven in a ‘tangible’ way. Nevertheless, we do not have to believe this blindly, because there is indirect proof in the fact that our consciousness does not age. We always feel as ‘I’, as the same person, regardless of whether we are a child, an adult or an old person.
If we accept our spiritual core, our spirit, as something superior and immaterial, we can imagine that the power of its decisions must first be ‘condensed’ before they enter the earthly realm. The final stage, immediately before the process becomes conscious, is our brain. However, it is not the starting point for our decisions, but merely the executing organ. Consciousness is higher – only day consciousness is partly fed by the information available in the brain. If you would like to know more about this, you can find further information on the page The conflict between head and heart (in German; needs to be translated).
From this point of view, the exact sequence is not difficult to understand: our spirit, i.e. our actual self, makes a decision. This decision passes through several stages, specifically in our body through the solar plexus, then the cerebellum, until it finally reaches the cerebrum. And after the aforementioned 330 milliseconds, it then becomes conscious in our daytime consciousness.
So we can specifically assume that we are both conscious and capable of making decisions at our Core! This gives us a great responsibility! For it follows that if we direct our will in destructive ways, as we have been doing for thousands of years, we will ruin the entire planet and bring about destruction and discord. This is the inevitable result of the great Law of Reciprocal Action, which always brings us the same consequences of our thoughts and actions, without exception.
The path to light or into darker areas –
we have the choice every minute of our life.
And how we make our countless decisions
shapes the quality of our life
according to the Law of Reciprocal Action.
.
Freedom of Choice and current Developments
If large crowds of people allow themselves to be mentally brainwashed by lying, manipulative and inflammatory leaders whom they themselves have voluntarily elected, simply because they are ultimately too lazy to form their own logical and reasonable opinions, then it is easy to imagine how great the damage must be; and we do not have to look far to see impressive examples of this in world affairs every day. The same applies when people, in their greatest naivety, believe that by voting for radical parties they can teach the more moderate ones a ‘lesson’ and thus create a platform for the former, which their representatives then triumphantly exploit to completely poison any remnants of a healthy climate.
Of course, we humans would also have the choice to steer our will in a constructive direction if we honestly wanted to: to preserve, protect and conserve nature as the basis of life, to treat its treasures responsibly and to pay strict attention to its ability to regenerate, avoiding all waste and pollution. We could replace the completely exaggerated urge to hoard money, material possessions and social prestige with a pursuit of spiritual values and interpersonal warmth, for these are infinitely reproducible and would bring happiness instead of suffering. Likewise, we would of course have to maintain peace and resolve differences of opinion purely objectively, which, as a consequence of the same Law, could bring us almost paradisiacal conditions. The period of upheaval until these goals are achieved would also involve considerable effort. But humanity has proven sufficiently – for thousands of years until today – that it does not want this! And so we have confused the powerful Cosmic Energy Flows that are connected to us and our will, so that we now often see no way out due to all the constraints we have created for ourselves. But the basic problem is extremely simple: it consists of thousands of years of Abuse of our Free Will!
Many people recognise this abuse in principle, but most of them immediately fall into the next trap: in their opinion, it is always the others who are acting wrongly, the politicians, the business leaders, the ignorant fellow human beings. They are the ones who repeatedly spoil the largely correct life that we believe we are leading! But this idea is not true, because according to the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species, we always attract the fitting kind of people. If we were above all mistakes, we would have ascended long ago and would no longer be on Earth!
This projection of guilt, or, to use a biblical image, the scapegoat principle, is what causes us the greatest unrest and makes our ascent enormously difficult, ultimately impossible. Every person who can separate themselves from this has taken a huge step towards their own liberation and that of many of their fellow human beings. -
At the mercy of fate ...
Of course, we must also explore the question of how, despite Free Will, we are powerless in many things and must endure much that we do not want. This is another reason why opinions on human Free Will vary widely. The materialistic approach, as already mentioned, doubts it and sees it only as the result of previous brain waves. But even for spiritually oriented people, practical constraints and life situations in which we have practically no choice, as well as the diversity of births and paths of destiny, often present many mysteries and a contradiction between freedom and bondage. Could our Free Will therefore after all be just an illusion, or can the apparent contradiction be resolved?
We have the solution in our hands with the Universal Law of Reciprocal Action! Once we realise that not even the smallest event in our lives and in the whole world remains without corresponding consequences, the frequently discussed question of the existence or non-existence of our Free Will can soon be resolved.
And we need another important key, without which this fact is not easy to understand. However, knowledge of this key has been largely lost in our culture – strictly speaking, since the Council of Constantinople in 553; and therefore, for many people, the leap to accept this is not insignificant. It lies in familiarising ourselves with the idea that we are not living on Earth for the first and only time, but have already had several or even many earthly lives before! We are therefore talking about very, very long periods of time in which we have already been on our way and, in most cases, have brought consequences upon ourselves through wrongdoing, which we have no memory of today for good reason, but which nevertheless often have not yet been resolved and balanced out. This task then falls to the present life we are currently living! The advantage of not being able to remember is that we would otherwise not be impartial if we could remember everything from the past. More detailed explanations can be found in the corresponding article on Reincarnation.
So, to summarise: we have lived on Earth as human beings several times and made mistakes, some of which have not yet been compensated for and must therefore be made up for in this current life.
The answer to the question of why many things seem inevitable and bind us against our will is provided by the aforementioned Law of Reciprocal Action, which inevitably brings us the same consequences for everything we have done and do, at the appropriate time, irrevocably and incorruptibly. However, the necessity of accepting the consequences means nothing other than that we have no Free Will in this situation. For this Law is laid down in Creation as a corrective measure, so that when we make mistakes, we can experience what we have done wrong, and when we act constructively, we are encouraged by pleasant consequences to continue along this path.
Let us remember that every consequence has a cause, as is the nature of things! So, a decision to do something, whether constructive or harmful. Once this decision has been made, the Law of Reciprocal Action immediately begins to work. The consequences of the decision mature and, after a shorter or longer period of time, fall back on us, bringing us the pleasant or unpleasant harvest of what we have sown. It is exactly the same as in the garden! Of course, the Law of Reciprocal Action does not only apply to tangible, visible actions, but begins with our attitudes and continues through our thoughts, words and deeds.
In short: The nature and quality of our decisions, whether constructive or destructive, bring us exactly the same consequences, whether we want them to or not!
to continue: How suffering can be avoided
This website is under construction – but here’s a preview of the topics you’ll find:
New: Free Will - How our Free Will determines the Course of our Life and thus the Choice between Good and EvilNew: Celibacy - Life pleasing to God or Violation of Natural Order? Thoughts on suppressing sexual attraction.New: "Awake!" - the 5th Lecture from the Grail Message - spiritual Awakening, human Dignity and inner Purity.New: The Power of Thoughts - Effects beyond the mind - the immense Benefit or Harm our Thoughts can inflict.The most popular articles:Why Faith must unite with clear Spiritual Knowledge - why true Faith is not what is commonly understood by Christians.Jesus of Nazareth - how his clear and pure Teachings have been significantly distorted over the past 2,000 years.More articles about very important spiritual correlations:The Grail Message – In the Light of Truth - an Introduction to the first Lectures of the great Explanation of Creation. What does it say?Life after Death - what happens next according to Natural Laws, and why viewing Death more naturally can be deeply liberating.The Last Judgement - why it is unavoidable for the Protection and spiritual Ascension of good-hearted PeopleEnigma Coronavirus - Is the Coronavirus a random Mutation, a "Punishment from God," or something entirely different?Translated from the original German site 'spirituelle-werte.de' with the help of AI. For inaccuracies or stylistic weaknesses I ask for your sympathy.The original website spirituelle-werte.de contains many other topics, which will follow gradually here, such as Atheism, Free Will, Forgiveness of Sins, the big problems of our false Monetary System and many more. For translation, I recommend the premium app deepl.com.