The question of free will is one of the classic philosophical dilemmas. Do we have any choice over over our own behaviour? Or are we fated to perform certain actions because of our genes and conditioning? Traditional philosophy has explored a variety of approaches to this question, but Elementalism provides a new one.
The questions above are the basis of what is known as the free will vs. determinism debate.
The free will argument contends that people can do whatever they want to. People have a choice between good and evil, between selfless acts and selfish ones, and if a person’s true will is good they will do good. As such, people who do good can be treated as if their will is good, and vice-versa.
The determinist argument contends that a person’s future actions are restricted to a range determined by, among other things, a person’s genes and their conditioning. People don’t really have a choice about what they do, because they can only motivate themselves to act if the wiring of their brain creates an impulse to action.
This is an important philosophical question because, as alluded to above, the resolution of it determines how certain miscreants are to be treated. If free will exists, then criminals can be punished harshly. If not, then they have to be guided into making the right decisions by behaviour modification.
The Elementalist perspective, as is often the case, is that mainstream philosophy has missed the point entirely.
Elementalists believe that all of us are, fundamentally, individuated consciousness, and that these individual consciousnesses traverse the Great Fractal by way of matching frequencies. To the Elementalist, there is no material world – every individuated consciousness is aware of a set of perceptions, and each set of perceptions exists somewhere in the Great Fractal.
These sets of perceptions change as the frequency of one’s individual consciousness changes. Therefore, to change the world to that which one desires, it’s only necessary to change the frequency of one’s consciousness. This can be done through repeated exertions of pure will.
Because there is no hard material world, there is nothing forcing a human being to behave in any pre-determined manner. There aren’t really any neurotransmitters, or any limbic system, or any instinctual response brain circuitry or anything else involved in decision-making. There is just consciousness and the contents of consciousness. Life is but a dream, through which consciousness passes, forever.
Elementalists believe that anyone can get anything they wish for, whether in this life or in one to come, by matching the frequency of one’s consciousness with the frequency of the part of the Great Fractal in which that thing exists or is happening. In fact, Elementalists go as far as to believe that one inevitably lives a life that matches the frequency of one’s consciousness, whether this is wanted or not.
Accordingly, a person has to be careful about what their true will is – because they will get it.
If a person’s true will is to assert themselves violently over others, they will gravitate to a part of the Great Fractal where the order of reality is the violent assertion of power over others. Sometimes they will benefit from that, and sometimes they won’t – that’s how it goes when you wish for such things.
If a person’s true will is order, then they will get order. They will end up in a part of the Great Fractal where chaos is minimised. A person who ends up in such a place might not like it on account of that they find the order suffocating. In such a case, this will be reflected by their true will, leading to a change in the frequency of that person’s consciousness, in turn leading them to another part of the Great Fractal.
If a person’s true will is peace, their frequency will come to reflect this as it comes to reflect the sum total of that person’s actions in their life. This will cause them to gravitate to a part of the Great Fractal populated by peaceful beings. An individuated consciousness might experience this as bliss – or hellishly boring.
In summary, Elementalists believe implicitly in free will, so implicitly that they strive to perfect their mastery over it. Mastery over one’s true will is mastery over how one navigates the Great Fractal – either one drifts ignorantly through existence or one dances skillfully through.
The Elementalist conception of reality teaches that we are individual fragments of consciousness experiencing the Great Fractal, which we are free to explore in perpetuity. As such, there is no reason to assume any kind of determinism beyond the Seventh Hermetic Principle, or the Law of Cause and Effect.
What that means, in practice, is that one can only move through the Great Fractal at a pace and manner determined by one’s previous actions. The more heavily one’s karma weighs, the more restricted one will be to certain pathways, and the less nimbly one will be able to change direction. One’s karma is, of course, a reflection of one’s previously expressed true will.
Such arguments were no doubt understood by the monk in the image at the top of this page. Although he was a Buddhist, and not an Elementalist, he would have been aware that the material world is illusory and therefore that all sensations are transitory. As such, he would have possessed a great deal of the wisdom that Elementalists aspire to.
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