Friday, January 30, 2009

Free Will vs True Will vs Predestination

More clarifications.

Frater BH made a post that Lavanah summarised wonderfully as "Free will doesn't exist until you exercise it. And, it is work"

There is a bit of confusion here. Will is a loaded term in the world of magick, especially to Thelemites and even those just familar with Thelemic thinking. 

When we are talking about Free Will vs predesination, we are talking about the freedom from a script written by an external being that is orchestrating everything for whatever reason (boredom probably).  It is inherent. It does not requite excercise any more than gravity does. Free Will is simply the lack of predestination. Period. 

True Will on the other hand is distinguished from want and whim and is the freedom from ones own mechanical nature and habitual patterns. When Gurdjieff says that you arent human because you need to develop a self rather than be imprisoned by your own mechanical nature, this is what he means. Its a different thing entirely. 

Everyone has Free Will all the time. Few exercise True Will even once a day. 

As occultists we must remember that just because we tack on additional meaning to certain words, doesnt mean that they apply every time that word is used. 

A separate and additional point. Our language is fine for discussing this. Frater RO and I disagree and I'll let you in on a little secret: we are both loving the fact that we are

Some people seem to be rushing to our sides to assure us that we really believe the same thing: I assure you we don't. One of us is right (me) and one of us is wrong (him :-) and we are both really ok with that. I havent even spoken with him about it, but I know that it is the case. There is no need to find a compromise on everything. There is nothing noble about needing to come to the same page on everything. Homogonization is boring. 

1 comment:

Rufus Opus said...

I happen to agree with you on the fun of disagreeing. It's not often you're so obviously wrong.