If There Is No Free Will, Is There Individual Responsibility? — Rupert Spira

For all of my life, one of my guiding principles was to take responsibility for what happens in my life and not to be in a victim story. Now, in one of your talks and and I hope I don't misquote you now, but in one of your talks you have said um there is no individual responsibility because there is no free will because as things are somehow predetermined. Um but then in another talk you've said it's important to lead your life in a responsible way. Now, this I don't understand. How can I lead my life in a responsible way if there is no free will? Or in other words, I can only take responsibility for things that I decide. Could you please elaborate on that? >> Yes. Yes, okay. Couple of things, Thomas. I hope that I I didn't say um What was something you said that didn't feel quite right? That everything is predetermined. I don't think everything is predetermined. Um I think God is more like a a jazz musician than a classical musician. It's not not going to reading from a score that that's fixed. It's it's improvisation. And I do think there's free free will or or more accurately, I think there's freedom. The nature of consciousness is freedom. Uh Whether or not we have free will is really a moot question because there there's ultimately there's no separate entity either to have free will or not, but consciousness itself is is freedom and at a relative level uh that freedom shows up in each of our minds as the freedom to choose. So, at the individual level we do feel that we have free will and I recommend that you live your life um as if you had free will. And that you use your faculty of discrimination and choice to determine uh [clears throat] um a course of life that is to the best of your ability and consistent with the understanding we speak of here. Namely, the consistent consistent with the understanding that we share our being with everyone and everything. Which is another way of saying consistent with love. Love is the recognition that we share our being with everyone and everything and I I So, I do recommend using your freedom, which is not your personal freedom, but it appears in the personal mind as free will to use your your freedom um in service of love and understanding and and to do your best to lead a life that is consistent with that. So, for instance, your um your determination not to lead your life as a as a victim, but to take responsibility, and that would be a very good example of leading your life in relation to a specific event or series of events in your life where you might otherwise have felt a victim not to do so. So, that that would be a a good example of that. So, when you're faced with a a choice in your life, um an action that you might take uh uh a new employment that you might embark on, a relationship that you might start um that when you're faced with these kind of major life decisions, you you pause and you refer the question to your deepest love and understanding and you you you respond to the question or the situation from this deepest place in yourself, not from [snorts] uh not from fear, not from desire, not from a desire to be recognized. You you you you you respond from the deepest place in you. You do your best to align your decisions, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, your decisions, your relationships with this love and understanding. And you use your freedom to to do that. So, no, I don't feel that everything's predetermined, and nor do I think that you are a just a mechanical puppet in the universe. No, you you have freedom. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense for me and feels really good. >> Yeah.