Freedom, Will and Freewill
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
"So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will." - Liber AL vel Legis, I, 42
I have recently been reading various writings, posted on line, regarding Thelemic concepts of Will and Freedom, and have to comment that their authors seem to be - in my opinion - rather confused about the place of these ideas in Thelema. Most of these writers seem to believe that because Thelema promotes human Freedom and is based upon the concept of Will it thus supports an idea of Freewill. To put it mildly, this is not automatically the case.
There are three issues here -
a) The promulgation of human Freedom - On a political level Thelema must be committed to this. We have no way of determining the Will of a given individual, as such maximal individual freedom is a necessary corollary to the injunction "Do what thou Wilt". In an environment of maximal freedom individuals are best able to discover their Wills.
b) The nature of Will - Will is a function of the inertia of the universe. An individual's Will is something that they discover. At the start of their involvement with Thelema they are a conflicted mess of impulses, as they progress in the Work they eliminate the minor impulses leaving only the single major impulse - the Will. This is additionally strengthened by the energy freed up by the elimination of the other impulses. Thus, the Will of a given individual is precisely determined by that individual's position and personal history (in Eastern terms, their Karma). Nothing else can be that person's Will.
c) Freewill - This is an ill defined philosophical concept having little to do with either Freedom or Will. An individual with a developed Will has no "Freewill" in the normal sense. Rather they have a single focused purpose which they cannot reject even if (by some bizarre stray thought) they want to. The undeveloped individual has a much smaller Will and is prey to their other impulses, but this is not freewill - which impulse triumphs and determines their actions is simply a function of the random factors in their environment. They have no more Freewill than a ball on a bagatelle table.
As can be seen from the above, Thelema espouses the discovery and development of the Will and promotes human Freedom as the best condition in which to conduct this process. Freewill has no part in this programme (even if anyone can say what this bunkum notion means).
Love is the law, love under will.
"So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will." - Liber AL vel Legis, I, 42
I have recently been reading various writings, posted on line, regarding Thelemic concepts of Will and Freedom, and have to comment that their authors seem to be - in my opinion - rather confused about the place of these ideas in Thelema. Most of these writers seem to believe that because Thelema promotes human Freedom and is based upon the concept of Will it thus supports an idea of Freewill. To put it mildly, this is not automatically the case.
There are three issues here -
a) The promulgation of human Freedom - On a political level Thelema must be committed to this. We have no way of determining the Will of a given individual, as such maximal individual freedom is a necessary corollary to the injunction "Do what thou Wilt". In an environment of maximal freedom individuals are best able to discover their Wills.
b) The nature of Will - Will is a function of the inertia of the universe. An individual's Will is something that they discover. At the start of their involvement with Thelema they are a conflicted mess of impulses, as they progress in the Work they eliminate the minor impulses leaving only the single major impulse - the Will. This is additionally strengthened by the energy freed up by the elimination of the other impulses. Thus, the Will of a given individual is precisely determined by that individual's position and personal history (in Eastern terms, their Karma). Nothing else can be that person's Will.
c) Freewill - This is an ill defined philosophical concept having little to do with either Freedom or Will. An individual with a developed Will has no "Freewill" in the normal sense. Rather they have a single focused purpose which they cannot reject even if (by some bizarre stray thought) they want to. The undeveloped individual has a much smaller Will and is prey to their other impulses, but this is not freewill - which impulse triumphs and determines their actions is simply a function of the random factors in their environment. They have no more Freewill than a ball on a bagatelle table.
As can be seen from the above, Thelema espouses the discovery and development of the Will and promotes human Freedom as the best condition in which to conduct this process. Freewill has no part in this programme (even if anyone can say what this bunkum notion means).
Love is the law, love under will.