Karma, Free Will and Consciousness

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Karma, Free Will and Consciousness

By Stephen Proskauer MD | February 3, 2008

Karma is often described as the impersonal law of cause and effect. The definition sounds mechanistic, as if no freedom of choice were open to us to determine how the consequences of our acts play out in our lives. We think that once we have done harm to others we are destined to be harmed by others, come what may, as if we were being punished like naughty children.

In Earth School, however, things don’t seem to be that simple. After hurting people we choose to be harmed not as a punishment, but in order to learn the true significance of what we have done. It is more a learning process than a penal system. Then, after we have learned what we needed to learn, we can choose to stop doing harm and suffering the consequences. It is up to us to decide when enough is enough. It’s all a matter of awareness and skillful use of our free will.

What is the point of this endless learning process? If it has any point at all, it must be the refinement of our participation in universal consciousness, the ultimate mystery. We and everything we encounter is nothing but the manifestation of consciousness, yet consciousness itself cannot be fathomed. It is endless, boundless, inconceivable.

The universe is a kind of stage set for the play of consciousness. In time our own awareness harmonizes more and more with this vast universal consciousness pervading everything and everyone, until we realize that’s what we are.

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