Part of the Casswiki article series Cassiopaean Experiment, Fourth Way and Religion
The question of free will has many levels. At the level of the universe, we could say that the only reason why anything exists is free will. The creative will of the All mediates between the [thought centers](Thought center) of being and non-being, creating a dance of all possible forms.
As the initial impulse of creative will descends from the unconditioned realms of creation towards materiality, it gets diluted, more mechanical and determined at each level.
Tradition, as transmitted by George Gurdjieff and Boris Mouravieff, even as reflected in the Bible, suggests that the logos or creative will of the Absolute is the impulse behind all which is. The Cassiopaeans and Ra define free will as the first universal principle.
Strict determinists are the only ones who completely deny free will.
The concept of free will becomes much more ambiguous when applied at the human level. We could postulate that anything with some degree of consciousness somehow retains some spark of the uncreated, primordial free will. If this were not so, we could not define concepts of responsibility, which after all are central to any ethics. For this reason, pretty much all religious systems recognize some degree of free will, no matter how they otherwise may tend to restrict this.
Gurdjieff’s description of the default state of man is nearly behavioristic, involving next to no free will. Still, Gurdjieff’s whole work strives towards opening a window through which this free will might manifest. In this sense, Gurdjieff is diametrically and fundamentally opposed to any deterministic school of thought.
The greatest problem for manifested free will at the human level is that man is not one: One I wills, another does not, a third is not even aware of the whole question.
In Life Is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’, Gurdjieff introduces the dictum ‘I Am, I Can, I Wish.’ From the book:
Only such a man, when he consciously says “I am”-he really is; “I can”-he really can; “I wish”-he really wishes. When “I wish”-I feel with my whole being that I wish, and can wish. This does not mean that I want, that I need, that I like or, lastly, that I desire. No. “I wish.” I never like, never want, I do not desire anything and I do not need anything-all this is slavery; if “I wish” something, I must like it, even if I do not like it. I can wish to like it, because “I can.” I wish-I feel with my whole body that I wish. I wish-because I can wish.
Free will has nothing to do with desires, it is unconditioned, it is for its own sake, yet it is not arbitrary or random, it may have a direction which is a reason unto itself. The free will possible to man in this sense is far from the possibility of arbitrary indulgence which is often the only thing modern Western discourse understands with freedom.