What is Consciousness? And what is the Free Will?

We hear the word "Consciousness" in reference to the goal of all spiritual development. The expressions "God-consciousness", "Christ-consciousness" or "Krishna-consciousness" are commonly used to express a particular concept, which mankind, in their development on earth, are supposed to attain. These expressions vary in their respective interpretations, but there really is only one concept, which is embodied in the word "Consciousness".

So what, then, is "Consciousness"? Is it a mere state of enlightenment, a psychic level of awareness, an ability to see and hear ethereal things, as with clairvoyance and the likes? It must be noted that we human beings are not just bags of meat and bones, we actually have an active kernel that animates these bodies. This active kernel is the very core of our beings, it is the atman or consciousness that dwells within us. The moment we accept this as a fact, we are already on the first step towards breaking away from the hitherto ruling materialistic lifestyle.

The much-lauded free will of man has its very origin in just this very kernel called consciousness. Before we began to incur much karma for ourselves, this free will was well and truly free. We were able to decide our paths in life completely uninfluenced by anything around us. This was during the first few incarnations of the human spirits on earth - the old golden age of Satya Yuga.

However, with time, we began to sow seeds that brought us much negative karma - this was when the age of the Kali Yuga came into being. As a result, all the returning threads of fate that approach us, i.e. the returning karma, also influence our decisions that we make today. This is why our free will today is actually not quite so free as we imagine. We are actually bound in most of our decisions by much of the returning karma, and it takes a lot of effort before we can free ourselves from this karma and thereby make our free will truly free!

This cannot be achieved by meditation or through mere acquisition of scientific knowledge. It is true that these are aids towards achieving this. But the actual key lies within us and in our attitudes to life, to our neighbours and, above all, to the Almighty God. If we learn to develop the virtues of love and compassion, and strive towards the purest worship of God in everything that we do, in our thoughts, words and deeds, then slowly, the threads of fate will lose their former firm grasp on our souls. We become free, and develop true spiritual consciousness. Then our free will can take full control, in unison with our intuition, which is also part and parcel of our spiritual consciousness.