Are You Sure It Is Your Choice? | How to Distinguish Freedom from Dependence

AVAlexander Volchek

When we talk about addiction and dependence, we usually think of alcohol, cigarettes, social media, or habits a person cannot give up. But are those the only forms of dependence? Can someone consider themselves completely free while acting every day on impulses whose origins they do not even understand? What does society instill in us, what do we bring with us, and what arises during our lives? Why can something called freedom today turn out to be another form of dependence? How do you distinguish your own free choice from something that already controls you? That is what we will discuss today.

There is a very interesting premise in this question: that society created the consumption of alcohol, the very existence of alcohol, supposedly bad habits, social media and reels, murder on Earth, or the hunger for money. As though it were very important that human beings did this. Not just important, but perhaps even something to be proud of.

As though the fact that a human being did it should excite us. Is there really a person in the world who created alcohol? Or a person who created the world of technology? Or a person who started wars, murder, or some form of violence against others? Did a particular person really begin all this? We do not know that person, although notice how people constantly try to attribute something to someone: this person created telephones, that person created artificial intelligence, this one created certain economic laws, and so on.

This person created modern medicine; that one is the biologist who discovered these things. They try to attach it to an individual. When they cannot, they simply say society did it, people did it. That is very interesting. We will look at what "people did it" really means, because understanding this lies at the very root of humanity's present direction. Again, four thousand years ago, a person did not think, "If I have a particular habit, other people created that habit in me."

Or, "My parents created this habit in me." My sister came to visit me in the States, and while we were driving we discussed how important help from different people can sometimes be. You might go to a psychotherapist, an osteopath, take care of your body in some other way, or discuss a particular subject. Sometimes you want to see a person and limit your work with them to one specific topic. That deserves a separate video, but I will mention it here. For example, osteopaths often start adding explanations as they work: "You have tension in this part of your body, and that is your mother."

"The tension in this part is a relative, your sister or brother. And this part is your ancestral line, those who have died," and so on. They make these connections. We were talking about how sometimes you want to find someone who does not add anything, someone who works with you in a very narrow area and sticks to that particular task. The more we explored it, the more we saw this happening everywhere, not just in osteopathy. For instance, if you begin working on your nutrition, you will be told that much of how your body functions and what your test results show depends on whether you are stressed.

They will begin recommending meditation, for example, because you are probably very stressed. Or imagine you meet someone helping you with your outward style. They describe what clothing or surroundings would suit you, then start adding things beyond style: "You need to develop certain qualities in yourself." They begin moving into psychotherapy, adding elements of it. You know plenty of training programs where people teaching business branch out into other areas of a person's life. They go beyond the original subject.

Four thousand years ago in Egypt, if someone felt anxious, they would not say their mother was to blame. They knew they had past spiritual lives. I mean four or five thousand years ago, not two and a half or three thousand. Those past lives contained reasons why they might feel a certain way. A person knew the spiritual world was real. When you truly perceive that world and understand that this present life is part of it, then the world itself is spiritual. You do not even need the word "spiritual."

Use "physical" or "material world," by all means. But in speaking of spiritual life, you do not need the word "spiritual": that is simply life. Then it is obvious that events and things have causes. Not just why you decided to drink alcohol, for example, or why someone watches a series every evening, but the origin of the phenomenon itself. Who brought it here? What energies brought it? Why is this phenomenon on Earth at all? In terms of human development, illness is necessary for the spiritual system to recover.

Death is also necessary for the spiritual system to recover. Without illness or death, a human being would be completely destroyed as a spiritual being, would disappear. Or perhaps not disappear, but undergo some transformation. This is a very interesting subject for observation, something we can observe in meditative states. Is the dark spiritual world—if we can divide it that way, the side of Ahriman and Lucifer—interested in everyone becoming demons, becoming part of the demonic world and serving it? Are the demons on that side interested in that?

What would Ahriman and Lucifer ultimately be seeking then? What do they want to find at the endpoint? What are they looking for, what do they want to obtain? They already have legions of dark hierarchies of spiritual beings, including people absorbed by that world, over whom they hold enormous power. Would that be enough? Or do they need the world of light? Do they not need it? We are not going to take the discussion toward needing it for enslavement or labor. That would be a strange direction to pursue.

Spiritual treatises say Ahriman is waiting to destroy the Earth. They even describe the movement of meteorites, directing a meteorite to destroy the Earth or the system where people live. Fundamentally, what is happening is much deeper, if we look at that extreme. Still, we are saying that illness and death allow a person to recover. To recover.

How, then, should we relate to different habits or phenomena in a person's life? What is the source of what? Illness is not the root cause, and in one sense it is not something brought by the dark world, the world that prevents or restricts a person's development. Or those systems, beings, realms, time, energies—you can call them whatever you like. Illness and death did appear because those energies exist, because otherwise a person would become infected and sink into all those realms. People often use this idea to justify themselves, as a kind of karmic justification.

Someone says that if they are doing something bad, it is experience that will let them gain something later: "I am probably going through this experience for a reason, to gain something afterward." You have heard that phrase countless times. But you could tell them, "You are not suffering now in order to gain experience. You are suffering because you did very bad things. If you had not done them, these events would not have happened, and you would not have needed this experience." There really are states a person lives through that benefit their development. Other processes are simply a chain of cause and effect. We understand that not every incarnated person has ever killed anyone.

Not everyone. Even the number of people living on Earth right now makes that clear. If you add up all the people who lived before, to the extent that science can count them, the numbers simply will not add up. So when we approach dependencies such as alcohol or social media, ask whether technology is a plus or a minus, discuss current political systems and power, or the division of people by nationality, way of life, and country…

The very division of people is itself a powerful form of dependence. Which binds a person more: their perception of other nationalities, people with different skin colors and different physical bodies, or alcohol? Which are they really more dependent on in terms of the information conveyed to them? I was recently in Europe with friends, and when referring to people from other countries they used words you cannot use in America. Not because they had a negative attitude toward those people, but because they had been taught to speak that way.

People in the United States have also been taught to speak a certain way because that is the current trend. A hundred years ago, people spoke very differently. Watch American, European, or Asian films from a hundred years ago and you will see different approaches, a different culture, circumstances, and details. Dependence is always an interesting question. For instance, why, when you go to America or Europe, do you see so many more fashionably dressed Asians? People arriving from China are much more fashionably dressed. You cannot say all of them are, but there are many fashionably dressed people among them.

I remember that impression from Guangzhou. I first went there in 2011, I think. A long time ago—twenty-five years, or how many? No, fifteen years. I thought, twenty-five is a bit much for my age. Fifteen years ago. I remember the feeling of shopping, brand-name shopping, expensive designer shopping: how Chinese customers behaved in those stores and how it looked from the outside. It was a mass phenomenon, not something exclusive. And not simply because there are so many of them. Someone might say that, but stores have limited space, and there are a great many stores in those countries and in China.

There were plenty of stores fifteen years ago too. What energy is there in these people? Why do they have it? My nephew is visiting now, and every day he gets dressed as though he is going to put on a show. This is fashion, serious fashion. Not just stylish or fashionable, but fashion as a statement. You could put it that way: being fashionable is one category, stylish is another, and this is a whole mix. Serious fashion. People in fashion might disagree. Someone might find it tacky, wrong, or a misunderstanding of styles. But this person clearly lives in his own world of perceiving outward space and image: what he wears, how he looks, what he conveys, how he expresses and shows it.

This is a very interesting point. Can it be expressed through other areas of life, including spiritual ones? Society has taught people to divide themselves into categories: you paint, you program, you sing, you wear clothes. Everyone has been separated. Few people have been told that this energy exists and can be directed in different ways. You can direct the very same energy into physics, studying physics or scientific research, and at the same time into fashion and musical art. Express exactly the same energy there. Is that dependence or independence?

Or is it a form of dependence when someone does not hear the world and wears leggings every day? Is that dependence, or is it independence? Look at how modern society describes it: as freedom from dependence. That is the strong trend right now, that this is a person's freedom, that they are not tied to these things. Are they not tied to them? Or are they, on the contrary, so bound to them that they cannot live any other way? They do not understand another way, do not feel or hear those energies, simply do not have them. Their actions and possibilities are limited. What is that?

When we discuss dependence as a social process, the first thing is to understand that these things have underlying energies. We need to examine those energies. Was the energy originally pure, and has it now become distorted and captured by certain worlds? An enormous amount of energy in the world has been captured and transformed. Take how the energy of metaverses or artificial intelligence is conveyed today. It is a transformed demonic structure, but it is transformed energy. There is a very powerful, pure impulse within these energies. Can it be used for something other than good? Yes. Countless films explore that. I was just on a plane watching a new film about artificial intelligence.

In one case, someone wanted to create an army of AI and bring things from games, from the virtual world, printing everything there into the real world. Another company brought equipment from the virtual world to heal people, along with systems to help agriculture, nutrition, and so on. One side brings a negative aspect, the other a positive one. There is another good film where something arrives—what is it called? You will find it. Not Eclipse. A huge spaceship arrives. I like that actress too. They pass on technology so people will help them a certain number of years later. Could that technology be used negatively?

Of course that much knowledge can be used negatively, or very positively. If today's artificial world and technological world talk so much about the negative uses of technology, then of course they carry a negative impulse. Today's AI is itself a very powerful, self-governing energy. In terms of dependence, Olya, it is important to understand that society does not create this energy. That does not mean we should not study it. I made a long video about this on my other channel, from the perspective of personal development: what to do about studying AI technologies. I also have a separate channel devoted to AI and technology themselves. I keep saying that we need to study these energies, but we must all understand that this is energy that creates itself.

If we can call it energy at all. These are energies, worlds, realms, beings, sources, causes, time and not-time, all at once. The universe is an immensely complex, very particular combination of everything that could exist. Suppose a person becomes dependent on it. We might say society is dependent, or the individual is dependent. Does that person actually have the ability to step back from it? That is what your question was about: what should the person do? That is where we are arriving. What should they do?

Why did this condition of dependence arise? Why did they fall into it? Are there things a person can avoid falling into? All people today die. People have been dying for several thousand years, certainly. That is important. They get sick. Everyone dies. We do not know anyone on Earth who has lived for fifteen hundred years. At least, we do not know of such a person. But we could allow for the possibility. From the perspective of spiritual science and studying the spiritual world, you can always allow for it. I readily do. As a rule, though, everyone dies. That means everyone is subject to this dependence on the world, just as everyone is subject to causes and effects and karmic influence, each to their own degree.

Can you avoid death? At present, as a rule, you cannot, given the current structure of our bodies and everything else. If you could avoid it, would you even want to go on living? That is a big question. Reflecting on this is very interesting. We could make separate episodes and meditations about it. Perhaps we will have such a meditation here on the channel. If you gained boundless possibilities in the spiritual world, or what the material world considers boundless, would you want to live here in the material world? Would the thought of wanting to live here even occur to you?

From the perspective of the spiritual system, your spiritual being has a tremendous attachment after death: it wants to return to a physical body, but that body is gone. This comes from certain energetic dependencies. Look further, and the reincarnation of a spiritual being is, on the one hand, its apparent wish to return to the same realm. On the other, it is simply a consequence that allows a person to develop and move forward. What ultimately prevails there is independence from the wish to live and incarnate. Find even one spiritual system that describes a thirst for life. Find one.

Perhaps some clubs or religious orders say you should live a long time. But it is modern society that says that. The question, Olya, is where this energy comes from, the energy behind a concept such as biohacking. What is biohacking? A person wants to hack biology and the physical world. The brain is already saying it is so clever that it will hack everything, even itself. The ego system and personality want to hack themselves. The dark forces laugh at this. They smile. What else can they do?

The forces of light may smile at it too, at this lack of development, this dull idea. Following this line of thought can bring you to a sober state, a state of broader perception, in relation to your particular dependencies, states, social phenomena, and life. You can observe your children completely differently. That is much easier. It is very hard to grasp your own life in terms of the movement of time. But turning your material gaze outward, toward your children, and observing how different causes and effects unfold for them is very interesting.

A few days ago, we were driving home along our street. There are perhaps five to seven houses, but the street is long, maybe a kilometer. We saw my older son, who is ten, coming out of one of the neighbors' houses. We rolled down the window and said, "Hi, Igoresh! What are you doing here?" He said, "I will tell you later," and walked on looking very pleased. We drove away. That evening we learned he had gone to the house next door, to a woman in her eighties, and said, "Would you buy a drawing from me, for whatever price you like? Buy any drawing." He sold her one, and that was when he was walking back. I heard the story and sat talking with my sister Anya that evening. I said, "Anya, can you imagine trying to understand or evaluate this? What would people think about it?"

Someone might say, "Why did you go and bother that elderly woman?" Someone else might think, "Good for him. He has an entrepreneurial spirit." That is the current trend, isn't it? Someone might suggest visiting other neighbors. Someone might say he should have given it to her for free. Someone might worry that he is concerned about money; someone else might be delighted that he is. Can you imagine how many different states and emotions we could see here? The best thing is not to let your brain debate or discuss it at all. It is pointless. You will not be able to fully grasp the combination of energies living within that action.

What is more, it is simply an action. As I tell everyone, a person can fulfill their karma while working behind the counter in a café or running a company. Either line of work. Everyone thinks that if a person runs a company or owns a business, they must be fulfilling some serious karma. Who told you that? Who came up with it? A person can live through the same states whether they live in a big city or on a remote farm, hardly seeing anyone. They can experience whatever states they need to experience. An action like this could be seen simply as dependence—from society's point of view, dependence on money, for example.

Or it could be seen as open energy for freedom of communication and life, a tremendous open impulse that is quite sound overall. Someone comes up and says, "Would you like my picture?" The woman on the other side could have said, "I do not want your pictures," or, "I will take one for free," or, "Here are two dollars, but I do not need the picture." Imagine the causes and effects that might then have unfolded for the person. She might not even have been home. He might have tried once and stopped. Or she might have been in a particular state and passed that state on to the child through her perception of the event. We do not even know how the other person perceived it.

There is your social phenomenon. What a person is most dependent on is misinterpreting events like these and acting wrongly in response. That often binds them much more than habits such as drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, or something far worse, drinking alcohol. What matters is the impulse behind the act. Was it an impulse of freedom, with the understanding that such an action could come only from freedom? Or a wish for support or help from the surrounding world? Or energies that arose to test something in him?

Or perhaps he is testing particular realms himself. It is a great experiment: go and sell something, then sell it for a high price, then not sell it at all but give it away, then do nothing at all. We would all call those worthwhile experiments. But people are not interested in experiments. They want a result, not simply life, but a particular result, a particular life, particular circumstances. At that moment, darkness enters and captures the person, their consciousness: the consciousness of a soul unprepared for these causes and effects, these dependencies.

We have raised many questions today that could be explored through meditative practices. If my editorial team pulls them out, I may direct our attention toward them in the meditations on this channel, which have taken place, are taking place, and will continue. Of course, it all depends on the energies arriving at a particular moment, not on a made-up idea or set of circumstances.