The freedom of Jesus Christ, who lived by his heart

It should be obvious from these last few pages why the greatest philosophers have always stumbled over the apparent contradiction between free-will and determinism; and that is because they were trying to solve the problem with their minds, rather than simply living by their hearts; whereas the mind has neither free will, nor is it determined, but is merely stuck in the mud forever spinning its wheels, the heart, on the other hand, cannot help but love what it loves- it is determined and free at the very same time. Only in the mind are we split in two, and rendered useless to ourselves in life.

Perhaps we should no longer ask ‘What is the meaning of life?’, but instead ‘What is the feeling of life?’.

As such Nikos Kazantzakis describes the fate of two of his characters, in his unorthodox book, The Last Temptation of Christ, stating: "...within themselves both had picked a quarrel...with their own minds, which calculated, recalculated, and did not let their hearts take wing." (p201)

This is why Christ admonished in the gospels, "We live by the letter, and the letter killeth." For the 'letter' is the system of rules, responsibilities, and preconceptions the mind places over the soul, crushing the necessary spontaneity from guiding us through our day. (Now, let me assure you that this book will not suddenly turn here into an alternative Sunday School lecture about the truth or untruth of the gospels, but I do hope, along the way, to point out that the structured, dogmatic, guilt-ridden rules of the church have so thoroughly deviated from Christ's intention that were he in the flesh today, he would certainly be one of the last to seek the living Spirit inside the confines of dogma.)

Christ lived by his heart, not his mind; he continually denounced the formulas, principles, and rules of society in general, and of the Pharisees and Scribes in particular (ex. the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath). In his passion for the living moment he chose never to write anything (i.e. to scribe), and he did not ask men to struggle to understand, but only to love.

And so it was inevitable that he was an outcast amongst the cultured populace, for he was freer, truer, and wilder than they; so wild, unkempt, and 'unlettered', that Kahlil Gibran, in his book Jesus, Son of Man, would claim, "They say that the wind alone combed his hair."

To live free does not imply one must be a self-seeking, disrespectful, libertarian, but it means simply to listen to the soul, to respond spontaneously, without preconceptions, judgements, or expectation.^{^[11]}

Regarding the unbroken, natural characteristics of Christ, William Blake asserts, "Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse and not from rules."(Collected Works, p202).

'Impulse', comes from 'pulse', which is the pulse of life, the heart. I am not speaking, of course, of the physiological blood-pumper, I am speaking of the inmost self, the core of our beings which directs us by feelings, intuitions, and desire- the desire to live truly, to be oneself completely, to live without struggle and pain, to find the thread of one's true destiny through the confused fabric of being.

[11] P.A. Bien, in his postscript to Nikos Kazantzakis book, The Last Temptation of Christ, says that Kazantzakis, "...saw Jesus...as the prototype of the free man."(p495). That is why Kazantzakis, in his book, has Jesus say, "The Law goes contrary to my heart." (p212)