To summarize: a person is an object, a phenomenon without freedom of choice, who thinks that it can know what is good and what is bad and above all imagines that it has freedom of choice. What the person or the ego does not want to see is that it is only an apparent object, that is called into life by the Source as a dream projection and just like a shadow lacking any independent existence. If you dare to recognize that you cannot be what you perceive (you can perceive a floor lamp, but you are not the floor lamp, not even if you are 'enlightened' ), then simply you cannot insist that you are a person. After all, you can look at your own person and even be surprised about your 'own' (responsible or irresponsible) behavior.
Thus, if there is no freedom of choice, if a person is a perceptible projection, who then is responsible for what? The Source, Consciousness, God, the Energy, the mysterious Witnessing conjures up the world as it is, for whatever reason, if there is indeed a reason and if so we cannot know it, because we are the Source itself. The eye can not look at itself. If there someone or something responsible then it certainly has to be the source, in which the relative, apparent world appears.
Do we then have to accept all behavior? Do we have to observe any behavior meekly in a sort of fatalistic state? The mistake one makes in this kind of thinking is that these questions are asked by a 'person'. We are then forgetting that a person cannot avoid asking these questions if they emerge in him. Furthermore these questions arise implicitly from the idea that there is a choice between acting and not acting, reacting or not reacting. And that is just the point: the choice is not there. If someone is hitchhiking then apparently there are two choices, but there is only one (relative) reality, one outcome: you either offer him transport or you don't. What it will be is what it has become, because it could not be any other way. Whether you confront the bully misbehaving in the subway or not: the decision has been made, even before it penetrates your consciousness. Suddenly you see that you flee or look the other way (shameful!). It could also happen that to your own surprise you fulfill a hero's role (fantastic!), about which you later will say; 'I never knew I was capable of doing this'.
If you behave 'responsibly' then you need to be a bit humble, it is not your merit. If you behave 'irresponsibly', then I have compassion. because it will unavoidably cause suffering; for you or for someone else. But responsible behavior can only exist by the grace of its opposite: irresponsible behavior. You are not your behavior, we (you and me) are the source and in that realm all the opposites disappear. From the absolute (where no opposites exist) we perceive the relative world as it unfolds, over which the relative has no control. Whether you jump into the swirling river to save the drowning person putting your own life at risk, or you let him die a certain death, you will only come to really know when you are confronted with this situation and no second sooner. Responsible or irresponsible is not the question; accepting What-Is, in whatever way manifested, your 'personal' reaction included, that is what it is about. And for that there are no words.
© Justus Kramer Schippers - February 2003 Costa Rica
http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/responsibility_schippers.htm
