FREE WILL

“Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime - by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?”

Thus writes Sam Harris in his provocative book Free Will (2012), a book that has changed the way I think. Did I have any choice in the matter? No. Based on random neuronal firings in my brain I clicked a link to a youtube video of Sam Harris and went onto red his book. As he said in a recent lecture (Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012),

Thoughts and intentions simply arise. What else could they do? Now, some of you might think this sounds depressing, but it's actually incredibly freeing to see life this way. It does take something away from life: what it takes away from life is an egocentric view of life. We're not truly separate: we are linked to one another, we are linked to the world, we are linked to our past, and to history. And what we do actually matters because of that linkage, because of the permeability, because of the fact that we can't be the true locus of responsibility. That's what makes it all matter.

For an atheist, Sam Harris is actually profoundly spiritual. He takes the same view of life on earth as ancient Buddhist texts; we aren't separate, we're essentially one. He talks about meditation too but I'll save that for another post.

***

Now I'd like you to make a decision. Decide, for example, to raise your hand, either one.
Okay, let's say you've raised your right hand. Why did you raise it? Why not the left hand? what made you choose the right?

Well, this isn't a big decision to make. So you didn't really think about it. The decision just popped up. I'll raise my right hand. Probably you don't even put the thought into words. You just do it. You raise your right hand. Who is controlling you? No one. You decided to raise your right hand and so you did.

Of your own free will.

And yet: the problem with the idea of free will is this. Did you decide to decide to raise your right hand and not your left? Of course not. The decision just happened. "You" actually had no control over it. "You" are actually just a stream of thought. The thought popped up. You raised your right hand and not your left. But could you have actually decided to raise your left hand? No, because the only decision that bubbled up from your subconscious was the decision to raise your right hand. It just happened, in other words.

“You can do what you decide to do—but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.” - Sam harris

Similarly, let's say you're choosing a movie out of the movies you've seen that you'd like to watch.
Jurrasic Park, you say, if you have a blah taste in movies. Or you think of maybe two or three others.
But you couldn't actually choose to watch any of the movies you didn't think of, say Titanic (which is of course worse but just as an example).
You couldn't choose Titanic because, just at that moment, the thought didn't occur to you.
You couldn't choose any of the movies you didn't think of at the time.

"Why didn’t I decide to drink a glass of juice? The thought never occurred to me. Am I free to do that which does not occur to me to do? Of course not."

Can anyone actually argue with any of this? I'm thinking they can't.
Whether you do or don't choose to respond to this post, isn't actually something you have control over. Any more than I had control over the decision to write it.

Yes, it was a causal chain of events that led me to where I am, pressing the Send button. But I had no control over the thoughts that popped into my head. I had no control over my response to Selina's post about me being here "only for the gameplay" or the other intricate workings of my brain that none of you could even begin to fathom.

Nor do you have any control, really. You think you do. But you don't.

A disbelief in free will is not incompatible with a belief in LOA. We attract our experiences into our lives. We seem to decide what we want. But actually when you look at it from a broader perspective you'll see that us, we, the earth, we're just a well-oiled mechanism playing itself out. A "game" of minds "deciding" what they want and suffering through all the attendant miseries of the bad decisions they make. A game of minds attracting things based on what they are, a self-winding clock manifesting things just the way it has to.

No serial killer decides his biology or life experiences. No corrupt politician decides the things that make him what he is. He has no power to change his thoughts. As Alan Watts says, "they pop up like hiccups."

The fact that it is a mechanism does not mean it is not a mechanism of extraordinary beauty. But it is a mechanism nonetheless. Things happen at random. They just are what they are. You decide you want to manifest a new car. But you had no control over that decision. You wanted a new car because of this and that and the other and eventually the thought came to you, yes, a new car, that's what I'll manifest.

It's humbling but that's all we really are. Self-winding manifestation machines.

I'm sorry Phantasm, but how does this thread belong in Esoteric Wisdom...exactly?

Thanks for this, Lotus. It's only taken me about half a year to manifest a post about free will from you
I look forward to reading that article in-depth soon!

so what do you guys believe yourselves then? is there free will? or is it all fate? or is it a bit of both?

I used to believe there is free will but everything is fated. (Just think - Einstein's block time - past, present, future all coexist, therefore the future is already out there and can only happen the way it does but the future that is out there is there as the result of our freely made decisions.)



Now I am not so sure...  firstly of course the concept of "free will" per se depends on us having independent "selves", which are illusory anyway, but if we look at it from the common standpoint...

If we look at it from the standpoint of ego, the idea of free will still isn't as convincing as I used to think it is. I'm not sure I'd go all out like say, Sam Harris does, but though we think we're in control, most of the time, we're actually not. According to Harris, we have the illusion of free will, but no actual will of our own making. I would not commit to saying that we have no free will, but the arguments for total determinism are convincing.

I would love to write volumes on this but I am in a huge hurry and I'm sure you, Lotus, and others will discuss it cohesively without me.

urgh! i wish i could discuss this.... but the truth is i dont know what to believe, i mean sometimes i think we have free will... but then when i think a bit deeper there's always something controlling us, whether thats fate... or even society and its rules in general

i guess we're free in a sense to have our own likes and dislikes and preferences but even they're limited by options

hmmmmm i just dont know

Night Eyes wrote:i guess we're free in a sense to have our own likes and dislikes and preferences but even they're limited by options

Well the fact is that our likes and dislikes are hard-wired into us by our conditioning. Believe me, if you took a Neanderthal and plonked him down in the 21st century...and if he had been raised in my house, well, he would have ended up being huge a classical music person and probably a big fan of Shakespeare, too.

I knoooow I wrote another post somewhere about free will, it was in some thread where Advaita and Spira were being discussed, I think I referenced some nonduality/spiritual teaching on thoughts as simply arising and also Alan Watts ("your decisions just pop up like hiccups").



“Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime - by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

“The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad environments, and bad ideas (and the innocent, of course, have supremely bad luck). Which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for? No human being is responsible for his genes or his upbringing, yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character. Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself.”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

“A moment or two of serious self-scrutiny, and you might observe that you no more decide the next thought you think than the next thought I write.”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

“You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

Hi ladies. Unfortunately I don't write on Freewill at all, Freya, and I especially don't argue about it. That's why it took you half a year, and frankly I had no intention whatsoever to share in this thread. I don't even think that my earlier post here was really "a post about free will from me" as you put it. Wish I'd known you're that humble; I would've sent it or something similar long time ago. It was only a link that I came across and just found relevant and possibly interesting here.

Anyway, I'm in one word an ardent defender of freewill, Night; totally and completely against determinism. All great sages and seers throughout history refused determinism. Even all "lords," from Krishna to the Buddha to the Christ, dismissed it. On the contrary, the Buddha called it an "obnoxious doctrine," and it rightly is.  Determinism, in my humble opinion, is not only fallacious but also dangerous, like a vicious virus that, once in your system, can almost literally paralyze you, terminate every meaning and poison your whole life. Seriously what could be more limiting and crippling than holding to such a belief, that one is but a puppet completely and even unconsciously controlled by the will of some higher power—or even worse, by mere chance?

We refuse determinism, however, on very rational and philosophical grounds, regardless of these psychological consequences. But this debate, just like the debate on "evil," or on "God," never ends, because the real problem here is not which answer is correct; rather, that the question itself is erroneous. The question itself is dual, based on a dual view of reality. It's because of this duality that such questions have arisen in the first place. But since duality is totally false and illusory, these questions are not only erroneous or fallacious but also meaningless—the reason they, despite centuries of debate, never really found conclusive answers.


Let me give you only one quick example: Who is the "doer" of your actions? You think you are the doer; the agent of these actions, right? Wrong. You're not the doer of any action. You never really do anything. You don't even "will" in the first place, or "desire" anything whatsoever. The question of freewill, arising from the illusion of your doership, is therefore meaningless.

That you are not really the doer, on the other hand, doesn't touch your freewill or imply that things, thoughts and events just happen to you. It rather means that you are beyond the whole illusory show; beyond all apparent motives and their subsequent actions. You, literally infinite and limitless, are beyond all dualities of the mind, and to the real you things, thoughts and events never even happen.

This debate therefore, including even my own opinion stated above, is taking place only in the "dream" of reality, only inside this matrix of illusions. Asking whether we have freewill or everything is predetermined is just like asking a little child whether roosters give birth or lay eggs. The child's mind, at least at first, probably gets trapped in the choices offered without paying adequate attention to the "roosters" the question is all about, or to the fact that roosters indeed do neither. Similarly, we get caught in this debate without first paying proper attention to the entity the question is all about. We take it for granted that we are intelligent beings, living on a planet called Earth, apparently with the power to think and will and accordingly decide and act. But this itself, this we take for granted, is at least in question here if not altogether illusory.  So as Freya rightly pointed out:

…Firstly of course the concept of "free will" per se depends on us having independent "selves", which are illusory anyway, but if we look at it from the common standpoint…

But even from the common standpoint, or the empirical level of reality as we Advaitins usually call it, the opposing argument still can't stand the test of reason. That our thoughts, for example, just "pop" into our head is not conducive to the denial of freewill. Even the so called "scientific experiments" that determinists are very glad of—where thoughts of choice were detected in the brain prior to the brain's owner himself being conscious of the choice—were miserably misinterpreted.

The fallacy here is our assumption that we "do" thoughts, consciously, which I'm afraid only reflects our ignorance of the "nature" of thought and what thoughts really are. But thoughts are "impressions" and "vibrations," just like colors and sounds, and as such their "perception" always precedes their "cognition." It just can't be otherwise. Willingly or unwillingly, we must first see red in order to know it red, and then use it or ignore it. We must "perceive" it first, as red, whether that was the color we accidentally come across in the street or freely chose to paint the wall. Perception always precedes cognition. Thoughts therefore, by their very nature, always "just pop" in the head, and must always be detected in the brain prior to the very last stage of all mental processes, i.e. cognition. And this, obviously, has nothing to do with our freewill.


But then again, the question of freewill as I said is itself wrong, not either of the answers provided. So let's get out of this trap and instead answer first who we really are. Identifying with the body-mind, we are truly slaves in this matrix. Some are even like beasts, fully controlled from within by their instincts and urges, and are not even aware of their bondage. Yet the freedom each and everyone can tap into is simply beyond comprehension. It's just infinite freedom, literally speaking, and each and everyone here, believe it or not, is literally omnipotent.

But that's it, no more; I almost broke my vows and wrote about freewill again. Just my opinion anyway.

Thanks Lotus

hmmmm its all so complicated yet not complicated at the same time isnt it!

yes if we look at this from the viewpoint of this is all an illusion then it just negates the argument totally because it doesnt even matter i suppose

but i like the idea of Self - Determination if we're not looking from the illusory perspective, but i've always had issues on the subject that we're only allowed to exercise so much free will before we're controlled anyways (especially when it comes to Politics)

thanks both for your perspectives though leaves me with a lot to think about

Thanks Night for reading.

... but i like the idea of Self - Determination if we're not looking from the illusory perspective, but i've always had issues on the subject that we're only allowed to exercise so much free will before we're controlled anyways (especially when it comes to Politics)

Yes, but this is not what they usually mean in the Freewill debate, Night. Of course we're not free in this sense. Even scientifically, we're deeply conditioned—socially, culturally, biologically, etc. And when it comes to politics, or economy, we have a very limited margin of freedom. We are left with very few options and are extremely restricted. Even when we come to choose, our President for example, we choose one of those already decided by some other, higher power--sometimes decided even decades earlier. Moreover, during the process we get exposed to systematic, scientifically-engineered brainwashing campaigns that almost determine in advance whom we're going to choose in the end. (And people indeed, on the other hand, are very easy to figure out. Sarcastic as it may sound, the US citizens just for example, in the last 100 years or so, always choose the "taller" candidate to be the next president—and arguably the most powerful man in the world. Can you believe that? The only exception was Carter, only because his campaign manager found out about this truth and made every effort for his man not to ever stand next to his taller rival, Ford, in the same shot. He even asked Carter literally, for the candidates' traditional handshake, to make it as brief as possible, just for this reason).

The Freewill debate, in contrast, is rather philosophical than cultural or political. The deterministic argument is that, we cannot be free in principle. This includes even the top powers or secret elites that govern the world. What seems to be free choice is not free at all, again principally, inherently, regardless of any social or political context. Everything in general is "predetermined" or "predestined," they claim; everything down to the blinking of your eyes. This is the argument I refuse, and what this debate in general is about.

So even when I said that we're like slaves in this matrix, I didn't mean any political, economical or social conditions. I only meant the interesting fact that we keep all our life thinking, feeling and acting on behalf of an illusory entity. It's this entity, indeed, that gets conditioned, programmed, and sometimes even fully designed, by the higher powers and according to their agendas. It's this entity, albeit illusory, that enforces our bondage, causes our suffering, triggers our thoughts, motivates our actions, thus shapes our whole life and, lastly, entertains all such dual questions and probably enjoys all such endless debates. (No worry, though, because this is only how things seem to be like here. We've never been in bondage and we've never ever really been suffering. Even if this is how it feels sometimes, it's perfectly okay; we literally have "eternity" to find out the truth).

Yes i understand what you mean Lotus, i guess i was just heading down a different perspective rather than the one being discussed


i dont think i would really believe in the deterministic approach down to even blinking.. seems pretty extreme!

but i remember reading a link which i may have posted somewhere on the forum about souls and reincarnation and how we choose our experiences before we're born, i know this doesnt fit with Advaita or anything but i found that pretty interesting, and i could believe something like that, where we decide what lessons we need to learn or what is going to happen on our soul journey

but then i wouldn't believe it to be so controlled and planned and set out, i do believe we form our preferences and what we like and what we want to do day to day and have some choice in the matter then

but saying that, if its our soul doing the choosing before birth... does that still make it free will? as its not some higher being doing the choosing? its still us or our essence making that choice and it is free to choose whatever it likes


am i rambling?

lol. No you're not rambling.

Everything fits with Advaita, Night, and this is the beauty of it. Most if not all Advaitins believe in reincarnation, but it's both true and untrue at the same time. Anyway I generally agree with you my friend. We might only disagree about some minor details, such as the Souls-Agreement. This is an interesting concept, and one of Bashar's favorite ideas. But what does this really mean, exactly? Why do we reincarnate in the first place? More importantly, who or what reincarnates: is it the illusory persona, or the true Self—which is God himself in man? I believe the answers to these questions, at least as provided by the Advaitins, let alone the Buddhists who believe in "rebirth" yet deny the existence of any soul whatsoever, would make this Souls-Agreement scenario very improbable.

But as for freewill we do agree. We were each born obviously with a specific set of limitations that, regardless of who imposed these limitations, considerably influence our freedom and even out ability to think let alone to choose. The whole argument therefore boils down to this one question: Can we overcome our limitations? Determinists say No. I say Yes, we can. At the very least, we are neither the body nor the mind where these limitations may take place. So we don't even need to break free from our limitations or to resist anything whatsoever—and this is the grand paradox of our being. These limitations are there constantly nagging and pushing you to resist them, in order to overcome them. However, you overcome them only when you stop resisting them. You just dis-identify with them, always remember they are not really "your" limitations, and they in turn gradually loosen their grip on your heart and soul.


(In the LOA context, this is exactly what Neville meant, but people misunderstood his teachings, thought he meant "ignoring reality" and thus often failed to apply these teachings. But he, a real prophet, told us about the primacy of consciousness, and that reality is only in the mind anyway. "Not even a sunburn is given from without," he wrote. "The rays without only awaken corresponding rays within. Were the burning rays not contained within man, all the concentrated rays in the universe could not burn him." What we are to dis-identify with, not ignore, therefore, is not reality, but our very self. Our old and illusory self, together with our old and illusory limitations. It's like baptism in Christianity—and exactly what Jesus meant: you simply die in the water, in order to be born anew. You thus rise not the same old person but a holy 'Son of God'. This is what the Good News is all about and how the Kingdom of Heaven is already here and now. But then again, seriously, who's ready to die? )

Thanks Lotus, i feel like i have more of an opinion on this now

i think you're most definitely right about needing to dis-identify, we are what we believe ourselves to be, and the only thing setting limitations in this sense is ourselves! (or our illusory selves rather)

we are what we believe ourselves to be, and the only thing setting limitations in this sense is ourselves! (or our illusory selves rather)

This is very beautiful Night, and very true. A quote for the day if not the week. I really have nothing to add after this perfect word and conclusion. Thanks my friend and have a great day.