Do we have free will ?

[nurthur11]

2 hours ago, James123 said:

Enlightenment is Infinite love?🤦 do you even meditate? If you believe that these are words, any word comes from monkey mind. 

I don't meditate - wanna fight?

[James123]

3 minutes ago, nurthur11 said:

I don't meditate - wanna fight?

Don't fight make love 😂😂😂 who is there ?

12 minutes ago, Alexander said:

So you believe everything is an illusion?

Whatever you have learned, teaches, thought all is an illusion. 

[Alexander]

6 minutes ago, James123 said:

Don't fight make love 😂😂😂 who is there ?

By your logic no one?!

6 minutes ago, James123 said:

Whatever you have learned, teaches, thought all is an illusion. 

You are breath of fresh air here atleast you write what you think and no need for me to decipher it.

[James123]

4 minutes ago, Alexander said:

14 minutes ago, James123 said:

 

You are breath of fresh air here atleast you write what you think and no need for me to decipher it.

The real question is, if you never learn that you are breathing air, will it be exist for you? 😂😂😂

[Alexander]

Just now, James123 said:

The real question is, if you never learn that you are breathing air, will it be exist for you? 😂😂😂

Of course, it will. For billions of creatures on this planet to breathe it.

[James123]

3 minutes ago, Alexander said:

Of course, it will. For billions of creatures on this planet to breathe it.

😃😃 i am done brother for tonight. Good luck. Peace! 

[Alexander]

Just now, James123 said:

😃😃 i am done brother for tonight. Good luck. Peace! 

Don't you believe self-inquiry is so self-absorbing.Narcissists of Being.

[James123]

4 minutes ago, Alexander said:

Don't you believe self-inquiry is so self-absorbing.Narcissists of Being.

PM me brother. I will help you

[Mandy]

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

It was a trollish comment .

There's a difference between taking something lightly/enjoying a humorous take, and being a troll. You want to let go of the seriousness and nihilism you find inherent in the question, and believe it will come by finding resolution in the answer. It's ok to be less serious. There's nothing at stake here. If you are suffering regarding this topic, listen to what you are feeling.

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

Why do you want to switch "free "with "unconditional "and" will "with" love "? To me this is just a prejudice to reach an already in -mind conclusion which had originally nothing to do with the question  .

Because you are asking if someone can have free will. Can the proprietor of a theme park own a whale, and the whale still be free? NO. If free will is an ephemeral thing and not an animal or object, how can it be possessed? If it is prejudice to reach an already decided upon conclusion, why are you frustrated about not having a conclusion? 

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

The question CAN be answered by yes or no .modern science (neuroscience) have done tons of experiments on the brain activity of people while they were conducting an experiment to track brain activity of those people while they were presented with simple choices like "move your hands "or "press that button ".and it was found that the brain activity occurs milliseconds before the conscious decision arises in the people's minds .

So science clearly tell us that we don't have free will .why can't spirituality tell us a straightforward answer too ? Isn't spirituality simply the science of consciousness? 

Consciousness/Awareness is prior to space and time. There's nothing observable outside of the observer. A science is "a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject." There is no knowledge or organization in Now, Awareness. There isn't even time or space. No thought about awareness is itself Awareness. 

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

So I ask you to give a straightforward answer to the question without turning the words "free will " into a different set of words to suit a prejudice of yours ?

Do humans have free will?  Yes or no? Few questions cut to the core of human experience quicker then this one. It's easy to see why. With free will we are in control of our lives and morally responsible for our actions, without free will we are reduced to mere robots following out the programming given to us. The implications of free will are staggering and yet the human race has failed to reach a consensus on a question that is absolutely essential to our existence. Our everyday experience tells us yes, but the logic of science tells us no. 

Both of these scenarios assume that there are separate selves. For Awareness there are no separate selves, nor time or space for them or brain activity to exist in. What is absolutely essential to our existence here now, not a thought about what we need, but directly now? What is essential to the words on this screen? Not a thought of what's behind it, (a Mandy, electricity powering a computer screen, etc), but what's responsible for you knowing that there are words and screen? 

 

By the way, highly recommend Rupert Spira's book, The Nature of Consciousness.

[Phil]

On 8/21/2022 at 12:38 PM, Someone here said:

I need an awakening to Love . I'm pretty much materialist(stage orange) in my thinking and I think these notions of love are woo woo new age BS . But of course I could be wrong and I'm probably wrong .even though I never experienced unconditional love even once in my life . The love was always attached to an object or an experience like a beautiful woman or a beautiful sunset or a tasty meal etc. 

Maybe there is the experience of these thoughts, but no thinker the thoughts are about.

Likewise, the experience of thoughts about free will (and someone having it or not). 

What if direct experience is that simple & self🤍evident?

[Someone here]

@Mandy

 again I think we are veering off from the original question. So I will try here to refocus the attention at the question at hand and not slide off topic to tangents. While I find them interesting. But they are surely another topics for another day. 

And BTW..the notion that there is no separate self is a support to the position that we don't have free will .because who exactly would have it ? The separate self of course. And since you claim that the separate self is illusory ..then so is the free will attached to it. 

But there is still the illusion of free will.

This illusion is very complete, very compelling and for all intents and purposes every bit as good as the real thing.

We are, for want of a better description, engines that make decisions. So it's not surprising we take responsibility for those decisions. This ownership over our own actions creates the illusion of free will. And very satisfying it is too.

But all our choices, deeds and actions are the result of some prior causes: Memories, genetic-predispositions, character defects, accidents, lusts, goals , momentary neurochemical flickerings or just random quantum interactions. In other words, just atoms doing physics. No will. No freedom.

And all those causes, they too had had prior causes.

If we were an omniscient observer staring into a person, we could watch every one of these golden strands of causality and trace them back in time to before the birth of the person.

Alas, we have no such powers. The mind/brain is a black box to us. It's workings obscured. And so we have to satisfy ourselves that the origin of an action was somewhere within that grey meat-computer.

 

It's simpler than that.

In this universe, and pretty much every universe we can imagine, there are only two possible types of event.

Class 1) Caused events: ..things that happen because earlier things happened.
Class 2) Uncaused events :;..things that happened without any prior cause.

For this argument we can consider thoughts and decisions to be events like anything else. Including the choice of Cheese or Tuna sandwich.

A class 1 decision is the product of what happened before. A logical process, an accumulation of preferences, a reaction to some event. There is no freedom in such a decision. It's outcome was forced by what went before. (that's what class 1 is) .. Using health conscious input factors we logically chose tuna. That's a rational and willed decision. But it's not free.

A class 2 decision is unlinked to prior circumstances. As such it must be spontaneous. It must materialise without context or reason. Quantum phenomena are a good example of this. But we could imagine some mental die-roll which allows us to pick at random and get cheese.

Again there is no possibility of freedom here. Because we can't control or influence such events. Class 2 events must be random. Because it was random, it was not willed.

There are no other classes of event. Not in this universe. Not in any universe we can imagine.

So all of our actions and thoughts are either determined by the previous causes or they are random. No free will in both cases .

P.S thanks for the book the suggestion. I heard its a great book and I like Rupert Spira style of teaching and I'm sure this book will  be interesting. 

I know its a lengthy post .feel free to ignore it if you want if you got tired if arguing with me .

Much love ❤

[Mandy]

4 minutes ago, Someone here said:

And BTW..the notion that there is no separate self is a support to the position that we don't have free will .because who exactly would have it ? The separate self of course. And since you claim that the separate self is illusory ..then so is the free will attached to it. 

No, because there is no separate self to lack anything. Just as you cannot possess you cannot be dispossessed or lack. 

 

5 minutes ago, Someone here said:

This illusion is very complete, very compelling and for all intents and purposes every bit as good as the real thing.

We are, for want of a better description, engines that make decisions. So it's not surprising we take responsibility for those decisions. This ownership over our own actions creates the illusion of free will. And very satisfying it is too.

But all our choices, deeds and actions are the result of some prior causes: Memories, genetic-predispositions, character defects, accidents, lusts, goals , momentary neurochemical flickerings or just random quantum interactions. In other words, just atoms doing physics. No will. No freedom.

And all those causes, they too had had prior causes.

If we were an omniscient observer staring into a person, we could watch every one of these golden strands of causality and trace them back in time to before the birth of the person.

Alas, we have no such powers. The mind/brain is a black box to us. It's workings obscured. And so we have to satisfy ourselves that the origin of an action was somewhere within that grey meat-computer.

You can speak for yourself and how your own thoughts create your experience, but that's not my experience whatsoever. 

7 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@Mandy

 again I think we are veering off from the original question. So I will try here to refocus the attention at the question at hand and not slide off topic to tangents.

I don't see it as veering off. In the case of a sailor asking the best way to keep from falling off the earth when he sails to the edge of it, the answer "the earth is round" would seem off subject and possibly very frustrating. Yet, it's kinda fundamental to what he's asking, even though it's not what he is asking. 

 

11 minutes ago, Someone here said:

P.S thanks for the book the suggestion. I heard its a great book and I like Rupert Spira style of teaching and I'm sure this book will  be interesting. 

I know its a lengthy post .

I think that if you are willing to be the sailor open to idea that earth is round, you'll find it fascinating. 👍

12 minutes ago, Someone here said:

 

Much love ❤

❤️

[Someone here]

@Phil i guess unconditional love is the Love that transcends ALL form. Because all forms are an expression of love but we know it not, because we (many of us) are still stuck in the utilitarian form of romantic or familial love, that as I stated, is beset by desires. But to Love, simply because they are a living being, who like us, just wants to be happy, feel secure and at peace, and once found, we then seek to make for its expansion.

So within the limited version of love, the idea of “loving" a murderer, rapist or someone who has done terrible things to us personally, is usually the first idea that pops into ones mind, of someone who is beyond deserving our love, so makes unconditionality seemingly not possible.

So we can't love unconditionally and survive. In order to survive you have to not love eating poison .

[Someone here]

@Mandy when you experience a thought...where does it come from ? And where does it disappear into? 

[Mandy]

@Someone here Any answer is just, yet another thought. No thing and no where. 

 

You know if the thoughts seem to "come from" an illusory self or are aligned with Self based on how they feel. 

 

[Someone here]

6 minutes ago, Mandy said:

@Someone here . No thing and no where. 

 

 

Exactly.  Now what does that tell us about free will?

If you watch your experiences carefully, you will quickly notice that they don't come from somewhere. They just come. A moment ago it was not even on a radar, and now it's here, deal with it. Thoughts are just like that.

We invented “from” as a way to mentally tie together what is already known. It is a mistake to extrapolate this method to what is not known yet.

So thoughts do not come from somewhere, but once they are here you may try and come up with a plausible explanation of where they came from. And it is always a different and custom-tailored explanation, haven't you noticed?

For example: “I am thinking about getting a cup of coffee. It must be because I haven't had a break from posting walls of text on this forum about fucking free will 😅

 

28 minutes ago, Mandy said:

@Someone here 

You know if the thoughts seem to "come from" an illusory self or are aligned with Self based on how they feel. 

 

What do you mean by that ? Do we have two selves ?one that is illusory and one that is real? 

[Mandy]

@Someone here

17 minutes ago, Someone here said:

 

Exactly.  Now what does that tell us about free will?

Nothing. 

 

19 minutes ago, Someone here said:

What do you mean by that ? Do we have two selves ?one that is illusory and one that is real? 

You/we have nothing. 

[Someone here]

@Mandy that's the weirdest kind of nothing i ever heard of 😅

 

On a serious note though ..

 Nothing is not. Even if it were, it would not be thinkable. Even if it were thinkable, it would not be sayable. Only being is, and is thinkable and sayable. If you think or say nothing, you actually think and say something, then not nothing as such but something you have named "nothing".

 I'm not sure If I'm confusing "nothing " with "non-existence " though.  The latter is certainly impossible. 

[BlendingInfinite]

If everybody had free will, everybody could levitate with his body immediately if he wants to.

Edited August 23, 2022 by BlendingInfinite

[BlendingInfinite]

It is plumb to say 'there is I so nobody has free will'.

 

Of course we somehow are able to navigate in this world, to create things etc. But in a limited way contrained to predefined environments, conditions etc.