--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bronte Baxter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Judy wrote: > I think the notion of "free will" is an artifact > of duality. > > Bronte writes: > > Wow, Judy. This statement of yours demonstrates that these aren't just semantic distinctions between us. I assume you are saying that from your perspective free will does not exist in higher states of consciousness, that from that level a person sees all is actually predetermined.
Nope, that ain't what I'm saying. I'm saying I think the ideas of *both* free will and determinism are artifacts of duality, and that *neither* exists in higher states of consciousness. Or to put it another way, *both* are the case in higher states of consciousness, but there is no conflict between them. <snip> > IMO, this is a perfect example of a philosophy that disempowers human beings, making us feel like actions and desires are paltry things. What good is all of it anyway, if some day we're just going to wake up and find the whole thing was predetermined? > > If I seem paranoid in believing the guru set does not have our best interests at heart, let me present this very philosophy as evidence in support of my position. Not only do these guys teach either (A) that our personhood is not real or (B) not something to identify with. They add to that the teaching that everything is just as it is and there's nothing can be done about it. I wonder if you missed a post I made a week or two ago about the "Everything is perfect just as it is" idea, in response to a post of yours about it. I've reproduced it below: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bronte Baxter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > One of the conditions of passing through is that you > accept the world as it is, so when you become an empowered > master you won't mess up the system that keeps the gods on > top and the human race underneath. Three things have to > happen to the aspirant before he is blessed with "the Self > unfolding the Self to itself": > > 1) he must come to believe that the world is perfect as > it is (so he won't want to change anything) > 2) he must come to believe that having desires or > viewpoints of his own is a bad thing (so he won't want to > change anything) > 3) he must willingly give up his individuality and even > his mind (so he won't BE ABLE to change anything) A TMer once asked MMY, "If, as you say, everything is perfect just as it is, why are we working so hard to change things?" MMY responded, "That too is perfect just as it is." Virtually every teaching I've ever encountered about enlightenment has said the same thing (usually at much greater length): experiencing (not just believing) that everything is perfect just as it is does *not* mean not wanting to change anything. How could it? Are one's opinions and desires and behaviors somehow not part of "everything"? If everything is perfect just as it is, so is wanting to change things, as well as the changes one is able to bring about. "Just as it is" doesn't mean frozen in time and space, never to be changed. It means *at this instant in time* everything is perfect. If in the next instant "this" is changed to "that", "that" is also perfect for that instant. And so on... Change is constant and inevitable. That being the case, "Everything is perfect just as it is" cannot possibly foreclose change to "just as it is." (Why a *bad* thing should be perfect just as it is even for an instant is a different question entirely. It's known in theology as "the problem of evil," and people have been wrestling with it for millennia, coming up with many different solutions, some more satisfactory than others. Most, however, do not conclude that the solution implies that one is to refrain from fighting evil, from working as hard as one can to change things.) In the interview with Ramesh Balkesar, the interviewer kept objecting that one could use the premise that one's behavior was entirely determined by God's will as an excuse to do bad things. Ramesh could have pointed out that according to this premise, having the motivation to use the premise as an excuse *would also be God's will*. The apparent disadvantages of the determinist premise (which is basically the same premise as that everything is perfect just as it is) tend, in my observation, to be a function of not taking it as an absolute, of inadvertently assuming free will around the edges, as it were. Added this morning, 9/25: Note that what I've described just above involves a paradox or an infinite regress. That's because I'm describing it from the perspective of duality. As I said at the top, I think from the perspective of Unity, the free will/determinism conflict is seen never to have existed in the first place, i.e., to have been an artifact of duality.
