--- In [email protected], "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote: > > > --- In [email protected], "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@> wrote: > > > <snip> > > MZ:The mystery of free will versus determinism very much comes > > into your question to me, raunchy. I have always wondered > > (taking this even just as a metaphor) how an individual > > judgment can be made of a created being by his or her Creator > > when surely that Creator gave a very specified form of free > > will to that person when they were created such that the > > Creator was never in any uncertainty as to how the person > > would make use of that free will in every moment--right > > through their life until they came to die (when I believe > > free will no longer in any meaningful sense continues to > > exist). > > Robin, if you would clarify something for me, please: When > you say the "Creator gave a very specified form of free > will to that person...," by "specified" do you mean a form > of free will that was designed specifically for that person > (i.e., the Creator custom-designs, as it were, free will > for each individual)? > > This is because the Creator knows what the person will face > during his or her life and what specific features (?) of > free will the person will need to have in order to make the > appropriate (in the judgment of the Creator) choices and take > the appropriate actions--even though the person is still free > to make different (inappropriate) choices? > > The idea of free will tailored to the individual is new to > me (if that's what you're saying). I think we generally > assume the faculty of free will is the same for everybody. > > The way it seems to me, authfriend, the experience of free will is inexplicable inside a universe which is governed only by the laws of physics. The sense each of us has of our own free will--this might be the most ultra-personal, perfectly individualized experience we have of ourselves: I can choose to act in the way I want to act. And yet, when we examine ourselves and our capacities, is it possible we could ever have conceived of something like the free will that human beings possess? Did evolution think it up? For me, the very existence of such a thing as free will requires the existence of something which itself has free will (and can conceive of how to create free will inside something it has created). This would have to be 'God'--or at the very least an intelligence intelligent enough to give each human being the ineradicable sense of this kind of subjective and mechanical freedom (and therefore an intelligence not just with free will itself: but capable of conferring that capacity upon what it creates--quite the design challenge I would postulate). > > What happens is that once we become self-conscious to the extent to which we become aware of our capacity to act in a self-determined and deliberative way, *we more or less appropriate this reality*, so that it becomes what we are: as if: *I* created my free will; and I sustain this free will; and no one can take this away from me--Even extending this to God. That is, even he can't deprive me of my freedom to choose whether to believe in him or not; or to do what he might ask me to do. The sense we have of our free will, then, is such that we feel we would have to choose to do God's will; we would not necessarily agree to do his will just because he asked us to.--Even as he is the very author of our free will.;-) > > Now if we are in fact the creations of a Creator, and if the Creator was intelligent and imaginative enough to dream up and make real something as mysterious and wonderful as free will, *he must have considered the consequences of this faculty*, and that meant: If I am giving each created person this freedom to do what he or she chooses to do, that means the whole of the universe is going to be individually and discretely affected, influenced, altered *by the freely chosen actions of each human being I create*. > > So--and I am just being intuitive and logical here--it seems to me that in God having given each of us free will it behoved him to anticipate all the combinations and permutations of possible effects that the execution of every individual free will in the world would have. And for this, God needed to have the power to create a world--and a future--in which he was able to see the necessary consequence of every free will of every human being since the first human being exercised this freedom of action. > > This meant that the future--in all its unfoldings--would never be jeopardized in its final design and purpose by the exercise of the significant contingency of free will inside human beings. Which would mean that the free will of each human being would in fact--regardless of what choices each human being made--contribute to, serve, and help bring about the very purpose of why God created in the first place. > > So, then, authfriend, this introduces an impossible paradox: God wants each of his human creations to have this experience--and exercise this reality--of free will--And yet he also wants to make sure that this freedom becomes (what other choice does he have?) the cause of fulfilling his final purpose in having created the universe. My intuition is that free will, then, somehow is compatible with the free will of God, and the free will of God chooses to make the free will of human beings serve his ultimate purpose in having brought the universe into existence with the Big Bang. > > Now, just as we like and love some persons more than others, God himself had to make each free will of each human being various and singular enough for there to be every kind of free will necessary to produce the specific actions which, individually, and in totality--through millennia--would go towards the fulfilment of that grand purpose (whatever it may be; what it is I am not at all sure). > > It seems to me, therefore, authfriend, that God, in creating each human being, created a unique form of free will--not the principle: in every person that is the same, as you say here. But in terms of *how that free will would express itself*: he had to make sure that he considered how any given human actor would end up relative to his (God's) final purpose, and for this, it was necessary to make each free will of every human being designed in way that was as if the whole universe existed for that one person--And in a sense this is the experience each of us has. Our free will, then, is something actually taking place inside the context of ultimate reality--for each one of our actions occurs with respect to the entire universe, because--according to my argument--no action rising out of the free will of each human being can take place outside of the context of the final purpose and intention of the Creator. > > The principle, mechanically and existentially, is the same: everyone's free will is identical in this sense. But because free will is inseparable from the first person subjective experience of each human being, and that their actions reflect that first person subjective experience of themselves, it means that the exercise of free will is and must be as unique as the person who is exercising it. > > And in this way we have persons whose free will is to facilitate the free will of God by acting against reality (necessary to set up the tensions and complexities through which each human becomes the person they are designed to become--*without sacrificing any sense of their free will*; in fact giving each person--even at death--the unchallengeable experience that Yes, I was responsible for what I did; I am the person represented by each of the decisions I made through my free will--so that there is no sense of blaming God for how one used one's free will--or even this possibility)--and on the other hand we have persons whose free will is to facilitate the free will of God by acting according to reality--but in the end to benefit from the resistance and opposition to reality by those whose free will destiny is to separate themselves from reality. > > So, yes, authfriend, my sense is that each person's free will is conceived of inside of and intimately related to the part they are to play in this whole drama of creation [every free will of every person is thus *contextualized*]--But that that person could never attain a sense of themselves which would allow them to understand this truth at the same level where God created in them the sense of having a free will. One cannot, then, participate in the intelligence and calculation which made free will compatible with--no, obedient to--the final purpose for why God created the universe and created each human being who enjoys the experience of existing--and existing with this mind-defeating mystery of having the freedom to act as we wish to act.
Authfriend: Thank you, Robin. That's a pretty neat solution to the free will-determinism paradox, albeit dependent on a bunch of assumptions about the nature of the principle to which we owe our existence--a Creator with a Personality and his/her/its own free will, etc. And obviously if it's been set up as you describe, it would only "work" if humans found their sense of free will completely convincing. I don't know if you want to get into this, but what about the experience of "I am not the Doer" that the enlightened person is said to have (indeed that you had 30-some years ago)? How would you explain this in light of your hypothesis? Is that a feature of what you now consider the illusory nature of what we think of as enlightenment? RC: I must assume you are referring to the experience that one, in enlightenment, becomes *primarily* identified with the Self, rather than the small self (the individual personality). I recall on my TTC how someone asked Maharishi how one could possible look forward to the extinction of the small self--becoming what was impersonal for eternity, which meant, once one died, nothing was left of one's individual identity. The question was what it was like to be in Cosmic Consciousness, and the sense which this person communicated of how terrifying this would be to be going forward in one's personal evolution to a state of consciousness which essentially eliminated who you were as a human being.--All of us felt in the question the expression of every concern anyone of us could ever have with regard to this circumstance of not being who we were anymore after CC. Maharishi's answer was instructive: He assured us that CC looks like one thing before you get there; it looks quite different when you have arrived--essentially telling us that our level of consciousness determines what we think of losing our small self--that from the perspective of cosmic consciousness the experience will seem very different. In other words, there is no terror over the fact of being identified with a Self which has no individuality. I would just say, Yes, most definitely, one identifies with a sense of a Self which appears undeniably separate from the self that one was before enlightenment. This is a very real thing in enlightenment: perhaps even it is THE thing. But as you anticipate, I believe it--now from my de-enlightened state of consciousness--to be the profoundest of illusions. In other words, *it is experientially true when one is enlightened* but it is not a state of affairs intrinsic to the experience of being a human being. That "I am not the Doer"--very much a central theme of The Gita--*is the perfect hallucination*, no doubt established in the consciousness of every person who has ever entered into the state of enlightenment; but it is a separation from one's true self through a mystical illusion created and sustained by celestial beings much more intelligent and powerful than oneself--One's willingness to worship such beings through mantra meditation being one of the most effective paths to that state when one experiences--seemingly with perfect objectivity--this witnessing of oneself from the vantage point of another self--the larger Self, the Atman. I also, as you know, believe the person who is subject to the reality of enlightenment--and the beautiful hallucination I am describing--has to have some serious inherent weakness, in order to allow those celestial beings to gain total possession of his or her consciousness. So the *means* to enlightenment is not enough. If you are a strong and normal human being, *you will never make it*. Which must mean that every person who becomes enlightened has some grave flaw in their over-all integrity as a individual person. That this experience can become a fact in one's life suggests just how sophisticated and brilliant these beings are, for they are bringing about a situation which, on the face of it, is impossible; namely, that one can go from identification with *who one really is* to a self which actually *does not exist in fact*--and yet, for all that, becomes more dominant in one's experience than the selfhood which constitutes the only real self that is there. The self which one knows as one's experience of being who one is, the me before enlightenment. But I had this very experience 36 years ago--and I had the extreme fortune to find a means to wrest this power away from these celestial beings, so they could no longer make it appear as if I had become another self which could witness the actions of the person Robin I used to be before enlightenment. However, the reason why I told Maharishi I had entered into Unity Consciousness rather than Cosmic Consciousness was because, although this witnessing was in fact true, in the movement of life I found everything was unified, that this witnessing was compatible with the sense of my smaller self itself having (as it were) become the larger Self. Witnessing was secondary then to this sense of having unified all of myself with the universe--even as I could separate out some level of my experience in which this "I am not the Doer" was absolutely true as well. If you had asked who is Robin, then--when I was enlightened--I would look at my experience and declare: "It is the Self"--and in saying this I would realize I was witnessing that the individual person Robin was a secondary and weaker form of identification. That in fact I had already 'died' to the person I was before Arosa. But I got myself back.
