Just A Friday Night Ramble (Liberation, Sam Harris, Book-writing, 2012)

I think there is also no scientific proof that one’s desires are actually one’s desires, as something originating in our own mind. Or it’s biased and fabricated. Since where do they come from BEFORE they appear in our mind.
As everything in material world appearing and disappearing in the void of never before and no longer, same way are one’s desires, coming from the void, which could be anything or anyone.
And observing them as they appear in your mind, there is no logical way to confirm that it’s actually your desire and not something that is fed into your consciousness from an external source that you know nothing about.
That is an issue of a system that is built on perception of the moment. It may lack the coherence of the whole picture as in what may lie behind the margin of that moment.
A mind may be taught to believe that if a message, e.g. desire, is dispatched into it, it’s for a reason. Ego centric minds will usually tend to treat everything as theirs even if it does them no good. Like, “ah, I want a bit more of that”. That’s the lack of a coherent picture in a sequence of motions of a soul that can say, “oh, that was good”, then get afraid and say “hey, and what if I never will be able to try it again”, and the ego will preprocess that fear based question into an answer of “ah, I want a bit more of that”, which a clouded mind will accept as its own desire and will go for more. Even when it could be better to have no fear to start with or put that desire aside and say, “I’ll leave it for later or let someone else enjoy it too”.
A clear mind sees reason in everything and sees the reason behind everything. And thus questions everything that gets dispatched into its mind as in “why and for what reason do I get all this stuff”, which creates a loop of inquiries that can restore the coherent picture as in where from does everything come and for what reason.
And some stuff can come simply for the reason to teach one to stay away from that stuff. That is an example of the separation between desire of the moment and that in the long run.
Since, essentially, everything comes from the long run. Every spirit has its long term desire, written on the timeless scale as in where it wants to get and where it wants to be in the long run.
Thus, it’s possible to say that everything is sort of predefined to some degree because at some point we take time to predefine it. And when the moment comes, our mind may either fail to see the reason and go through another spiritual lesson, or see the reason and recognize it as something it agreed with long time ago, which may come as a realization or an impulse to it.
But it doesn’t mean that we have no free will. We have will to choose our desires in the long run. And have option to fall for momentary desires emitted by imperfection and weaknesses of our bodies and souls.
Scientists like to find something in a microscope, fail to recognize how it connects with everything else, but hurry up to make a story out of it.
God’s only will for us was to let us have our free will and that’s the only thing we have. The rest are just mechanics of how our free will works.
And in our free will we can have long time commitments which may be fed into our consciousness bit by bit, creating karmic loops if necessary when we fail to recognize that we let our egos and ignorance loose and fell off the course of self realization in time and fulfillment of our purpose in life.
Peace,
@djurminschi

This is a debate that has been raging for a good few years now. One side uses God as an argument, and the other pure science. Neither side will compromise enough to see the simple explanation, or at least simple by analogy.
I see the brain as analogous to a computer. Maybe it was made and programmed by God, or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it will never have enough resources to pick apart it’s own algorithms, or maybe it will happen in time. Both are red herrings for this debate.
Consider a traditional computer – a base unit (the CPU) that runs the algorithms, and the screen that displays the results. Those results have to be translated from raw binary numbers into something that can be read on the screen, and that takes a very small, but finite time. Special test instruments, connected directly to the CPU can see those results before then screen can display them. So by analogy what we can actually say is that it is the screen, the interface to the outside world, that has no free will, but the CPU has.
I realise the flaw in that argument – that the CPU is following a set of predetermined instructions. On the surface that is true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. In advanced systems those very instructions can be modified by themselves in response to an infinite variety of inputs. Plus anyone who has ever played with generating fractal images will know that even very simple rules can generate almost infinite variations.
Maybe there is no free will, but by the time you have worked out every single input stimulus, and how they would interact together, you, and maybe even the Earth, perhaps even the universe will have died of old age. So it’s hardly worth losing any sleep over.
Of course if you want to lose sleep you could always worry that the equations that have been derived to explain how time and space work together don’t actually say what direction time should be, or could be running in. Maybe cause and effect work the other way round because time is actually running backwards compared to how we perceive it. To relieve the stress of that trying doing a Google image search for fractal images, and wonder at how a few simple lines of computer code can generate such infinitely beautiful images.

Wonderful replies, Reena. One can never grasp non-dualities by using duality to get there, although there is really no where to get to. It makes for a great time filler, but not much beyond that.
Is there an individual at play or not?
Is there free-will or is everything predestined?
Does any of it really matter? I don’t think so but it’s fun playing until it’s no longer fun, then on to a new game.
Round and round we go. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :^)

Oh dear Reena you seem to have strayed far.
Only the other week you were poo-pooing the gurus (rightly so) but now you are making science your god. I do not disagree with what Harris says but I do disagree with the perspective he is coming from. He is an unconscious human describing the unconscious human condition. He is describing the box from inside the box. He reminds me of a caveman trying to describe to his audience how the internal combustion engine works. Truly the blind leading the blind.
Of course we have free will. This is a most basic God given right. Unfortunately living in this dualistic world which currently is an ego-fear-based reality-phase, we have given over to ego and its incessant chatter and as a consequence we live in a conceptualised world held in place by the constant re-affirmation of our ego. IF and its a big IF, humans could divorce themselves from their constant ego-fuelled mind chatter they would be able to live in the present moment. By living in the present moment there would be no judgements based on past conceptions and every action would be imbued with freshness. In such an environment we would be able to listen to our inner self and make appropriate choices – our free will would be working in a healthy uncluttered fashion.
What I object to is that Harris is so in his box that he cant see that he is a slave to science and doesn’t truly understand the soul although he mentions it on several occasions. Yes this has all been proven by science, agreed, but our scientists are also working from within the same box. Soul isnt science so whilst begrudgingly acknowledging it, in the next breath they dismiss it. He is totally right in saying that if he had exactly the same DNA, life experiences and soul as the murderer he would also commit that murder-yes true. BUT and it’s a huge BUT, we DO NOT all have the same soul and that is why no two lives are the same and why therefore his argument is meaningless.
And by echoing his ‘its scientifically proven’ you immediately make science your god as well. Free will is coming from something higher than the brain itself. Its coming from something they cant observe or measure, the soul. Yes the scientists measure the choice sometimes seconds prior to the apparent moment of choice but do they then take that step further and ask ‘What then is making the decision prior to the visible measurable indications’? No, that a bit too large for them to get their collective minds around. And they wont ever until they step outside the box.
At least the so called gurus can give us an inkling of what living in the present may be like although they cannot take us there. We have to do that for ourselves. Again, what I find negative about Harris’ theories is that they are trying to impose (by conditioned rationalised argument) that we have no free will. Rubbish! We are slaves to no-one, not even our own egos unless we choose to be and that in itself is also a choice even though it might negate or discolour subsequent ones. It may appear that we had no choice in the matter, being birthed into this ‘cruel’ world and making the mistakes as we went along. However my soul/intuition tells me that we chose to come here, chose to have these experiences even if the reasons are not apparent as yet because we are still all closed in our perceptual boxes.
If you buy into this ‘we have no choice’ story you merely limit your future options and slow-down you spiritual evolution. Mind you its all part of your own unique journey so maybe its something you need to believe in for a while.
Much love
L

No free will indeed? This is spurious claptrap from an ant’s perspective. This line of thinking, yes thinking, denigrates our intelligence which lies outside of the realm of mere thoughts. Our free will is fully functioning on levels that the thinking mind is at a loss to comprehend because it, the mind, functions from within its own box. Were it able to view the process from the elevated perspective of the higher self it/we would percieve that our divine plan is unfolding exactly as it should and what we percieve as lifes obstacles are exactly the ingredients required to achieve our destination. We are all travelling a million winding paths but they all lead to exactly the same point – full awareness and self realisation. Not even a single snowflake falls without God’s divine intention!