Quote:Q: When a truth-seeker earnestly practices his Yogas, does his inner Guru guide and help him or does he leave him to his own resources, just waiting for the outcome?
M: All happens by itself. Neither the seeker. nor the Guru do anything. Things happen as they happen; blame or praise are apportioned later, after the sense of doership appearing.
Q: How strange! Surely the doer comes before the deed.
M: It is the other way round; the deed is a fact, the doer a mere concept. Your very language shows that while the deed is certain, the doer is dubious; shifting responsibility is a game peculiarly human. Considering the endless list of factors required for anything to happen, one can only admit that everything is responsible for everything, however remote. Doership is a myth born from the illusion of 'me' and 'the mine'.
Sadhguru: Nothing is predetermined. You determine your own destiny, your own actions.
Rupert Spira: Free will is a concession to the deluded mind that believes itself to be separate.
Ramana Maharshi: Everything is predetermined.
Quote:D.: Has man any Free-Will or is everything in his life predestined and preordained?
Maharshi: Free-Will holds the field in association with individuality. As long as individuality lasts so long there is Free-Will.
Quote:In other words, fate and free will appear to exist only so long as our mind appears to exist, but when we scrutinise this mind and thereby know the truth that it does not really exist, fate and free will will also cease to exist.
My personal favorite explanation. [Rupert Spira]
Mooji's explanation (he has many others as well)
Adyashanti on the Personal Will
What I take from this is that the ideas of free will or predetermination are at base irrelevant. Neither is true, neither is untrue.
I guess presented this way they can seem like opposing forces but I think the key to solve this paradox is to see fate and freewill as united, as one single process, seen from different perspectives. Fate is chosen and freewill is fated. Then like you say, neither is true and neither is false.
(10-22-2017, 07:26 PM)sjel Wrote: [ -> ]What I take from this is that the ideas of free will or predetermination are at base irrelevant. Neither is true, neither is untrue.
Here is the best way I have found of saying this because words inevitably distort the truth:
All will is
FREE. The spirit is
freedom itself. There is no other will than
free will. We are so free we can even choose bondage, paradoxically.
However, there is no such thing as
independent or
separate will. Therein lies the illusion. This is what the masters are pointing at, though they all have different ways of saying it. All will is free, but no will is separate. Because all is one, and no amount of pretending it isn't unified, can stop it from being unified.
The One dreams it is a god, who dreams it is a man, who dreams it is a monkey, who dreams it is a butterfly, who dreams it is a flower, who dreams it is a gem. And when the free spirit of the one reaches the twilight of dreaming, the twilight of consciousness, it wakes up from the gem, and wakes up from the flower, and wakes up from the butterfly, and wakes up from the monkey, and wakes up from the man, and wakes up from the god, and it realizes again that which it has been since before time, the One Infinite Creator.
Every will is an extension of the prior will, so all ultimately causes all.
(10-23-2017, 03:47 AM)anagogy Wrote: [ -> ]However, there is no such thing as independent will. Therein lies the illusion. This is what the masters are pointing at, though they all have different ways of saying it. All will is free, but no will is independent. Because all is one, and no amount of pretending it isn't unified, can stop it from being unified.
Pretty much this. Although looking at it strictly from an individual perspective, I like to call it
circumstantial free will. You have free will, but very limited direct choice regarding the circumstances in which you can exercise that free will.
Otherwise, I can actually see a structure for the universe which reconciles the whole free will vs predestination paradox. Across the so-called quantum universes, every possible eventuality for any given life\entity already exists. However, because an individual cannot see all outcomes, their free will determines which path through their lives is taken. And given that there are undoubtedly a truly staggering number of possible outcomes for any given entity, this creates a sort of simulation of free will that is real enough at the individual level.
So it's kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, on a massive scale. Technically speaking, all outcomes are already in place - at least from the Creator's POV. But your choices still guide the outcome that
you see.
(10-22-2017, 10:40 PM)Night Owl Wrote: [ -> ]I guess presented this way they can seem like opposing forces but I think the key to solve this paradox is to see fate and freewill as united, as one single process, seen from different perspectives. Fate is chosen and freewill is fated. Then like you say, neither is true and neither is false.
That was wonderful! I had been contemplating free will vs fate because this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this question this week.
We makes plans, we choose lessons, preincarnative programming, we make contacts and agreements before the incarnation (which is still free will btw). Within incarnation under the veil it seems like fate and destiny, no free will. Yet, what we had chosen to do before life converges with ourselves in the present moment. It is ALWAYS our choice how we shall meet that which we are given. There are many possibilities and probabilities, all of which we are responsible for creating and cocreating. We as humans under a veil simply cannot see beyond the illusion or into our deeper minds. We don’t see the consequences that certain choices may bring later on.
You reading this are in the present moment. You have free will to do whatever you want with this moment. What do we choose to do? How do we choose to be?
The spiritual alarm clock may go off in one’s incarnation, and he may choose to ignore it or not. For me, the wake up call was from a book calling to me at the library. It was a very clear feeling, resonance. I ignored the book and scoffed at it the first time. A week or two later I went back to the library and saw the book again. This time I couldn’t resist the curiosity, the call. Why was this book (
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice) calling for me to pick it up? Well, I read it and it was exactly what was needed for me to begin waking up. (I look back with hindsight and see the amazing pattern.) I was seeing Christ for the first time. Not the dogmatic rigid biased interpretation from religion. Because before that I had a disdain for religion and Christianity. I didn’t realize my problem was with the churches and their interpretations rather than Christ himself. This was absolutely necessary for me to realize my spiritual path and to be able to appreciate the Law of One later on.
In conclusion, our free will choices meet the present moment. It’s your choice.
(10-23-2017, 03:47 AM)anagogy Wrote: [ -> ]All will is FREE. The spirit is freedom itself. There is no other will than free will. We are so free we can even choose bondage, paradoxically.
*checks to make sure "
freedom itself" isn't a link*
I think that might explain why the one
infinitely free creator (on Earth at least) seems to so often choose bondage.
(10-23-2017, 10:19 AM)isis Wrote: [ -> ]I think that might explain why the one infinitely free creator (on Earth at least) seems to so often choose bondage.
Consciousness can only choose when there is an awareness of choice, and in many instances of consciousness, there has been a loss of awareness of choice. Again, due to choices, made in ignorance, confusion, coercion, or persuasion. A lot of small choices which reduce choice can lead to a stochastic wave markedly in favor of a reality where there is reduction in awareness of major potential choices in that reality (the butterfly cannot conceive of what it is like to be a human and the potential choices of a human). You can't wake up from a dream, if you don't realize you are in one. We are in a prison we cannot see, nor taste, nor touch. Often the parts of it we can see, taste, and touch are the most shallow components of the cage (the catalyst of the cage is all we have to work with -- once we get enough catalyst and use it to transform ourselves to the point where the great way out of the cage becomes illuminated). All that is dense and rigid was coalesced by energies that were much lighter, faster, and more free. So in instances of bondage, it is because the will, or the spirit, has been relinquished. One little piece at a time. Getting it back, is what polarity and the path of the adept is all about. Building up the charge, in order to do work in consciousness.
(10-23-2017, 10:19 AM)isis Wrote: [ -> ]*checks to make sure "freedom itself" isn't a link*
Your free will just affected my free will. Or, in in a more accurate way of describing it: some choosing just happened.
Ra seem to suggest this too, that there are two main ways of polarizing in service to others or service to self. The first way is the one which is most common I guess, that is meditating, seeking out teachers, do exercises and perform disciplines in order to open the gateway to intelligent infinity. The other way is when you just have this gateway opened for you with little or no difficulty, no training, no control. This is my understanding at least of 11.20 and some other qoutes.
(10-23-2017, 04:12 PM)GentleWanderer Wrote: [ -> ]What does it mean that separate will doesn't exist ?
It means that, in every action that you do, in every choice you make, the intelligent infinity within you, even though it be only latently activated or conscious, knows what every other piece of intelligent infinity is up to. Every particle of existence is counted. This is why beliefs, or the vibrations you are activating moment by moment, create and shape your reality, even though, in our spiritual infancy, we have very poor control of it. In true separation, this wouldn't necessarily be the case (that beliefs would create reality). There would be true chaos, rather than the facsimile of chaos.
(10-23-2017, 04:12 PM)GentleWanderer Wrote: [ -> ]Does it mean or imply that the only real freedom we have is to realise we're dreaming to be such or such creature thus awaken to our true nature in oneness ? This is more about awakening from the dream than changing what's occuring in the dream.
You have the freedom to choose between the choices you have available to you, however, there is also the momentum of karma "weighting the choices" in one direction or another. We, in our ignorant and veiled physical state, call this karma the bias of "desire" (the harvest of accumulated biases from previous incarnations).
(10-23-2017, 04:12 PM)GentleWanderer Wrote: [ -> ]But as the Creator's played the game of giving birth to individualized creatures, these creatures now have a separate will from the creator, yet it's the creator who first decided it ?
The individualized creatures are just imagined. So it is merely a simulation of individuality, a mere concept. But a perfect simulation is not much further away from the real thing, except in very subtle metaphysical ways, as I alluded to above.
(10-23-2017, 04:12 PM)GentleWanderer Wrote: [ -> ]There are reports of mystics who are able to tell almost down to the very last details, what will occur to a certain person at a given future date. How does that confirm or deny free will ?
Drunvalo Melchizedek told such a story, he was told by an angel what would occur to him and what actions he would take on a given day and it happened exactly like the angel said. Was a teaching from the angel and Drunvalo said he wouldn't want to know his future in advance otherwise life would be so boring.
It neither confirms nor denies free will. It is simply an example of the ability of more evolved beings to see the momentum of karma in the dimension we call "time". Just like when you throw a baseball, if you have a precise enough awareness of the amount of force applied and the direction in which is applied upon you have a very good idea of where it is going to end up, these beings have a very powerful ability to see that same momentum but applied through what we might think of as the 4th dimension (time). As Ra said, the seeming contradictions of free will and determinism melt when an understanding of true simultaneity is grasped.
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