On Free Will

We make our happiness hostage to the  fulfillment of the desire. At that   moment... no fulfillment because the  desire has lost its purity. So, yeah,   I'm just wondering if you could  speak on the idea of free will. Yeah, I mean, if we talk about free will,  we have to be very clear. We have to know   what we are talking about and whose free will or  absence thereof we are talking about, you know. So, I guess both. I am wondering,  like, from myself or... Yeah, but yourself, you have to be clear  what you call yourself. If what you call   yourself is this body, we can ask  the question, is this body free? Obviously, it is not absolutely free because  it cannot fly, for instance, right? And also   because it is subjected to illnesses, aging,  etc. And also, when it moves, it moves because we   have decided to move in some direction, right?  In other words, it is the slave of the mind,   which seems to be making the decisions, right? So,  by itself, the body is like a car, but the car is   not free to go where it wants to; it is the driver  that matters, right? So then, once we understand   that if I call "I" the body, no, there is no real  freedom there. The body is really conditioned. Now it is conditioned by the thoughts, by the decisions.  And now, if we look at the way the decisions happen,   they come as thoughts at the  time... Right? Let's do this,   let's raise the arm. At the time of a thought,  there is no thinker of the thought. Are you   following me? Because consciousness  is completely one with the thought.   The perceiver (consciousness) and the perceived  (the thoughts) are one, they are indissociable. So the thinker of the thought comes as an  afterthought, claiming, "I (a separate entity,  whatever it is, this belief to be a separated entity) created this thought." But this separate  entity that claims to be the thinker of   the thought itself is an object that appears  in consciousness, is not consciousness itself. Whereas, in fact, it was consciousness that was  the thinker. That which is a concept, a belief,   an object appearing in consciousness,  is not the consciousness. And only   consciousness thinks because decisions (I am going to your question) because decisions appear as thoughts. They are a subset   of the set of thoughts. It is  consciousness that makes the decisions,   not a separate entity. So the answer to your  question, as a body or as a separate mind,   there is no freedom. But on the other hand, you  can say, "Yes, but I feel that there is freedom   when I decide." Yes, because at that moment  you are free, but as consciousness, you see? So then there is free will, if we call it that,  or freedom to choose as consciousness. Actually,   free will means what? It means a will that comes  from freedom, right? It's a will that   comes... Consciousness is freedom.  But it may create a will, a will that comes   from freedom. It's very different, by the  way, from a will that comes from ignorance. And the beauty is that the will that comes from  freedom is always fulfilled, always executed.   Whereas a will that comes from ignorance... no.  So this will that comes from freedom is the will   of consciousness. It's the impersonal will, if  you will. And on that level, there is free will.   So freedom is on the level of consciousness,  zero freedom on the level of the individual. Whereas most people believe that there  is a certain level of freedom,   a certain amount of freedom on the  level of the individual. For instance,   the individual can raise the arm  but cannot make the clouds move,   right? But that is not true because it is only  consciousness that decides. So our decisions   come from consciousness. They are cosmic events,  and all events come from this freedom, you see? So the place of freedom is universal,  and that's all I can say. Now, there is another related question,  which is the question of determinism or   predestination. One way to look at it is this: Let's take a very materialist way to look at it. This body is  made of matter. Matter is ruled by the laws of   physics. The laws of physics are deterministic.  Where Mars is going to be in the sky exactly one year   from now is already decided, already determined.  So in this view, according to this perspective,   everything that happens in our life is  already decided, predetermined. There is   no real freedom as a result. If everything  is predetermined, there is no freedom. That vantage point somehow grants reality to time  and to causation, you see? Another interpretation   is that time is not real. Time gets created.  Time is part of the waking dream. Only the   dreamer has the freedom, and the dreamer can  change the dream at any moment, at any eternal   moment. In other words, because the dreamer can  change the dream, the dream is not predestined. But what happens in the dream is not decided  by the dream itself. It is preordained,   if you will, from a different  place, which is beyond time.   It's very hard to conceive that because it  is preordained from a place beyond time,   which is at the same time a place of  instantaneity and a place of eternity. So we can only understand  that through metaphors, like   the time in a movie is an illusion. When we watch  the movie, the time seems real, but in fact,  what we watch, for instance the various scenes in the movie may have been shot  at completely different times, right? And then   during the editing process, have been recreated to  give a story. So it's the same here: the movie...  the time seems real, but it is all preordained  from a different place. Which is beautiful because we are free, you know? We are  free as consciousness. We are free,   and we are consciousness. So there  are two kinds of freedom. There is   freedom from and freedom to. To create, like  the freedom of the artist or the freedom of   the engineer, the freedom of creation,  the freedom of the gardener, right? Freedom from is the first freedom we conquer on  the path of Jnana, because it is the understanding that   what we are is not affected by anything that  appears. We are not affected as consciousness   by anything that appears in us. We are  beyond space, beyond time. We are safe.   Freedom from everything that in ignorance seems  to threaten us. Freedom from death, freedom   from absolute disappearance. Experience of the  immortality of consciousness. That's liberation. But then whatever happens also is the display  of our decisions. There is a beautiful... there are several poems   by Abhinavagupta, who lived, I think, in the  16th century. I'm not sure. He was a playwright,   he was a poet, and he was also a great grammarian,  but he was also a great teacher. So he wrote poems about the Truth, and in one of  these poems, ther are not too many, perhaps ten, like Shankara´s poems, there are not too many either. In one of them he describes the path of knowledge   and he describes at the end the life of the Jnani. He says something like, don`t remember exactly, I'm paraphrasing, "Now that you have your freedom,   enjoy the display of your divine energies.  Enjoy the display, the show of your divine Shakti, or your devine energies." That's the freedom to, knowing that  everything that happens in your creation. Then you have the extraordinary  serendipity in your life,   that impersonal desires appear out of the  blue and get fulfilled out of the blue. So that's about free will. The place  of true will is in consciousness. Then   there is a manifestation of this  will. So the will belongs to the   nominal because there is no form in  the will. Then it manifests as forms. The philosopher Schopenhauer often said, he had   he was reading some Indian texts, so he had some  knowledge about the Upanishads and so   on. He was interested by that. So basically the only  book that he wrote, hewas keeping... working at it,   changing things throughout his life, and the  title was "The World as Will and Representation." For us, ("Vorstellung", I think). For us, in fact, if we translate it, "will" that is the   consciousness, the nominal aspect; "representation"  means in fact like a show, means in fact the creation,  the manifestation. But there is this consciousness and will,  there is consciousness, will and manifestation. I never remember the Sanskrit word, you know, that... is (Inaudible) Could you say that again? (Inaudible) That consciousness also has the  power to ... and act. It creates, yes. It's this transition, you know, between... We can  see it in us when we have a desire. Most desires   are pure in their first moment, in the moment  when they are born. What happens is that then   ignorance gets hold of them in the following  way: "If this desire doesn't get fulfilled,   I'm cooked." In other words, we make our  happiness hostage of the fulfillment of the   desire. At that moment, no fulfillment  because the desire has lost its purity. It's lost   because we have made our happiness  dependent upon an object. We have   lost sight of the fact that the objects  are just a celebration of what we are. Something interesting, actually, is a slight  distinction between the Tantric Kashmirian path   and often some scholastic Advaita path. Is that in the  Tantric tradition, the manifestation is loved,   is accepted, is recognized as being ultimately  Shiva. So there is no restriction,   no going exclusively to the pure consciousness,  to pure Atman, and saying, "No, namarupa not   good. We want only sat-chit-ananda." It's  one; you have one, you have everything. (Inaudible) I was thinking that too. So in this case, then  consciousness, let's say, is choosing ignorance.   Oh yes, it's always consciousness that chooses  ignorance because there is nobody else to choose   anything. So Shiva's potential as ignorance is  just as his potential of anything. Nobody   imposes ignorance onto Shiva. Nobody imposes  anything oto Shiva. Shiva chooses to play the game. So then, ultimately, the divine will is manifested  as the individual will. It's just an extension,   isn't it? Absolutely. Ignorance is  a manifestation of the divine will,   and liberation is also the manifestation of the divine will. Yes, in cases when consciousness is done,   then it's liberated. We know that.  And that's a little bit, you know,   the thing we know as kids. The attraction of the  forbidden fruit. As children, we know that. "Don't   do that." "That must be interesting to do. There  is something to explore there." Yeah, exactly. So that's a reflection on the human level  of the divine interest of exploring all the   possibilities. So the ego-mind, in the way  that it's cultivated, we just kind of ... have deluded ourself into   choosing something that's good and then not  so good... Because we have put   in place an entire system whereby we are not  lost forever. But it`s liberating, like we're just   being bad right now. So consciousness is being  bad, right? Yeah, well, not literally, but... And also... And that's a reason why, from the vantage  point of wisdom, ignorance is not a problem.   No, it's wonderful. So in fact if a teacher says to the disciple,   "Oh oh, I'm going to help you. You're  in ignorance. That's bad." You know,   "that's baad." That's not true. He's just  playing good cop with the student,   kind of agreeing with him or her.  Ignorance is not a problem. So Ananda is a feeling. I understand it as a  feeling, but let's say if it were a state of   realization, would it be akin to enjoying ignorant  moments, blissful moments? Ananda is the enjoyment of   consciousness by consciousness. Consciousness is  always present, and it's just that some people   enjoy, and it's not some people, in fact, it's  consciousness also enjoys seeing itself as   an object. That's the enjoyment of ignorance. And  it enjoys itself having ignorance at times. Yeah,   yeah. So, is that enjoyment Ananda? It`s  a continuation of Ananda. For consciousness,   there is only Ananda because consciousness  is free, does what she wants. Right okay.