Angelo John Gage

@Nahm Evolution created consciousness with an ego which allowed humans to do what exactly? Have the illusion to choose? What benefit would that be compared to all the other animals who are not 'self-aware' like we are and are able to go about jsut fine without mental anguish, global wars, self-harm, suicide, destroying their environment, taking drugs, torture one another... the list goes on.

@Edvard @Pointer A robot has no free will because it is programmed and con only be a robot. It will never have self awareness because you cannot program self awareness into something because that would be cause & effect which comes from its CPU. We are not robots, we are Gods put in biological machines. However, some of us think we are the machine, others think we have no control of this machine. When the truth must be both; we do not control our autonomous systems, but we can control everything we are able to with intentional and focus. A rock has no will. A tree has no will. A tree does not decide to sheds its leaves for the fall and winter; it is totally at the mercy of the environment. It cannot analyze and make choices. WE can. We are Gods in a bio-feedback machine which gives us information via the 5 senses that we can interpret and use to our advantage. What would bet he evolutionary advantage of consciousnesses? Why would we evolve such a thing if it would only bring us an awareness in which we cause ourselves 99% of our own suffering. Consciousness without free will serves no purpose if is it not to make decisions beyond instincts.

How does a robot find itself? @Pointer

@Nahm @ragolp Yes I understand and have that experience but that doesn't negate free will. I have control in this reality. Who is controlling your fingers now and typing the answers you are responding with? Is it God directly? If so, then who am I responding in the opposite? Not God? If I am not God, or if I am the Ego, how did I choose to oppose you without that will to do so?

@Pointer @Nahm C'mon gents, you need to be stronger than that! Who knows what I would make them out of. If I could create them out of nothing, then they could be whatever I wanted. See for God to do any creating he would have to have a will to do it. And if we are fractions of God, what makes you think that we have none?

@Nahm The idea of pandeism is that God blew himself up and became everything else, and ceased to be the god-head and can never fully know itself again for sure. In other words, he died for us... so we can exist. IDK if I buy that idea however. If I was God, I wouldn't need to explore the universe that I created. Why would need to do so if I know it as my creation. I would probably create other beings and allow them to exist freely in it to enjoy my creation.

@Pointer A Blacked-out drunk person is unconscious has no free will; despite doing whatever they are doing in their inebriated state of mind. Sober person with intention and awareness, has free will. Even if every idea is not inserted by their will; the mixing, analyzing, focusing on, and acting upon is their will.

@Edvard Because of their intention. The missing component in all this is there is intention behind any action, not just cause and effect that regresses to the big bang.

@Edvard If you were to go back in time with the knowledge of the experience and it's outcome, you would still have the ability to do evil irrespective of the consequences, or you may choose to not do evil because of the consequences. You see, we do irrational shit because we are not bound to instinct like animals are. Yet even even animals I think have choice; some totally robotic and instinctual, but some more aware and free: For example, what evolutionary purpose or reason or need does a dolphin have to risk its life to save a human from a shark attack? Everything has a cause and effect, it seems at the macro level, but like quantum physics has shown, things can be random. So even if you believe everything is a chain events, you are not aware of all causes and effects which come forward in your thoughts, but you are aware of the different reasons as to why you chose to do whatever acts, but only in hindsight can you say you chose "right" or "wrong." At the time you made your decision based on the best possible information you had. No one chooses to make the wrong decision on purpose. Even someone who purposely wants to sabotage their life is making a choice to reach the goal of sabotaging their life, which is the correct decision if they want to sabotage their life.

@Edvard Einstein can say whatever he wants; he was also proven wrong in his theories. No one is an authority. Think about what convinced you that you don't have free will. It was not yourself was it? Did you just sit there in a normal state of mind and say "You know, I have no free will; I'm a machine at the mercy of physics and these fake thoughts," or was it the experiences I mentioned, or some other thing?

@Edvard That is why no one can say that free will does not exist with 100% certainty, and the most honest position is that of 50/50, or an agnostic position on it since we do not know for sure. But from our own direct experiences, we seem to have it and there is no reason other to believe don't other than achieving altered states of consciousness where it seems it's gone, or believing in scientific experiments which don't even disprove it totally. When I go to sleep and have dreams, I will agree with you that I have no free will and I am watching some kind of mental story unfold; but when I wake up and plot my day, think about what I want to do, focus on certain things while ignoring others; despite various thoughts, sensations, and other inputs, I am willing my day to happen within my abilities to make it happen. The big bang is not responsible for this reply, nor is responsible for your disagreement. In fact, at one point you may have believed you had free will, yet something convinced you otherwise. Thus the perceiver (you) decided to change your believes on the topic. @Pointer My definition of free will is making conscious choices within certain situations; I believe it's 50/50 because all choices are limited within the certain situation. If there were only two doors in front of you to choose from, you could not will a third door to appear and choose it. I reject the notion that choice is an illusion and that this is all some kind of video being played in front of us and we have no control nor are we responsible for any of our actions.

The idea we have no free will is a thought that one brings back after they experience oneness and see that everything is "whole." but that is only on perspective in an absolute infinity, which also must include free will, which is what you experience at the self... to claim there is only one or the other is dual and goes against everything this forum claims it is. I don't see why people are not seeing this obvious fatal flaw. In order for a paradox to exist, BOTH things must be true and false at the same time. When you claim we have no free will, then you are making an asboluite statement which is not a paradox; thus saying that free will does not exist. Again, I state that does exist in certain cases and does not in other. That is nondual.

Think of you and your partner as two computers that need to have a strong connection between them to form a network. If the communication between two computers fail, the network will not exist. Communication is the most important and vital component in any relationship; and you must communicate honestly. You may be honest with yourself, but are you brutally honest with your partner? Any thing you hold back will simply build up and turn into resentment. Your fear of conflict is a sign that you hold things in until they blow up because you are afraid of rocking the boat. But no boats traverse water without rocking. And what good is a boat that will eventually sink in the problems within are not addressed? IT will eventually sink. My suggestion to you are the following: Notice your feelings; disassociate from them by zooming out of your mind and observing them. You are not those things. Turn the self talk of "I am angry (or whatever emotion) to "I feel angry" (or whatever emotion), so its a feeling rather than an identification that the Ego will take. Explain to your partner PRECISELY why you currently feel XYZ emotions. Do not blame them or claim they are a certain way, but rather are "seem to be acting" a certain way, "which you feel is causing these emotions in you." So do not say something like " Well, you're a jerk so you made me cry." That is a victim mentality. No one can make you cry. You must take full responsibility for your emotions. In stead, " I think you're ACTING like a jerk, and because of this, I feel disrespected." An act can change, but someone who IS a jerk, is a form of being, and will be insulted by your criticism rather than take it constructionally. But if you want to get deep, you are basically torturing yourself by allowing the ego to create problems that do not exist in reality, and if they do, then you are lowering your standards and are with someone who you should not be with if this happens more often than not; whether it is you or them.

I would suggest not listening to anyone on how you body responds to foods other than your own body's feedback. This means eating a certain diet for a few weeks to see how you feel; then change your diet to another diet and see how that feels. But it is logical to see that one should stay away from eating a ton of processed foods and eat make sure they each mostly, densely nutritious whole foods. Make sure you are getting enough green veggies and complex carbohydrates like spinach, green lettuce, kale, ( the darker the better) lentils potatoes, yams, rice, whole grains etc. The occasional junk food here and there will not harm your body. You do not need to eat a ton or any meat at all, if you wish to not eat animals, for whatever reason, until your goal is gain more muscle, but if you do, make sure they are humanely raised and grass fed. If you eat fish, make sure they are not farmed. In regards to your ance, it could be genetic or it could be you're eating too much processed animal products and fats. Try going whole food vegetarian for a few weeks or drastically reduce your meat consumption while upping your complex carb consumption. Protein and carbohydrates are both 4 calories per gram so if you cut your meat consumption by 3/4, you could add 3/4 more carbohydrates and should see no increase of fat as the calories you're eating daily would not change.

@Edvard What I get from this video is that we are basically puppets that God works through and we perceive the consequences of a will which is not ours. So this would be similar to putting a camcorder on a roller coaster and recording the ride we have no control over. But at the same time, he tells you to find yourself and other things; actions which need agency. He then speaks of an awareness, which even that is an illusion of free will. As I have stated above, if God has a will, and we are God, then it is our will and it free because we are God; but it is limited in this form, memory, experiences, to our environment, and the thoughts in which come into our minds. But as God perceiving this experience through our existence, we choose. So even Tolle's answer does not disprove free will.

@Edvard I addressed both aurguments via the scientist and the enlightened person. Sadhguru I believe takes the same position I have, but also goes as far as even there being a cosmic will.

What is there to surrender if you don't have any will? In fact, isn't the claim that the suffering that we experience is caused, according to these teachings, by ourselves because we have not surrendered ourselves to the flow? Well then, doesn't this imply that you have decided to go against the flow? Another thing I realized the other day that I thinl is a fatal flaw with the argument against free will is that people refer to certain experiments that apparently prove their is no free will or claim that enlightenment shows that we have no free will; ironically both stating that our thoughts are not under our control. However neither disprove free will. Even if our thoughts were not in our control, the choice to act upon such thoughts, is our choice. If you say choice is an illusion, because thoughts are an illusion, then you're literally refuting yourself and have no ground to claim what you're saying is true. Now I know the fundamental idea here at Actualized.org is that nothing is grounded; that we must accept paradoxes, yet to claim we have no free will is not accepting paradoxes, rather, it's making an absolute statement and picking one side. In other words, it is dual. All of the experiments I have seen "proving" there is no free will prime the person to make a choice with a set of options; but this is precisely what I mean when I say we have 50% free will, because we can only choose from what we are given. I cannot play a poker hand that I am not dealt unless I choose to bluff and pretend I have that hand. I cannot choose from something that I am not perceiving; whether in reality or in my mind. Sam Harris argues that we cannot choose what we are choosing; that our thoughts are all causal...ok, but what about our focus? Again, I do not argue against the idea that the subconscious mind can influence our thinking and perception; I will even give you that EVERY thought is out of our control, but that does not mean that our decisions are not in our control just because they are interpreted into the language of audible self talk in the mind which you call a thought. That is why I say it's 50% free will because one who is able to see that they are not their thoughts, can step back and make decisions that are not knee-jerk reactions. You see, I believe there is the EGO, which gives you suggestions, and then there is you, the PERCEIVER, which is the real you. If the perceiver believes he is the ego, then of course he has no free will. Someone like Sam Harris, who believes everything is physical and is all the in brain, has no choice but to believe that we have no free will, lest contradict his naturalist reductionist position. Now let's get into the argument that we would find here against free will: The experience of "oneness," whether via deep meditation, DMT or whatever, shows us shows there is no free will. Yet on the other hand, we are taught to surrender, focus, meditate, etc or people will discuss astral projection or lucid dreaming in which they decide to explore their experiences; sometimes even while tripping on DMT or whatever, but how can anyone of these people do any of this without making decisions? Furthermore, there is one state of consciousness I think most of you have totally dismissed: What about the state of being totally knocked out, such as under anesthesia? I have had a few surgeries, and when you are under the knife, you have absolutely no recollection of any events; not even the fact you are knocked out cold. The only reason why you know you were drugged is because you return back to consciousness and remember what this was all about. How about the time before you were born? Do you remember where you were in 1800? No, because you didn't exist. In both cases, we can't even imagine that "nothingness," we can only compare our experience of being out of our body tripping, or knocked out with zero awareness or consciousness at all, because we return to what our normal state is; in this reality. So I could argue that meditation and DMT trips are illusions due to altering our physiological chemistry and that real reality is literally nothing whatsoever; that there is no oneness and there is zero perception at all, or any after life, or anything metaphysical and agree with Sam Harris if I choose to use my position of being knocked out via anesthesia as my proof that I am correct. How can one state that there is no free will because they have gone to DMT land via psychedelics (drug), or a deep meditative state (altering our chemistry with focus and breathing), or absolute nothingness under anesthesia (other drugs). In all cases, our chemistry is altered from the "normal" state of where we are now and how you are now as you are reading this. Notice, we ALWAYS return to this state regardless of which other states we experience temporarily; so who how can we argue that any other state is the real reality, so much so, that we claim we have no free will? It is obvious that under different states that it must be that we have no free will because our awareness is either super-heightened beyond ourselves; to include everything so it seems there is just ONE beyond the self, or that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever; not even existence at all, when we are knocked out before a surgery. For those of you who have not even been under the knife, think about being black-out drunk... you don't recall your actions or that you were even existing during that "missing time." Yet many of those against the idea of free will disregard our experience here that is "shared" reality in which we seem to have free will and say that we don't because of the DMT or meditation experiences or neuroscience. In other words, they are saying we have no free will because they have reached certain states where they surrender and have no free will. This is like saying that when you choose to go on a roller coaster, in which you have no control over, your choice to go on it never existed because the ride is fixed. And lastly, if you claim there is no free will, then you are making an absolute statement that is not paradoxical; thus is dual in nature. What I am proposing is truly non-dual, in the sense that in different states we have free will and there are other states we do not.

@Nahm Lol, and that's why I don't drink at all... Ketamine is another story ketamine will certainly make you float around and see awesome stuff, with no hangover.

@MarinM Well I stated in my trip I had no thoughts or will at all; like going on a roller coaster ride, but what I'm saying is, when we return to this "reality," we certainly do have free will. When you surrender your will, of course you have no will. But you cannot surrender yourself or your will if there is nothing so surrender. My point is, the paradox must have both things true/false at the same time; but stating we have no free will, is choosing a side and not a paradox, whereas my belief of 50/50 (both yes and no) or 1 and 0, is more of a complete truth

I just realized a fatal mistake in the idea of not having free will: The idea of not having free will is also a thought... So if the argument is that thoughts are illusory, then according to this argument, the statement is also false.

Lets examine when we trip: My trip on DMT was quite interesting; it only lasted 5 mins. During that time, it "felt" like eternity. I encountered two Hindu beings: The first one was Shiva, the god of destruction, who danced in front of me, said something I could not understand, then shot three laser beams into my body and I could feel getting sliced into pieces (even though I had no body). After this I was transported for forward through colors and shapes of all sorts, I'm sure you all know, until I encountered the second hindu god: Ganesh, who sat there with his big elephant head, moved his arm upward and downward and showed me a golden triangle. This golden triangle kept spliting into halves, thirds, etc, replicating over and over and over forever. Then after this happened, I was bolted through more colors and fractals; but the entire experience repeated itself again. Twice this same experienced happened until finally I came into a room of just EYES; ALL EYES everywhere; every inch of this room there were eyes looking at me and this went on infinitely. I assumed this was God, the perceiver of all things. Now, why am I bringing this up? Well because during this trip I had not ONE thought, but I was "recording" it. So during this trip, I did not "think" "oh look its Shiva" or whoever; the entire trip there was no thoughts at all... It was like going on a roller coaster and experiencing this experience as I perceived it as it happened. In a roller coaster ride, you're not really thinking much as you're in the moment going up and down at high speeds. It was later that night that I went to go research about DMT trips and found out who these gods were: Shiva destroyed my body because he is the god of destruction; my interpretation was that he had to kill my ego to let me go on to the next lesson. It turns out, Ganesha, the elephant head god, is the god of wisdom/knowledge, and he showed me that the universe is infinite using the replicating triangle to symbolize this. And I found even pictures of these beings, including the room of eyes another person drew that had a similar experience online, that literally looked identical to what I had saw; colors and everything! Now I'm not Hindu, I don't believe in these gods, so either I saw these images before and never noticed them and they were stored in my subconscious mind; or we humans have a collective consciousness like Jung believed, so if any humans believe in these gods, then we all have access to these things in our universal memory bank; or these beings actually exist. I have no idea. But the point is, I had no thoughts during the experience, I had no will as I was shot across the cosmos and just observed what was going on; as if I was locked into a roller coaster chair. But when I returned into this "reality" I was able to think about the experience and go over what I believed happened. So then, what is going on? Of course in the realm of the "true" reality, we have no free will, because we are tripping our balls off, just like you have no free will on a roller-coaster. You surrender yourself to the experience, but that doesn't mean the decision to surrender was not from you, the perceiver. Surrendering is a decision; a choice, the opposite of resisting, which we humans do a lot of, even resisting the idea you have free will because you believe it's a thought. When you choose to go on a roller coaster, you are deciding to go on it; I don't see how atoms from the big bang or super novas exploding can lead up to the suggestion for me to go on a roller coaster. That is why I believe, surely, there can be influences, but these are subconscious influences which are later filtered to the conscious mind where we can analyze and choose between all these suggestions. Also notice, we always come back to this "reality." Why is it that we cannot simply stay in the other reality? Why do we always come back to the illusion? What if there was a drug that made you have a SUPER EGO trip, and showed you that EVERYTHING IS THE EGO, and the opposite is an illusion? Maybe that this isn't the illusion and the other "reality" is. Maybe the trips we are on are mind fucks? So to assume we have no free will because we tripped our balls off during a meditation or on DMT, is like saying all I have no free will because I went on a roller coaster ride and all the decisions I made before going on them were not mine and I have no free will, including choosing to go on the roller coaster. So to conclude this giant point, I believe that the perceiver DOES have choice, but ONLY when you are aware that YOU are the perceiver and NOT your thoughts and NOT your ego. Thus, most people are indeed on autopilot and do not have free will as they are constrained MORE by their subconscious influences and other things.

I love these answers. I want to actually post the comment I left Leo when I first came upon his channel and left it under his video on Free Will VS Determinism: " I believe that we have the free will to "veto" the unconscious mind's suggestions that are causal. For example, how did you "decide" to change your mind on this issue? I think because whatever input you were exposed to before, you then later in life, chose to negate the old beliefs since you decided they were no longer true. If this is not the case, that means that certain input and information that you were not exposed to would have always changed your mind had you simply heard it first; so in other words, like taking a specific drug that has a certain determined reaction, so should any input or information. But the fact we humans can deny the truth (as you did later change your mind), is a form of free will. So maybe the thoughts and information that comes from external or internal "causes" suggest that we think or do this or that; we have no choice over, but we do have the choice to observe the system and stop it from doing something. So I think the issue lies with this: People believe that free will must be a positive choice, and miss the entire "veto" powers we have in our conscious mind. Furthermore, the "self" you speak in combination may be an illusion (ego) but we can observe the very fact that you are asserting that we have no self. So who is observing this observation? What exactly is agreeing or disagreeing with you that there is no self? Just stumbled upon your videos recently and I enjoy the content. Keep it up."

I'm new to the forum and also new to Leo's work which I find very great. I'm still catching up on many of his videos which had a profound effect on my thinking as I love learning all this crazy shit most people don't even care about. I am curious as to what dreams are about? If brains don't exist, which Leo put for a great argument against; if reality isn't physical,, which implies that any experience one could have in this absolutely infinite hallucination must also be as "real" as the hallucination it came from, then what are dreams exactly; where are they happening (no where) is God having that dream; Is the dream an actual event IN real event in the hallucination; Do dreams count as "real" or other dimensions of existence? Those are just a few questions I can think of now, and would enjoy to see what Leo has to say about this.

@Cepzeu An illusion or thought cannot act upon a thought. If we are God, then we have free will. If we are not God, then we do not. Rocks don't have free will; neither does the moon. Plants don't have free will. Trees don't have free will. Yet God inhabits these things if he is everything; but these things are different than us, and God can "act" through us, which is really us if we are God, and we have free will to act. The ego is basically a survival mechanism which has become self aware and tried to convince us we are the ego; in other words, we Gods have got sucked into our own software that we forget we were driving the vehicle.

If the "truth" is that everything is a paradox, then we should have free will and no free will simultaneously which fits my description perfectly; that it is 50/50; our free will comes from the ability to decide, regardless of what these thoughts are, when we are AWARE... when we are not aware of what we are doing, it is if we have no free will as we are acting instinctual and on a lower level of consciousness. It takes effort, focus, and awareness to have free will; but even so, it is not "free" because it is partially constrained by the events and circumstances built upon your karma. So when I speak of free will, I am not saying that there is nothing influencing us from our past or thoughts that come in or out of our head; its what we decide to do in the moment, regardless of all the information. There are many times in our lives we get carried away by emotions and do things we can't believe we did; but then there are times we knew precisely what we did and willed it to be so.