No Free Will?

[TruthSeeker]

Whats is the basis for saying there is no free will?

[jjer94]

Check out Leo's video on free will.

The most fundamental basis is that free will requires an agent of will, and when you look in our experience, you can't find one. 

Here's another article explaining the problems with free will better than I can ever explain it:

http://www.uncoveringlife.com/free-will/

[TruthSeeker]

Quote

 

The most fundamental basis is that free will requires an agent of will, and when you look in our experience, you can't find one. 

 

I have no idea what you mean by that...

 

If any one has an answer that would be helpful....Thank you

I just can't grasp the idea that I don't have free will.

Doest that mean we are not responsible for our actions? If someone shoots someone. Well it's not his fault...he didn't have free will...he didn't choose to do it.

If I see an old lady carrying 20 grocery bags up the stairs and I ignore her. Did I not have the choice to help her or not. At that moment of me standing there watching her...don't i have the choice to say "hello miss can I help you" or not.

In that dumb article you attached he spoke about a case of which ice cream to choose...and proved from there that theres no free will. Well I too agree that in THAT case theres no free will. Free will is only in a case where the decision is actually difficult for you. Meaning for example, most people don't have an internal battle of whether they should blow up a city or a school (some people unfortunately DO have that struggle). Do for most people its NOT a freewill decision whether to blow up a city or a school. What Im trying to say is that Free will lies where the decision is actually difficult for you to make and you have a force inside you pulling you to do the opposite.  For example in the book 7 habbits of highly effective people he talks a lot about how we choose our perspective on the events that happen in our life. For example, most people are sad if its raining outside. He talks about how circumstances dont make happyness rather we choose how we react to events and that decides our mindset. But thats a freewill choice and how to react to certain events...We can choose to be negative or choose to see the positive aspects of what happened. (That was just an example).

Again to summarize. There IS free will. Its just only in a very narrow range of cases and that narrow range of cases is different for every person and even within the same person can change and he grows and develops. For example, for years it could be difficult for a person of whether he should eat a certain not healthy food. Every time its a struggle and he has to make a Freewill choice whether to eat it or not and usually fails. But then he watches Leos health videos and it inspired in and the next day he DECIDED not to eat that thing. It was still hard for him and still a struggle but he overcame and used his free will. After months and months and years and years of not eating that thing. Its no longer a challenge for him not to eat that thing. He now grew and overcame that challenge and now to not eat that thing is no longer FOR HIM a free will decision. Now he has other things in his life that he can make freewill decisions on. Should he focus more on giving his woman pleasure in bed or just focus on busting his load. Thats a free will decision for most people. Because its difficult. Now for some people who have worked on themselves...so even THAT is no longer in the range of there freewill and they are above that. 

Meaning he all have a FREE WILL POINT thats on this meter. This point is always moving based on our actions. Anyting below the point or anything above that point is NOT a free will decision (i.e. choosing an ice cream flavor or blowing up america is not a FREEWILL choice for most of us hopefully)...but for each person that point is at a different spot on that meter and that point moves up when he practices his free will properly and those things are no longer a struggle for him.

Ok 

 

 

 

[Guest]

Best argument for no free will is the following:

There's a pool table setup up in a particular way. The pool table is an analogy for the universe. The cue ball is hit (big bang happens), it strike the balls, and the balls all go to their positions, and keep moving to wherever their circumstances dictate. Now consider that there are two pool tables each set up the exact same way. Things will play out the exact same way.

Now, this leaves us with a bit of a contradiction. It seems as if I do have free will in the present moment, and can change my mind. But how much of what makes this person me, is the sum total of my previous experiences? If I was born in a different circumstance, given a different race, given a different gender, a different financial background, a different culture...if I was presented the same situation (for example, I am unemployed and have to decide what career I will take), I will take a vastly different course.

In other words you are the sum total of your experiences, you are consciousness that has been molded into delusion by the mere fact of existing and coming into a complex human world. Your decisions from here on in are thus equally determined. This leads us to the realization that there is no "self". 

 

 

[Truth]

1 hour ago, TruthSeeker said:

I have no idea what you mean by that...

 

If any one has an answer that would be helpful....Thank you

I just can't grasp the idea that I don't have free will.

Doest that mean we are not responsible for our actions? If someone shoots someone. Well it's not his fault...he didn't have free will...he didn't choose to do it.

If I see an old lady carrying 20 grocery bags up the stairs and I ignore her. Did I not have the choice to help her or not. At that moment of me standing there watching her...don't i have the choice to say "hello miss can I help you" or not.

In that dumb article you attached he spoke about a case of which ice cream to choose...and proved from there that theres no free will. Well I too agree that in THAT case theres no free will. Free will is only in a case where the decision is actually difficult for you. Meaning for example, most people don't have an internal battle of whether they should blow up a city or a school (some people unfortunately DO have that struggle). Do for most people its NOT a freewill decision whether to blow up a city or a school. What Im trying to say is that Free will lies where the decision is actually difficult for you to make and you have a force inside you pulling you to do the opposite.  For example in the book 7 habbits of highly effective people he talks a lot about how we choose our perspective on the events that happen in our life. For example, most people are sad if its raining outside. He talks about how circumstances dont make happyness rather we choose how we react to events and that decides our mindset. But thats a freewill choice and how to react to certain events...We can choose to be negative or choose to see the positive aspects of what happened. (That was just an example).

Again to summarize. There IS free will. Its just only in a very narrow range of cases and that narrow range of cases is different for every person and even within the same person can change and he grows and develops. For example, for years it could be difficult for a person of whether he should eat a certain not healthy food. Every time its a struggle and he has to make a Freewill choice whether to eat it or not and usually fails. But then he watches Leos health videos and it inspired in and the next day he DECIDED not to eat that thing. It was still hard for him and still a struggle but he overcame and used his free will. After months and months and years and years of not eating that thing. Its no longer a challenge for him not to eat that thing. He now grew and overcame that challenge and now to not eat that thing is no longer FOR HIM a free will decision. Now he has other things in his life that he can make freewill decisions on. Should he focus more on giving his woman pleasure in bed or just focus on busting his load. Thats a free will decision for most people. Because its difficult. Now for some people who have worked on themselves...so even THAT is no longer in the range of there freewill and they are above that. 

Meaning he all have a FREE WILL POINT thats on this meter. This point is always moving based on our actions. Anyting below the point or anything above that point is NOT a free will decision (i.e. choosing an ice cream flavor or blowing up america is not a FREEWILL choice for most of us hopefully)...but for each person that point is at a different spot on that meter and that point moves up when he practices his free will properly and those things are no longer a struggle for him.

Ok 

 

 

 

If you've seen Leo's video he lays it out very clearly, your explanation of "reacting" to things and choosing to react to negative or positive things doesn't mean you have free will, and by someone being motivated externally, triggered into getting healthy, you see that? triggered, externally (watching leos video.), he didn't will that motivation.  Leo talks about this EXACT thing in his free will video @ 55:50 

The thing he gets at is that there is no self inside that is willing these things, only the illusion that there is a self inside willing these things, and he explains that in great detail, not just in this free will video but other videos that relate to this.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Truth

[Leo Gura]

Not only is there no free will, THERE IS NO YOU!

The second part of this statement should have you way more puzzled and freaked out than the first part.

What this means is: literally, the one who thinks he's reading this sentence right now (TruthSeeker), does not exist!

Can you fathom the gravity of this claim?

It's a REALLY serious claim!

This isn't a joke. We're not kidding around. We're not being poetic. We're not using analogies or metaphor. When this claim is made, it's made like a hard physical scientific claim. There is no such entity as TruthSeeker. TruthSeeker is as real as Santa Claus.

Now, how can that be? How can it be that you've lived your whole life believing you exist even though you've never existed? And even more embarrassingly, how can you still continue to assert your existence after you've been told you don't exist and you start to suspect that it's true?

 

[Guest]

@Leo Gura not meaning to be offensive, but does it really help when you say that? The realization of no-self is surely a combination of all insights into the nature of reality. If so, then he's not going to suddenly just be like "Wow, I don't exist!"...It just doesn't help..

[Leo Gura]

@tryingforfreedom It can be a big help because the first step in this journey is to REALLY grasp the possibility that you might not exist. If this possibility is not REALLY considered, then there's a very slim chance in hell that anything will happen. The mind will get lost in fantasies and arguments and theories.

For this reason, I often like to stress to newbies: YOU DO NOT EXIST!

It's a real wake up call. And if there's any spiritual wisdom in the person, something in him will stir upon being directly confronted in this way. And then the possibility free will not existing will become plausible. And then an honest self-investigation can begin.

Even when I tell people very clearly: YOU DO NOT EXIST! most of them do not actually grasp this as a possibility. Their mind just skips over it like some bit of esoteric science-fiction.

[Guest]

@Leo GuraI half see your point...but when you say "the mind will get lost in fantasies and arguments and theories", it just becomes another theory, without the proper realization. Like if I went up to a random atheist and told them "God exists". 

It does help, but to a limited extent, is what I am saying, and can possibly be more damaging than helpful..

Edited February 15, 2016 by tryingforfreedom

[Leo Gura]

@tryingforfreedom Well... that's the nature of this work. The mind resists truth in 1000 sneaky ways. Proper realization has to start somewhere. And it starts with opening the mind to the possibility that one may not exist. The possibility for self-deception has to really be grokked.

Will it get through to everyone? No. It will only get through to 1 in 1000 or worse. But again, that's the nature of this work. The person hearing that message has to have some innate capacity or intuition for truth. Without that, it's hopeless.

Over 100,000 people have viewed my videos explaining spiritual enlightenment. I seriously doubt a single one of them has become enlightened yet. So the odds are really really bad here. The level of depth at which this one simple communication (You do not exist) needs to be grasped at is unimaginably deep.

I myself still find value in being rudely interrupted sometimes and told, "Leo! What the fuck are you doing? You don't exist, remember?" And then I'm like, "Oh yeah..... What was I thinking?"

[Guest]

@Leo Gura Thanks for doing this in a pragmatic and accessible manner. I am interested in how a higher level of consciousness may shed new light on already familiar perspectives. I'm far from having seen all your videos, but do you plan on doing any that involve approaches to different perspectives from higher consciousness states?

Another question: How does enlightenment relate to the knowledge graph? Is it the only state in which can transcend the knowledge graph but still also operate within it?

[Mohsinuddin]

Then What is the point of finding life purpose?@Leo Gura

[Rito]

@Leo GuraI was recently reading about the Conway's Game of life which shows by Cellular Automation analogy that free will is illusion.The initial conditions do not  determine whatever the state of a system will be at any time points thus demonstrating that whatever inputs we give the end pattern is same.

Thus whatever we do we are never completely free and hence have no free will.

It is a nice way of looking at it.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Rito

[Dhana Choko]

Does a cat have a free will? What makes it different from a human?

[kalter000]

3 hours ago, Dhana Choko said:

Does a cat have a free will? What makes it different from a human?

Cat in your profile pic doesn't look like he had free will 

[TruthSeeker]

Let me summarize what Leo said.

I asked "Whats the basis for there not being free will"

He said "Well buddy you don't exist so obviously theres no such thing as free will"

 

Ok lets assume its true that we don't exist and the whole universe (including "us") is really this one big unity that were all apart of and "we" don't really exist and enlightenment is just realizing that etc etc.

Lets say thats true. Now, for the man who gave a whole video about his Love of paradoxes and how theres many of them in the world and how he's fascinated by them etc etc. (and by the same man who gave a video of Openmindedness) Im surprised he's not even open to the possibility that Free will exists. Maybe thats just one of the paradoxes of the world, that even though we don't exist and nothing really exists (like literally nothing) its all this big oneness...but even so, theres free will. Just because you don't want to accept that paradox doesn't mean its not true. This would be THEE paradox. Could be our minds are too small to understand how that can be but just because our minds are to small to understand how we cant exist but even so theres free will...doesn't make it not true.

Listen I'm not saying Im right. I just trying to look at both sides the the question. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 15, 2016 by TruthSeeker

[Rickard]

"In the gap between stimulus and response lies your freedom." - Victor Frankl

[TruthSeeker]

Great quote. Also in the book seven habits of highly effective people, Steven Covey uses Victor Frankl as his main example to this foundational idea.

I've copied and pasted the part of that book from this website for you guys.

Quote

Habit 1:      Be Proactive

A unique ability that sets humans apart from animals is self-awareness and the ability to choose how we respond to any stimulus. While conditioning can have a strong impact on our lives, we are not determined by it. There are three widely accepted theories of determinism: genetic, psychic, and environmental. Genetic determinism says that our nature is coded into our DNA, and that our personality traits are inherited from our grandparents. Psychic determinism says that our upbringing determines our personal tendencies, and that emotional pain that we felt at a young age is remembered and affects the way we behave today. Environmental determinism states that factors in our present environment are responsible for our situation, such as relatives, the national economy, etc. These theories of determinism each assume a model in which the stimulus determines the response.

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the death camps of Nazi Germany. While in the death camps, Frankl realized that he alone had the power to determine his response to the horror of the situation. He exercised the only freedom he had in that environment by envisioning himself teaching students after his release. He became an inspiration for others around him. He realized that in the middle of the stimulus-response model, humans have the freedom to choose.

Animals do not have this independent will. They respond to a stimulus like a computer responds to its program. They are not aware of their programming and do not have the ability to change it. The model of determinism was developed based on experiments with animals and neurotic people. Such a model neglects our ability to choose how we will respond to stimuli.

We can choose to be reactive to our environment. For example, if the weather is good, we will be happy. If the weather is bad, we will be unhappy. If people treat us well, we will feel well; if they don't, we will feel bad and become defensive. We also can choose to be proactive and not let our situation determine how we will feel. Reactive behavior can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. By accepting that there is nothing we can do about our situation, we in fact become passive and do nothing.

The first habit of highly effective people is proactivity. Proactive people are driven by values that are independent of the weather or how people treat them. Gandhi said, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." Our response to what happened to us affects us more than what actually happened. We can choose to use difficult situations to build our character and develop the ability to better handle such situations in the future.

Proactive people use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them.

Being proactive means assessing the situation and developing a positive response for it. Organizations can be proactive rather than be at the mercy of their environment. For example, a company operating in an industry that is experiencing a downturn can develop a plan to cut costs and actually use the downturn to increase market share.

Once we decide to be proactive, exactly where we focus our efforts becomes important. There are many concerns in our lives, but we do not always have control over them. One can draw a circle that represents areas of concern, and a smaller circle within the first that represents areas of control. Proactive people focus their efforts on the things over which they have influence, and in the process often expand their area of influence. Reactive people often focus their efforts on areas of concern over which they have no control. Their complaining and negative energy tend to shrink their circle of influence.

In our area of concern, we may have direct control, indirect control, or no control at all. We have direct control over problems caused by our own behavior. We can solve these problems by changing our habits. We have indirect control over problems related to other people's behavior. We can solve these problems by using various methods of human influence, such as empathy, confrontation, example, and persuasion. Many people have only a few basic methods such as fight or flight. For problems over which we have no control, first we must recognize that we have no control, and then gracefully accept that fact and make the best of the situation.

 

[kalter000]

@TruthSeeker dude, what's the point in this speculation? Ego wants to prove it's rightness? 

You were told to sit down, start looking and find out for yourself. The answer to your question no one truly knows unless they are enlightened. People just trying to linguistically channel their experience, which is not the same as actual experience.

I find it funny, that 99% of unconscious body functions are all by themselves and don't ask for your "personal interruption", but this 1% of conscious behavior is somehow desperately need you to function, as if it's much more important then pumping blood, regenerating and fighting viruses. Everything was doing well without you, you are not invited to this party :Р 

It seems obvious to me, it's my assumption, go verify truth for yourself. 

[Dhana Choko]

3 hours ago, kalter000 said:

Cat in your profile pic doesn't look like he had free will 

She definitely does not have a free will. ;D Which is EXACTLY my point!