On Free Will

[Cepzeu]

32 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:

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.

 

Careful with that thought. Paradoxes only exist because our minds may not be able to resolve them at our current level of understanding or experience. Reality has no paradoxes in it. 

[Cepzeu]

20 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:

@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. 

 

Different from us? You mean a human body? What makes you think you are the human body or mind? 

Thoughts exist, the ego does not. The ego is an idea (just like a thought). The ego is just a label for thoughts that we have which we attribute as being us rather than just more phenomena in the field of awareness. Keep this following point in mind: thoughts exist, the ego is just a thought, it itself does not exist just like the content of thoughts does not exist. 

[Cepzeu]

Also, God does not act,  "it" just is. Since we are God we don't act and therefore don't have free will. "We" just exist

Edited December 29, 2017 by Cepzeu

[SOUL]

6 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:

The ego is basically a survival mechanism which has become self aware and tried to convince us we are the ego

The self conscious is self aware from a self preservation perspective biologically and is causal which includes all involuntary actions, the ego is the 'interface' between the self conscious and our present moment awareness, which is the 'voluntary' part of our consciousness and the ego's job is to convince us to behave voluntarily on behalf of the self conscious impulses.

This is where the freedom in willful action comes in, we can either act on what the ego influences us to or we can not.The ego creates a compelling narrative, a story to influence us into action. When we were simple primitive creatures it was primitive but as we evolved into complex social creatures it's devices evolved into a complex narrative along with it.

Although we can bypass the story altogether and act on primitive impulse or not, what is voluntary is still voluntary.

[star ark]

1 hour ago, Angelo John Gage said:

@Cepzeu @Faceless The observer of the thoughts can choose to act or not act upon them...If that observer is "God", then does God have no free will? 

If we as individuals are just a piece or fractal of god, then does just one piece have full control of god's free will?

Does one atom have a say over the others?

Or could it be a synergy of everyone as a piece of god?

 

[Faceless]

We are primitive and we haven’t yet evolved to simple. Lol 

 

 

[Edvard]

@Angelo John Gage Firstly, the notion of having free will or not is a thought, which means it is false, or at least not the ultimate reality. However, if the real you is solely consciousness, and ultimately nothing, where is the freedom of thought and action, except for it being an illusion? Btw, even if it was true that the self was real, I think free will would always have to be an illusion. The reason is that every thought has a reason - or non-reason. The first explanation tells us that whatever you do is determined, the latter tells us that whatever you do is random. This is all that can be. No one is--ultimately--responsible for anything. How could that be? Reality just is, by being, there's noone to choose anything. You are consciousness, including thoughts that just appear in consciousness, but these are what we tend to identify with. Whether you act on those thoughts is also determined by thoughts. Thoughts aren't solely conceptual words that you decide to act on or not, for a start it's also images, self, reality, and other deeply subconscious taken for granted ideas that you are not conscious of. Consciousness work could however make you conscious of this. Although I think that in addition to no free will in experience, I find it utterly logical also conceptually, although as I said it is a belief that you don't think of by being Truth.

By saying free will exists you are basically saying that some souls are inherently good, and some inherently bad, because they decide to do things, but what do they base their decisions on? A universal set of values? No, it's based on nothing, and from nothing is where ideas emerge. But if the decisions arise from nothing, what makes one soul choose anything, except for giving it a set of values and interensts in which to act from? But no values was there in the beginning, only nothing, and yet you want to make distinctions between the different «nothings» that you claim to have responsibility for what happens in nothing.

[Angelo John Gage]

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."

[Nahm]

@Angelo John Gage God.

[Angelo John Gage]

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.

Edited December 29, 2017 by Angelo John Gage
I suck at spelling

[Faceless]

To chose implies there is confusion, belief implies fear. 

Also why take psycho active drugs? 

And why do you meditate?

What’s the motive of these? 

 

 

 

[SOUL]

I'm amazed by the people who 'think' they are thought slaves that are really nothing that are 'forced' to tell everyone else they are thought slaves of nothing, too.....those sure are some interesting beliefs but they are your own personal truth and they are not universal 'truth' or reality at all, just yours.

Edited December 29, 2017 by SOUL

[Angelo John Gage]

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.

 

[MarinM]

@Angelo John Gage its not a thought, its achievable experience. I dont have true experience of that but I've had some smaller levels of truth. Seems like no one can convince you, and no one should. Just have the mind open for the possibility and see for yourself if it's true or false

[Angelo John Gage]

@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

[Nahm]

@Angelo John Gage I have seen this Super Ego drug you speak of....

[Angelo John Gage]

@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.

[Nahm]

@Angelo John Gage I haven’t tried it....the ketamine that is. Me & the beer go way back. 

[pluto]

Most people that take DMT don't really go deep enough to enter the Infinite territory. You must realize all of those you experience are a projection of self, once you come to this realization that all is projection during an experience it all ceases to exist and you become one with the ALL and experience everything, that exists, that ever exited, that will exist, that doesn't exist, all at once for eternity and eternity realizing you've always been here forever and ever and there's nothing really out-there to begin with. You created all illusion for your own fun and games and further exploration.

Knowing everything got boring, so you decided to create life (without knowing) so it can become interesting again. Now as we become more and more aware of who and what we truly are, we are simply remembering nothingness by forgetting everythingness. Gotta love that twist

[Faceless]

Let’s go even deeper into this question of free will and ask ouselves this...Are we free of desire? Answer this question honestly and then you got your answer. And you will see the contradiction of free will. 

Only reason this idea of free will exsist is because thought makes a seperation between the observer and the observed... the observer looks at desire as seperate from the observer. But the observer is desire. Keep it simple folks.