Fate and Free Will

[Guest guest]

Apologies - forgot to insert correct subject heading for my last input -

perhaps you could correct this for the archives Ram?

 

Harsha:

"The main thing is consciousness, not the constructs that have consciousness

as their source. If you follow the constructs outwards, you see the world

and are bound. If you follow the constructs inwards through inquiry, you see

that You Yourself Are the Consciousness untouched by fate or free will."

 

D: I do agree with the wisdom of all of this - very well put! Not sure I

agree with your categorisation of Ramesh as 'only a minor teacher' though.

Obviously he is not in the same league as Ramana (but then who is?) but if

he is minor, this does not say much for most of the other teachers around

today, does it?

 

Benjamin:

"Even in a deterministic (read 'robot-like') world, sadhana can be useful.

It simply amounts to good programming. The sadhana is replacing a bad

computer program in our vasanas with a good one."

 

D: An excellent way of putting it (especially given that most of the people

on this list seem to have something to do with computers)!

 

Michael to Dennis:

"There seem to be two positions on the go here. (1) repudiation of

free-will on general philosophical grounds (2) repudiation of free-will as

being part of Maya and thus being inherently illusionary.

 

D: I think there are three actually: (3) repudiation of free-will on

experiential grounds. I am happy with this even on its own

 

Michael: "It was position (2) that I was trying to come to grips with."

 

D: Actually, I don't know that this is really a 'position' at all. In fact,

I thought it was generally acknowledged that, within the phenomenal realm we

effectively DID have free will. If you are talking about the noumenal, then

free will or not is no longer an issue.

 

Michael: "About Predestination the same argument can be made. There are a

great many materialists who deny the

freedom of the will and do not believe in God. Should belief in God

strengthen your denial of free-will?"

 

D: What I said (that I presume promted your statement) was: "If, by

predestination, you understand that

a god has planned what is going to happen, then this is clearly in

contradiction to free will". The key word here is 'planned'. If I believe in

a god who plans everything in advance then this does seem to deny free-will.

(Actually, as you will have gathered, I do not personally feel the need for

a god at any level.)

 

Michael: "Sankara used the theory both on the Paramartha and the Vyavahara."

 

D: I don't see how any theory could apply to paramArtha or how Sankara could

think so.

 

K: (any relation to Kafka? :-) ) said some stuff about 'naguals' and

'tonals'? Sorry K, some of the material looked as though it might be

interesting but I didn't recognise the terms. Have I missed a previous post?

Anyway, I didn't find an advaitin peg to hang my understanding on. I noticed

the reference to Carlos Castaneda at the end. Are these his theories? If so,

I respectfully suggest they are out of place on this list.

 

Sadananda:

"Logic in the absolute sense fails since the proof of lack of freewill goose

back paarmaarthika."

 

D: Is this actually so? Surely the notion of free will causes lots of

problems in vyavahAra doesn't it, from a scientific point of view at least?

It is far simpler to assume automatic cause-effect chains for everything -

long live William of Ockham!

 

Sadananda:

"Within the relative level - kartha, karma and kriya are all ontologically

of the same status and to deny it - I repeat - is jumping unconsciously to

the level of paaramaarthika - since one cannot logically within vyavahaara

establish that everything is predestined. "

 

D: Where is the fallacy in the logic of all actions being triggered by

thoughts, memories, previous conditioning and interactions between all of

these? I do not think you have yet answered this have you? I am not invoking

paramArtha here.

 

Sadananda:

"I notice clear inconsistency in the statements if one rejects the free-will

when one starts the statements. He recommends only one spiritual sadhana

,.... asks them to spend 15-20 mins at the end of a day - Sorry fellows you

have already failed to prove the point."

 

D: Where exactly? The suggestion to spend 15-20 mins is itself the primary

cause for the action of doing so. There is no free will here.

 

Best wishes,

 

Dennis

 

P.S. to Sada-ji - I know that whether or not you respond to these further

queries, having said that you have concluded, is not a matter of free will

on your part. But don't feel bad about it if you (think that you) choose not

to! :-)

[Guest guest]

Dear Sadanandaji

>End of my second last posting on this subject!

>Hari OM!

>Sadananda

 

 

In English we have a saying "The third time is the charm!"

 

But I won't be the one to test it!

 

Om!

Benjamin

[Guest guest]

Hello All,

When what is evident and obvious to common sense such as the existence of the

world, is now mysteriously transformed into the external world and the will into

that dubious contender for autonomy, free-will, we must ask whither philosophy?

Is it as that Wodehousian man on the next bar stool might say, absolute nonsense

old chap let it not wrinkle that Dover cliff of imperturbability, your brow.

 

One is tempted to fold the tent of reason and steal away but I think I'll stay

anyway.Are we focussing on one corner of the picture or becoming overimpressed

by an aspect? Errors are made, illusions are suffered, dreams are dreamt, could

it all be a mere phantasmagoria? "An object and its knowledge are different"

says Sankara, speaking of concepts. That large fact becomes a chasm into which

the world falls.

 

Ask yourself when tempted to espouse a position opposed to common sense and all

scriptures, am I leaving something out, am I turning a footnote into the text?

Shop around. If someone says to you that (I read this) that Sanskrit is the

language of Heaven you can always say 'can I get back to you on that'. If he

also says, All men are mortal, Socrates is a man - Socrates is mortal, check

your logic primer.

 

Best Wishes, Michael.

[Guest guest]

Dear Greg,

 

 

advaitin, Greg Goode <goode@D...> wrote:

 

 

< snip >

 

And you don't need a confirmation from academic science.

Just take a scientific look at yourself. Look at the thoughts

themselves. Can you predict your next thought? Can you choose

your next thought? Can you control your next thought?

The negative answers to both are enough, you don't need science.

Neither determinism nor free will is the answer.

 

< snip >

 

 

 

 

KKT: The example you give

is very eloquent, Greg.

 

So are we merely puppet?

 

 

Peace,

 

 

KKT

[Guest guest]

D: I'm afraid that I am beginning to struggle trying to keep up with the

volume of posts on this topic. It seems that more and more posple are

addressing their statements and objections to me and expecting a response! I

guess I did invite this by some of the provocative statements I was making.

This might not be too bad if I could easily understand all of what was being

said but this seems not to be the case. In particular, Michael, I seem to

have problems with your material. It comes across with such authority, using

an amazing but sometimes unfamiliar vocabulary. But I have to confess that I

find it a little intimidating at times and too demanding for a comfortable

read. It's a bit difficult finding an appropriate response to refute the

arguments if you cannot understand them to begin with!

 

I also decided to abandon the confrontation with Sri Sadananda - I can see

there is no way I will persuade him to change his view. I will certainly go

away and look up the relevant sections of the Sankara adhyAsa bhAShya,

however and see if that can bring me around to his point of view. I had

thought that I did already agree with all of that but, as I pointed out

before, I did not recollect any reference to anything relating to free will.

I'll come back on that after I have checked it out.

 

The same goes for Hu-mata's quoted Buber article 'On Doom'. When I see a

quotation beginning with words such as "The biogistic and the

historiosophical orientations of this...", I'm afraid I just switch off -

it's my nature. It may be that some valuable points were made but perhaps

someone who does understand this sort of vocabulary can paraphrase it for me

in everyday language?

 

Ram:

"If everything is deterministic, then we must answer the question: 'by

whom?'"

 

D: Why?? This is certainly not the case in my understanding. As I have said

before, it is simply a cause-effect chain. Why bring anyone into it?

 

Sorry - I will have to stop now for a while. I'll send off what I have

written so far and offer apologies to those I have not responded to. The

problem is that I have just received the second proofs of my book and

discovered that, not only have they removed all of the Devanagari script

from the text (because they haven't got a font??) but they have also failed

to retain a matching index so that I will have to generate this all over

again. Not happy! Incidentally, in response to Ranjeet, yes it is the same

website. The domain www.advaita.org.uk is fixed however and is redirected to

whichever ISP I currently belong. This happens to be Virgin at present. The

book is due out July or August (assuming I produce the index quickly!).

 

Best wishes,

 

Dennis

[Guest guest]

Namaste Sri Sadananda!

 

Sri Dennis has graciously relinquished his debate with you, but being

an idealistic and naive American, I will plunge onwards with my

enthusiastic view of things. At the least, I would like to make sure

that we understand each other.

 

You said:

>There are appropriate terms for both - fate is praarabda

>and free-will is the purushaartha. Each with clear cut

>meaning in Vedanta but not in the sense that is used by

>Dennis and Benjamin.

>In my understanding - what I have is fate and what I do with

>what I have is free-will. In that sense both have roles but

>not in the sense it has been argued as one against the other.

 

But do you really have a choice in what you do with what you have?

That is the whole question. How do you know whether everything is or

is not determined by rigid cause and effect? I may not be certain

that it is, though I do suspect that such a determinism does in fact

follow logically from the nature of God, and I see an echo of this in

the laws of physics. That is why I framed my argument in terms of an

assumption: suppose that everything is rigidly determined by cause

and effect. That means, in this context, that every psychological

event of type A is followed by a psychological event of type B. In

that case, the most elementary logic shows that the future can

proceed in only one way from a given past, and this eliminates the

possibility of any real choice.

 

Now you may *feel* that you have a choice, as when you decide you

want to eat a samosa, and lo and behold, you see yourself getting up,

cooking and eating a samosa. You think to yourself that all that

proceeded from free-will, but that was only because you were able to

do what you wanted to do. It is merely a psychological impression of

freedom.

 

It's true that we don't always do what we want to do. We may decide

for spiritual reasons to curtail our diet so as to become more

detached from the senses. But this may simply arise due to the cause

and effect of a successful spiritual education. Your guru was

effective in instilling the aspiration for spiritual progress in you,

and it bore fruit with a commitment to better behavior. All this

could easily be explained in terms of cause and effect. Just because

you made a beneficial and difficult choice in life is no argument in

favor of free-will. It could just as easily be explained in terms of

the natural consequences of education and insight, which are behaving

as beneficial causes.

 

So the question of whether every psychological event is determined by

rigid laws must ultimately be answered through scientific

investigation, even within the relative level of Jiva, although we

may be strongly inclined to a certain conclusions based on

theological preconceptions (namely the perfection of God can produce

only one manifestation of his nature in Nature).

 

>Divine help is there whether one seeks or not. But in seeking

>the divine help, Jiiva understands the role of Iswara in framing

>the result. In that prayer, he actually reframes his frame of mind

>to be more conducive to make the action more efficient. samoham

>sarva bhuuteshu - says the Lord - I am equal for all. No

>favoritism for those who pray and no hatred for those who curse

>or who ignore. But those who pray only tap the source of energy

>that is available abundantly for everybody for asking. The divine

>grace comes into picture impartially in framing the result of

>action since He is the author of all the Laws. He won't bend the

>laws just because jiiva prays.

 

Again, this is no argument against determinism; rather it is one in

favor of it. The impartiality of the Lord is the same as the uniform

behavior of the laws of physics throughout Nature. I am only

suggesting that this uniform behavior is extended to the

psychological realm. In this case law or dharma rules everywhere,

and every specific event is followed by another specific event. This

logically eliminates the possibility of true choice, since the future

immediately follows from the past.

 

This does NOT mean that we cannot make spiritual progress, only that

it must happen according to the laws imposed on us by the Lord. When

we pray for help, the desire for the prayer arose from past

psychological laws (e.g. education, reflection or meditation) which

nurtured us towards that level of spiritual development, just as

sunlight and water nurture the plant. Then, when we pray, the

attitude of prayer nurtures us even further and allows other

beneficial psychological energies to manifest within us, all

according to dharma. Law or dharma is not our enemy, only we must be

I tune with it. But whether we are depends on our past behavior.

 

Jesus said that men are like grains of wheat planted in a field.

Some grow and other do not, according to circumstances and the causes

and effects arising from those circumstances. Fortunately, Hinduism

and Buddhism tell us we get a second chance, and another, and

another...

 

Om!

Benjamin