FREE WILL

So, what about free willy? "Do you believe that you have control over your destiny? If you do not, then you are more prone to bad behavior." (Free Will / free will)

John decided to holiday in Sousse because his upbringing and heredity have determined that Sousse is his kind of place.

In other words, a 'causal chain' led John to Sousse.

It can be argued that John was not forced to go to Sousse, and that in a sense his decision was 'free'.

It can be argued that 'conscious, determined decisions' are 'free will decisions'.

It turns out that there was trouble in Sousse, and John had made a bad decision.


"If there is an explosion in a public place, hotel, or shopping mall, you should know that it is the Tunisian special forces who planned it." Thus said El Hocine Khafi, a former official at the Ministry of Interior of Tunisia.Une base militaire américaine à la frontière tuniso-algérienne.

William decided not to holiday in Sharm el Sheikh, even though his upbringing and heredity have determined that Sharm el Sheikh is his kind of place.

Why does one person make 'wrong' decisions and another make 'right' decisions?

Chance or randomness can affect our decisions.

Quite by chance, William had come across a travel exhibition and discovered that there were at least a dozen places better than Sharm el Sheikh.

The chance visit to the travel exhibition broke the 'causal chain' and allowed William to make a better choice.



Philosopher Daniel Dennet says you can exercise free will by doing something unpredictable.

This could mean going to Paramaribo rather than Las Vegas.

Daniel Dennett says determinism and free will are not incompatible.

Does free will really exist?

There is simple causation (one ball hits another one and it causes the second one to move) and causation that results from careful thinking.

A criminal might commit a crime 'because he was born criminal and brought up criminal."

But, the criminal is free to do the 'unpredictable' and to be good.

The criminal is free to think about his actions.

You can be unpredictable.

You can avoid being manipulated.

"Freedom, of the important kind, of the kind worth wanting, is freedom from being manipulated."

Does free will really exist?

Who are the people who are being manipulated and who are therefore not free?

It is mainly the ultra-conservatives, the extremists and the fundamentalists.

Think of the fundamentalist Jew who is not free to marry a Moslem.

Think of the White racist who is not free to make friends with a Black neighbour. 



You could argue that William's 'guardian angel' led him to the travel exhibition.

You could argue that people are only 'free' when they are tuned in to 'the Holy Spirit'.

Why does one person make 'wrong' decisions and another make 'right' decisions?



Some Taoists would argue that every 'thing' and every 'action' is a mixture of 'good' and 'evil'.

Both Sharm el Sheikh and Paramaribo have their 'good' and 'bad' bits.

According to the Taoists, everything in the universe is single, whole, but composed of opposites.

"Taoists believe that nature is a continual balance between yin and yang, and that any attempt to go toward one extreme or the other will be ineffective, self-defeating, and short-lived."

What Taoists Believe

The Buddhists would argue that 'ignorance' is the cause of bad decisions and suffering.

Socrates would agree.

The Buddhists would also say that our sense of being a separate 'self' is an illusion.

"The death of his younger brother, Edmund, from measles on 2 February 1900 deeply affected Hitler. He changed from being confident and outgoing and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.... After his father's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's behaviour at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave in 1904."

Alvin Plantinga defends God with his "free will defense"

"It is possible that God ... could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil. 

"It is possible that God .... would desire to create a world which contains evil - if moral goodness requires free moral creatures."

Jesus said that 'some seed fell on stony ground'.

Is that just bad luck?

One can speculate that if God is going to create 'a real world', then, as with a game of golf, there has to be an element of chance.



Discoveries in 'Quantum Physics' suggest that 'determinism' may be wrong.

The movement of 'particles' cannot always be predicted.

Dostoevsky points to characters who do bad things, knowing that they are bad, in order to assert their uniquness and independence.

Some might say that God does not have this burden, as, presumably, he is incapable of choosing evil?

Dostoevsky, and others, seem to suggest that all creatures go through a long learning process, which can involve suffering, in order to achieve enlightenment.



But what about 'justice'?

Let us assume that there is a God who is 'just' and 'fair'.

Jesus said that 'some seed fell on stony ground'.

How can God ensure that those who, by chance, have gone astray, are rescued from their bad luck?

For life to be fair, every single soul has eventually to reach perfection and salvation.

And every single soul has to experience the same range of 'ups' and 'downs'.



Life magazine reported (The Mystery of Chance):

On 1 March 1950, all the fifteen members of a church choir in Beatrice, Nebraska, due at practice at 7:20, were late.

For example, one couldn't start her car; and one mother and daughter were late because the mother had to call the daughter twice to wake her from a nap.

At 7:25 the church building was destroyed in an explosion. The members of the choir, Life reported, wondered if their delay was "an act of God."

...

To the Hindu, we are all part of God; our sense of being a separate individual, such as John or William, is an illusion; and all our souls eventually join up with God.

According to The Upanishads, the Hindu New Testament (Life And Death Explained?):

God is within all the created world (immanent) and outside all the created world (transcendent).

God becomes immanent (within all) until the end of evolution when the immanent has all again become transcendent (outside the created world). The created world evolves into the transcendent God.

Why? 

For the joy of creation.

Why is there evil? 

For the joy of good arising from it.

"Eventually suffering destroys the ego."

A Quote by Eckhart Tolle on suffering.

Why darkness? That the light may shine more.

Why suffering? For the instruction of the soul and the joy of sacrifice. 

Why the infinite play of creation and evolution? For pure joy.

The Buddhists teach that "it is only conventionally, not ultimately, true that we are persons."

Buddhist 'No-Self' Doctrine.

NISARGADATTA - ALL COMES FROM WITHIN

In our lives we are aware of DUALITY - hot and cold, kind and cruel, happy and sad, war and peace, healthy and unhealthy.

Do our minds create this world of Duality?

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Can our minds skip into a parallel world where there are no extremes, and we do not worry about duality or non-duality?



Nisargadatta Maharaj ( 1897 - 1981), was a Hindu guru of nondualism.



His Guru told him: "Go back to that state of pure being, where the ‘I am’ is still in its purity before it got contaminated with ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that.’

"Your burden is of false self-identifications - abandon them all."



"Trust me, I tell you: you are Divine. Take it as the absolute truth.

"Your joy is divine, your suffering is divine too.

"All comes from God. Remember it always. You are God, your will alone is done."

Nisargadatta Maharaj says he did not condition his mind by thinking, "I am God, I am wonderful, I am beyond."

He simply focused the mind on pure being, and soon the peace and joy and deep all-embracing love became his normal state.

"In it all disappeared - myself, my guru, the life I lived, the world around me.

"Only peace remained, and unfathomable silence."



According to Timothy Conway, Nisargadatta's only subject was -

"Our real Identity as the birthless-deathless, infinite-eternal Absolute Awareness ...

"Fundamentally, we are not an individual, we are intrinsically always and only the Absolute.[web 3]

Nisargadatta explains:

"You are the timeless spaceless witness.

"And even if the mind tells you that you are the one who is acting, don't believe the mind.



According to Conway, awareness of the Absolute could be regained by -

"A disidentification from the dream of 'me and my world'".

Nisargadatta's message:

"You are not your body, but you are the consciousness in the body."

...

...

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SCHRODINGER - MONISM

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger thought about the meaning of life. His ideas were heavily influenced by monist (oneness) philosophy

Many people have thought about the meaning of life.

"Jesus knew that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? 

"You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff." - J. D. Salinger, in Zooey (1957)

The person who is not attached to external pleasures, the person who is tuned into the divine, feels everlasting joy. - Bhagavad Gita, 5.21

We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. - Erwin Schrodinger

The fundamental truth is that the world of our sense-experience is all illusion - maya.

Quotes from Erwin Schrödinger -

Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual.

No self is alone.

We are never in a position to say what really is or what really happens, but we can only say what will be observed in any concrete individual case.

The ego is an illusion. 

Indeed in a certain sense two egos are identical - when one disregards their Karma. 

The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.

For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. 

A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; he felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? 

Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.

I insist upon the view that 'all is waves' (invisible energy).

The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads (Hindu texts). 

And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the way.

There is only one mind...

Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. 

The personal self equals the omnipresent eternal self.

True lovers, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...

The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real.

Vedantic philosophy... has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply that object...

You - and all other conscious beings as such are all in all.

It is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago.

Rather this knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings. 

This life of yours... is, in a certain sense, the whole... I am this whole world.'

Erwin Schrodinger.

Eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.

Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves.

This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. 

We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators.

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. 

It knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. 

Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.

The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the "world of energy."

~~~



Monism

Monism is a belief that there is only one mind.

Heaven is inside of you, according to Jesus.

I call it the Tao - Laozi

A person who is not attached to external pleasures but enjoys happiness in the soul, the person who perceives Brahman (the divine) in everything feels everlasting joy. - Bhagavad Gita, 5.21

The ancient Hindu philosophers stated as a fundamental truth that the world of our sense-experience is all illusion (maya), that change, plurality, and causation are not real, that there is but one reality, God. 

Quantum theory is now discussing instantaneous connections between two entangled quantum objects such as electrons. 

This phenomenon has been observed in laboratory experiments. 

The entangled objects somehow communicate instantaneously at a distance. 

Jesus knew that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff. - J. D. Salinger, in Zooey (1957)

COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS; GAY GODS

What's in your mind?

Race, sex, gender, guns ...?

Carl Jung's idea was that "when the darkness of the unconscious begins to stir, if these forces are not understood, they will magnetically draw people together...

"These people will become unwitting instruments for what Jung calls 'the powers of darkness' to act themselves out in the world."

What Would CG Jung Say


Golden Dawn, Greece.

"The collective unconscious makes people ripe for political manipulation, especially in the era of mass politics." [63]

It's best if we understand our minds.



Ancient myths give us some clues about what's in people's minds.

The Egyptian god Seth, while married to his sister Nephthys, had sex with other male gods such as Horus.

The 'Greek Myths' tell us something about the collective unconscious - the memories and impulses of which we are not aware, but which are common to mankind as a whole.


Eros (Cupid)

The 'shadow' is said to be one's dark side.

Eros, the Greek God of Love, could be a positive or negative force, leading to virtue or misery.

...

The Greek Myths feature bisexual gods and heroes, and transgender folks, and cruel killers.

Athena, goddess of wisdom, loved the maiden called Myrmex.

Zeus loved Ganymede.

Apollo loved Prince Hyakinthos.

Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, loved Adonis.

Adonis by Henry Oliver Walker - Library of Congress

Hermes, the wing-heeled messenger of the gods, had many male lovers.

Iphis was born female but raised male by his mother.

Callisto was the daughter of Zeus and the follower of the lesbian goddess Artemis.

When Zeus disguised himself as the goddess Artemis, Callisto had sex with him.


Ganymede by Henry Oliver Walker - Library of Congress

Teiresias was transformed from a man into a woman for seven years. 

During his female years, Teiresias became a priestess of Hera, married, and even had children, according to Hesiod.

Antinous was the male companion of the Roman emperor Hadrian. 

Hadrian encouraged the deification of Antinous.

Adonis by Henry Oliver Walker - Library of Congress

In the creation story for the Egyptian gods, the first deity, Atum, was both male and female.

The Egyptian sun god Ra is said to be the mother and father of the gods.

The Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut was female but wore men's clothing.

Hapi, the god of the Nile, is depicted in hieroglyphics as an intersex (both male and female) person.

The Hindu god Shiva has been depicted as being androgynous.

The Hindu god Vishnu was gender-fluid and was sometimes male and sometimes female. 

Vishnu had sex with Shiva.

...

The male Hindu god Krishna took on female form in order to marry a bloke called Aravan.

The Hindu hero Shikhandi was born female but became a man.

The Hindu god Agni married both a man and a woman.

The Hindu god Ila changed genders every month.

Bhagavati-devi is the Hindu goddess of cross-dressing, and more than 5,000 male worshippers dress as women each year for the ritual Chamayavilakku festival in Kollam. 

What's in people's minds?

Both the Republicans and Democrats in the USA appeal to 'the Dark Side'.

"A leader, such as Donald Trump, will invariably appear - in my language, get “dreamed up” - who will express, reflect and, like a lightning rod, amplify these darker forces. 

"This leader is typically someone who, in Jung's words, has “the least resistance, the least sense of responsibility and … the greatest will to power.”[6] 

"Jung comments that this leader “will let loose everything that is ready to burst forth.”[7] 

"As if offering a prophetic warning, Jung says with complete certainty, “a mass always produces a ‘Leader,’ who infallibly becomes the victim of his own inflated ego-consciousness, as numerous examples in history show.”[8] 

"I think many of us intuit that Trump's reign is not going to end well – the question becomes: how can we mitigate the damage?"

What Would CG Jung Say

BAD DREAMS ARE USEFUL

Bad dreams show us our dark side.

And this can be useful.

British cabinet ministers may dream of beating young boys dressed in girls underwear.

White fascists in South Carolina may dream of shooting dead their annoying neighbours.

Sam Wolfe has written about bad dreams being related to the unconscious mind.

Sam Wolfe points out that, according to Carl Jung, the unconscious mind consists of both the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.

A Jungian Perspective on Nightmares and Bad Dreams

Hitler apparently used symbols and instincts from the collective unconscious to win over the masses.

Advertisers reportedly do the same thing.

Sam Wolfe reminds us that Jung claimed that humans want 'wholeness'.

In other words, humans don't want their minds to be full of conflicts.

The Sunni Moslem does not want to be one minute seeing Islam as the religion of peace and the next moment wanting to kill a lot of Shias.

Individuation is the name Jung gives to the process of achieving wholeness.

Individuation involves dealing with 'the dark side'.

Jung said that "the individuation process…forms one of the main interests of Taoism and Zen Buddhism."

Jung also believed that this idea of becoming 'whole' is referred to by Jesus.

Jesus said: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

Some supporters of Jung believe that the faults that Hitler saw in the Jews were faults that Hitler himself also possessed.

..

Sam Wolfe points out that "Individuation is difficult because it involves giving up ... the mask we put on..." 

According to Sam Wolfe: "One way that the personal shadow manifests itself is throughpsychological projection."

A Jungian Perspective on Nightmares and Bad Dreams

For example, the gay homophobe will be constantly accusing other people of being gay.

The bad driver will blame other motorists of getting it all wrong.

The American general will blame the dead Iraqi children of deliberately getting in the way of his bombs.

Sam Wolfe writes: "If we despise someone for being lazy, cowardly, mean or deceitful or if we are constantly annoyed at someone for being arrogant, greedy or sluttish, this perception reflects a despised part of ourselves."

Herman Hesse, in his novel Demian, wrote: "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."

Sam Wolfe writes: "In order to integrate your shadow into your personality, you first must recognise and accept that these despised traits are a part of your self ..."

A Jungian Perspective on Nightmares and Bad Dreams

You must DETACH yourself from the bad traits.

Both Jesus and Buddha pointed out that we should see our own faults and then detach ourselves from these faults.

In our bad dreams there are symbols that represent the bad stuff.

We might dream about threatening creatures whom we are having to shoot at.

When we waken up we may realise that the dream is about our own faults and failings.

The psychologist Paul Tholey suggests that the dreamer should try to engage in dialogue with the hostile dream figure, with the goal of achieving some kind of reconciliation. 

A Jungian Perspective on Nightmares and Bad Dreams

Sam Wolfe writes: "Ugly and terrifying characters in our dreams can be transformed into beautiful and friendly characters. 

"The shadow, therefore, is really hidden treasure...

"As the German psychologist Kuenkel said, 'The true way to healing' is to seek out the 'barking dogs of the unconscious' and reconcile with them." 

As Jesus said, love your enemies.

Sam Wolfe writes: Greet your demons and monsters like a long-lost friend and so too will your enemies in real life cease to be enemies. 

Continued here: A Jungian Perspective on Nightmares and Bad Dreams

Not all dreams are bad.

I once had an employee who believed that while she was asleep she could leave her body and go off to visit her relatives some hundreds of miles away in Sumatra.

Australian Aborigines believe that people leave their bodies during sleep, and temporarily enter the Dreamtime.

Australian Aborigines believe that in dreams dead relatives communicate their presence. At times the departed relatives may bring healing.

Australian Aborigine Dream Beliefs

Some Indigenous American tribes believe that dreams are a way of visiting one's ancestors.

Alice in Wonderland.

Today, about one-third of hospital patients over the age of 70 have 'hallucinations' which they think are real.

Hallucinations in the Hospital.

One patient I know sees her departed father.

The Sumerians in Mesopotamia (Iraq, Syria, Kuwait) believed that the soul, or part of it, actually visits the places and persons experienced in dreams. 

The Babylonians and Assyrians in Mesopotamia divided dreams into "good," which were sent by the gods, and "bad," sent by demons.

Ancient Egyptians believed that dreams brought messages from the gods.

In Chinese history, some people wrote of part of the soul leaving the body during sleep to travel in a dream realm.

The Indian text Upanishads, says that dreams can be expressions of inner desires, and, can involve the soul leaving the body and being guided until awakened.

The ancient Greeks believed that the Greek god Morpheus sent warnings and prophecies in dreams.

The Greeks borrowed the idea that souls leave the body during sleep.

The Roman philosopher Cicero believed that all dreams are produced by thoughts and conversations a dreamer had during the preceding days.

Jacob's dream of a ladder of angels, 1690, by Michael Willmann. Jacob's dream of a ladder

Most of the dreams in the Bible are in the Book of Genesis.

The ancient Hebrews believed that dreams can be the voice of God.

The Hebrews differentiated between good dreams (from God) and bad dreams (from evil spirits).

St. Augustine and St. Jerome claimed that that they gained useful insights from their dreams.

Martin Luther, however, believed dreams were the work of the Devil.

...

Some philosophers and scientists believe that the "physical world" may be an illusion.

In the Taoist book Zhuangzi, by Zhuang Zhou, we read:

"Once upon a time, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily enjoying himself. 

"He did not know that he was Zhou. 

"Suddenly he awoke, and was palpably Zhou. 

"He did not know whether he was Zhou, who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhou. 

For the Hindus, Brahman (God) is everything, and is both in the world and not in the world, at the same time.

Hinduism

In the 17th century, Descartes wrote that a mind can exist without a body.

Meditations on First Philosophy.


Goya

Freud taught that the content of dreams is the result of unconscious wish fulfillment.

Freud saw dreams as a "road to the unconscious."

Freud argued that important unconscious desires often relate to early childhood memories and experiences.

Freud thought there was a possibility that dreams can be linked to telepathy.



Carl Jung wrote that dreams are messages to the dreamer and that the messages can help the dreamer to solve emotional or religious problems.

Jung wrote that recurring dreams mean that the dreamer is neglecting an issue related to the dream.

Jung believed that memories formed throughout the day also play a role in dreaming.

The unconscious deals with these when the ego is at rest.

Jung wrote that while dreaming we may tune in to the collective unconscious.

Jung also wrote about symbols in dreams.

For example, in your dream your wife might be represented by Britney Spears, or your boss might be represented by Adolf Hitler, or your workplace might be represented by Disneyworld.

...

Jie Zhang proposes that the function of sleep is to process, encode, and transfer the data from the temporary memory store to the long-term memory store.

Deirdre Barrett describes dreaming as simply "thinking in a different biochemical state" and believes people continue to work on all the usual problems in that state.[71]

From the 1940s to 1985, Calvin S. Hall collected more than 50,000 dream reports at Western Reserve University.

Hall's studies indicated that participants from varying parts of the world demonstrated similarity in their dream content.

Hall found that in dreams different locations and objects continuously blend into each other.

In the Hall study, the most common emotion experienced in dreams was anxiety.

[85]

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Hall found that sexual dreams occur no more than 10% of the time and are more prevalent in young to mid-teens.

Daydreaming can be useful.

There are numerous examples of composers, novelists and filmmakers, developing new ideas through daydreaming. Similarly, research scientists, mathematicians and physicists have developed new ideas by daydreaming about their subject areas.