Where to Find Free Will

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Philosopher of the French Revolution

Once upon a time, you may have taken Philosophy 101 and wrestled with The Big Question: Do we have free will, or are we totally determined? Are we programmed to run like an automaton? Is our every thought, word and action that of someone else? Is it even possible to live authentically in this complex global society?

Since then, the answer seems to have swung sharply in favor of the determinists. Neuroscientists suggest that our thoughts arise only after an internal decision has been made. Silicon Valley is getting better and better with advanced Artificial Intelligence in replicating our brain processes. Yet, how can this be? We certainly FEEL free much of the time.

When we gaze at a trusting little infant dropped down from heaven by a stork, we can’t help but be deeply moved by her beauty and innocence. No way can this precious bundle be a robot! Yet as we progress through life, we feel the burden of our own conditioning getting heavier and heavier.

Where shall we look for free will?

Can You Find Free Will in Your Body?

If you are your body, you can move as you wish within certain constraints. You might not always have the exact color of hair and eyes, the total physique that you might want, but you can go many places and interact with other bodies any time you choose. Isn’t that freedom?

Yet you know that you have an elaborate set of genes which might be considered defective. Your body is always aging, whether you like it or not. You may not be here forever in your present form. Anyway, there is always someone more handsome or beautiful than you, tougher or stronger, cooler and more collected. Even if you become Mr. America or Miss America, your time is limited. It will all be over in a year.

You begin to suspect that your body is your piece in the giant game board of Life. Find a car, a wife, two kids and a mortgage. You can then progress throw by throw, either to the Poor Farm, or Millionaire Acres. But really, what kind of freedom is that?

Can You Find Free Will in Your Mind?

Perhaps you are an intellectual, like me. Maybe you had a good education, and you can often convince others that you are not totally stupid. You may not be your body, but certainly you are your mind! Yet, you will always find smarter, more knowledgeable and wiser people than you. If you get a Harvard scholarship from an inner city high school, you are in for a shock once you reach the campus.

Every year, computers are getting smarter and smarter. In the last several decades, they have become orders of magnitude faster than ever before. They are shrinking from filling an entire room with vacuum tubes to comfortably fitting into the palm of your hand running billions of cycles per second. By 2030, or at the latest, 2040, they are estimated to exceed human intelligence. Then what are you going to do?

The more education you pile up, the more you learn about less and less. Post-Ph.D., you risk becoming an educated idiot. You begin to discover life can’t be reduced to rational empiricism. You need to jazz up your right brain to keep from becoming totally dysfunctional. Have you thought about taking a watercolor class? Anything to keep the spark of creativity alive!

Can You Find Free Will in Your World?

If you are not your body, or your mind, perhaps you can find your answer out in the world. You can move to Paris, Tokyo or Bombay. You can learn a whole new language and culture and become a global citizen. Maybe you will even stumble upon enlightenment… IF you find the right ashram, the right guru, the right mantra.

Yet, whatever you do, you will bump up against socioeconomic constraints. You can never have enough money or power. The higher the position, the greater the responsibility. If you became President of the United States, what kind of life would you have? No matter how good or bad you were in office, you would always end up being blamed for this or that.

More to the point, going out into the world makes you vulnerable to superstorms, floods and fires. Systematic hacking and terrorism. Unrest in country after country. You may begin to feel your only choice is to run. The world is not the same as the one in which you were born. How can you possibly be your world?

Only When in Chains Can You Free Yourself

The older you get, the more you will find that Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s lament could not be more true. Everywhere you look, people are in chains, leading lives of “quite desperation.” Everywhere you find people hoping against all ¬¬hope, fighting incipient disillusionment.

We can think of Nelson Mandela before he became President of South Africa. Nelson was condemned to a life of hard labor breaking rocks on Robben Island. As a deeply frustrated activist, he had attempted to bomb the whites. In such a situation, he could so easily have been written off.

Yet Nelson Mandela refused to give up. He wore his chains and chose his chains, his tiny little room and his daily routine. He read books, kept dreaming and wrote. Slowly, the world began listening. Even more important, he became something of a saint. People loved him, even the prison guards. He created paradise in a hell-hole. Finally, the South African government realized that Nelson was already free inside, and a precious collective asset. In partnership with de Klerk, he created a new rainbow nation.

Free Will Happens the Moment You Wake Up

You will remember The Blue Pill and The Red Pill in The Matrix. Neo’s choice, however uncomfortable, was the right one. With the Red Pill, NEO jumped out of the simulation and faced the real world. Finally, he had a choice to intelligently act. All the earlier choices in the couch potato world led to nothing.

The Matrix is a powerful, contemporary metaphor for the experience of enlightenment. When you own your own experience, realizing that no one and nothing resides outside of you, you begin to see Who You Are. You are the Creator within His Creation. While you appear on the cinema screen, you are really in the audience the whole time watching the show.

Unlike any character in the reel, you don’t have to worry about doing this or that. You get to create it all. You have divine imagination. The moment you surrender to your True Self, you are empowered. In harmony with Source, you can create miracles. You can mold your world closer to your heart’s desire. You can wave the magic wand and transform anyone or anything you touch.

You have a body, a mind and a world… on camera. Now go within to make this an Academy Award production.

Do you agree?

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