I apologize... I just don't seem to have the ability to be succinct! What can I say I love these sorts of conversations gang!


For sure. Skepticism is best applied to our own beliefs and perceptions. I'll be blunt. I couldn't honestly care less about my current 'beliefs'. If I find something that points to them being false I'll drop them in a second. Seriously I am only interested in the truth and fully acknowledge that my views are at a minimum flawed. Quite possibly dead wrong.

However, It's worth noting that I started from the "I have free will" stance. Overtime my views have changed for a few reasons.

1) psychedleic experience has allowed me to see a vast unifying experience, but only when my ego is not present. In all my experiences I have only really experienced this 2 times. Both times were with active meditation.

2) meditation has shown me that a) I am not the controller of the thoughts that arise, though I absolutely still appear to have volition..or the ability to direct my mind. So say in meditation I can direct my will to observe sensations in my body... and for a time this works, but then like clockwork my focus will briefly fade and my mind will be wandering off into were ever mind wanders off.. Now here is the interesting thing. This mind wandering is obviously conditioned by the world around me. As are day dreams, as is the majority of our dream content.

But what about this volitional part that I seem to have full control over? If there is any chance of true free will I feel it has to come from this part. So at first glance it appears that volition is totally under my control. But as a long term meditator (20+ years now) I can only hold a single minded focus for at best say 10 minutes (I'm being generous with my abilities ). What does this say about my freedom? Well it could very well say that I have access to free will that is completely undeveloped... and for sure I have gained more control over my mind in my years meditation.. but 20+ years and I can barely eek at a sustained 10 minutes of single minded focus at a time?

So diving deeper into this volitional aspect... is it conditioned? Well yes it is. I only heard about something like mindfulness meditation from the world around me. So looking at the interconnected web of cause-effect I have to realize that even the things I'm applying my volition to are conditioned by the world around me. I only know how to meditate because I read about it in a books and watched talks.. If I had never seen the books or talks would I sit to meditate? Would I have gained insight into the nature of my mind without the greater whole? The obvious answer is no.

So coming full circle.. and this comes back to a challenge laid down by Buddha 2600 years or so ago. His challenge, and one I have taken quite serious is simply: What is the nature of this self we speak of? By self he is referring to an unconditioned part of you. A free controller if you will..

I simply can not find one. When deeply examined at any level I have to admit my entire life, including my consciouses/unconscious activity is completely and utterly conditioned by the universe at a large. In a VERY real sense there is no me. And at first glance this is a radically scary point of view. I mean obviously there is a me typing this.. but why is this body typing this? Think about the long chain of cause and effect that led to me writing these exact words at this time. Don't just think about the linear chain of events. Go wide. How many meditation books, buddhist books, etc have all factored into me being able to apply 'my' volition to these words right now? Apply the same back to yourself?

Do you see what I'm getting out? As long as my actions are conditioned can I really claim them to be mine? Can I claim to be the controller in the same way that most of us talk about being the controller?




This is a good question and certainly it's worth defining terms so everyone is on the same page.

OK Here is how I am processing that that makes the most sense to me as of now. The word Free implies freedom from something. Conceptually there can't be a free without it's opposite which is unfree right? For the sake of this argument I'm ignoring any sort of unaccessible spiritual realms or other unverifiable conditions.

Based on my response above can I claim to be unfree of the universe? Remember I can't find a single unconditioned action... yes I appear to be able to choose from a sequence of events that arise, but if I'm honest the arising of the events that I'm choosing from is also conditioned by the whole... So if I can't find any aspect of myself that is free from the greater whole then how could I be said to have a truly free will? BTW will== volition for all intents and purposes.. it's the free part that's in question. Volition is the real part, freedom seems to be a grand illusion to me when examined very deeply.

So the question you ask is valid and essentially what I have been arguing for in this thread is that there is in fact a distinction between choice( will/volition) and free will/volition. Certainly doesn't mean others will agree with that... but it seems to me that if choice and free will are forced to be the same thing then we simply have to drop the idea of us having any sort of freedom. This doesn't really stack up with my direct experience (and current perception) of what goes on when I'm presented with a choice.. at that moment it appears that my volition is able to in fact choice between the options presented to me though I can't deny it is conditioned by my the world at large...



This is a valid question. What I suggest is this...the same thing I did. Sit down. Get comfortable and close your eyes. Bring your attention to the thoughts. Now pick a single thought, image, concept and hold your mind on it... Seriously give this a try.. how long can you hold your mind on that concept? Why did you choose the concept you did? And why in the world are you sitting with your eye's closed right now? The answers to those questions get to the crux of the matter. Be honest and you will see that the answer to all three is being conditioned by something outside of yourself.

We have no freedom over the choices we have to make..

For instance if I say, "Tell me your real name". You are forced into a choice situation. You can choose to share your name or not share your name. What you have no control over is the fact that this choice has arisen and your are now forced to make a decision. You can't not chose an avenue. When presented with a question like this you will either choose to share your name or not. How is that freedom? A prisoner is given a choice to eat his food or not... is he free? A free man might go to the store and get something tasty. But the prisoner can only choose between eating his slop or not.. Hardly seems free to me though I can't deny he is making a choice, but he isn't free to determine what choices he makes..

OK that's enough philosophical rambling for now.

This is the most important question of all. Mr. Peabody who are you? What are you? Get down and dirty with these questions. Take a ruthless approach to it because after all is there any question that is really more important?

Where does the universe end and you begin? Or more directly how far in front of you must you reach your hand before you touch space? Is there any aspect of you that is not connected to the universe? These are questions everyone has to answer for themselves..

My answers came back like this. The only division between me and the universe at a large is a mental label. Furthermore thoughts aren't even physically real.. I mean they have no mass and can't be directly measured (The only other 'thing' we know like this is light itself). or sure we can look at a EEG and see a correlation to brain activity, but we aren't directly measuring a specific thought. Going even deeper I can directly observe the mind churning just as I can observe the a tree blowing in the wind...

But get EVEN deeper. Look around you right now. Where are you seeing? Not what are you seeing, but where are you seeing? Let's examine sight.

Photons stream in from the environment and make contact with photoreceptors in your eye which form impulse patterns that run down your optic nerve and into your visual cortex when our brains apparently create an entire world map from nothing more than patterns of photons hitting receptors in the eye!

OK... now take a dose of mushrooms, get in a pitch lack room and close your eye's... Where is the light coming from for those visions? It's obviously not from the sun or a light source?

Now answer this question. Is there any separation between the observer and the observed?

But arnt the patterns manipulated by an exterior environment before hitting the optic nerve by reflection or absorbtion of the light frequencies? We are looking at patterns reflecting off of objects and therefore it is natural that we can make a map of our surroundings.



The light is coming from your imagination and/or subconscious thoughts which have developed from informational input recieved over the span of your life. Full frequency light is white because we translate it as such. If we saw full frequency light as say orange maybe the mushroom visions would have a different ambience.

Well technically the patterns we are interested in are the 2D patterns of light that hit our photoreceptors... and this is translated into a series of chemical pulses down the optic nerve.. these impulses are translated by the brain to generate a world map. What you are seeing is absolutely generated by your mind... and clearly the patterns of photons hitting the eye are responsible.. but isn't it possible, likely that we aren't seeing the full picture.. and seeing really is an internal process.

An more importantly if we were to say put someone in a closed room and perfectly control impulses of light hitting their photoreceptors could we induce a real hallucination in someone? I think so.


That sounds like a good answer... but what is imagination? I think the fact that we see anything behind closed eye's in a dark room is very telling about the nature of what we call open eye vision as well. Seeing is an internal process. What is seen is also an internal process.. both seeing and the seen are internal.. and are thus inseparable right?

I'm not denying the external world. What I am declaring is that our perception of it is all internal. We actually have no idea what the external world looks like. Our eye's only allow us to see a visible spectrum, our ears only allow certain frequencies, our noises only pick up certain chemicals. Everything we thing we experience as outside of ourselves is actually happening inside.. and yes it is conditioned by outside for sure.

And from what we can tell scientifically it's all interconnected..

And BTW I use these sorts of extensions to go big like:

I'm not separate from the universe. I'm conscious..thus the universe is conscious. You are also conscious and are in a totally different location and are also inseparable from the universe.. thus the universe is conscious and consciousness is non local. And at no point am I deviating from science and invoking spiritual. I'm just using what I know to expand and interpret in a broader sense..

I think that seeing is a conduit to the outside world, the same as touch and hearing but i can agree that that the perception of these things is internal. Perception and seeing are two different things to me. Would a blind person imagine things in the same way as someone with good eyesight?



I have no problem with this but how can you say that you are not deviating from science by saying that consciousness is non local when, as far as i can make out, the jury is still out in regard to what consciousness actually is?

In one sense it maybe a conduit to the outside world.. say with your eye's open. But how do you so easily explain dreams and visions away as conduit to the outside world? When you close your eye's on a dose of shrooms do you agree that you are 'seeing' visions? Because your if so you have to admit that things like photons, external worlds, eye's, and optic nerves are not necessary for 'seeing'. Doesn't mean they can't feed and bias certain kinds of seeing.. like I look around and see plants. Clearly what I am seeing is biased by the outside world, but the seeing itself is internal... I may very well dream about these plants (or different ones) tonight and I will experience this as 'seeing'.

i would say eye's are like a sense base that makes vision possible, but seeing is the process by which vision is known. Perception would then sit on top of seeing and add things like "Pretty colors, or ugly scenary". Perception is wholly an egocentric thing. As another example: a camera has vision, but doesn't see and thus can't perceive. That is how I look at this.




I'm not sure you understood what I wrote then. You and I are neither one separate from the universe. You are literally and figuratively the entire universe looking at itself at the location known as you... and so am I at the location known as me. You are conscious and so am I. The universe is conscious through us.. we don't occupy the same space... we are the universe looking at itself.. if we are conscious and not local to each other then by extension the universe is also conscious and it's consciousness is non local.

I'm not denying that consciousness might arise from the material...or not. What I am suggesting is that consciousness is no different from a sun or a rock or a comet or asteroid. It's a fundamental part of the universe. I mean we are conscious... we are universe. We can say that we only arose because of a random process, but that would have to apply to everything in the universe. We are no more (and no less) random than any other aspect in the cosmos. There are likely more expressions of consciousness on this planet alone than there are stars in the milkyway... and consciousness certainly isn't limited to the human mind and likely not even to so called sentient beings..

Would you say suns are a non local phenomena in the universe? If so then doesn't it extend to consciousness as well? Doesn't have to mean consciuosness is a field. It just has to mean that the universe has expressed consciousness in more than one location.. which it clearly has. It also doesn't mean that consciousness couldn't be a field.. My statements simply ignore all of that as it's outside the current domain of scientific inquiry.

So yeah I stand by my initial statement. I'm not deviating from science at all. I'm providing a different interpretation for the data... a broader interpretation.. a non human centric interpretation.

But honestly look at the tree of life make me thing the material is just a process for tapping to the field of consciousness in greater and greater way's.

For example where on this gradient of life would consciousness arise?

sunflower turning towards the sun.
amebo searching for food
worm searching for food.
Seagul fishing.
Wolves pack hunt..
Apes picking fleas off each other..
humans...

I say all life expresses the ability to tap into consciousness in different way's. Our human brains may be the evolutionary pinnacle on this planet, but we could be like dung beetles on a cosmic scale.. Of course that is speculation, but with the wide gradient of consciousness on this planet, a realization that consciousness is as fundamental (in a sense) as a sun.. it sure as hell seems likely consciousness/life will be found throughout the universe.. and well the universe is vast and i can't image that we are the pinnacle of cosmic evolution.. dear god I sure as hell hope we aren't the pinnacle.


Does that make sense?

You obviously missed the part where I talked about taking responsibility in spite of not having full control.

But thanks for setting me straight with your dismissive tone. It's a great way to welcome a new entrant to the conversation.

None of us knows what's "really" going on here, or we wouldn't be talking about it and sharing such diverse and interesting ideas. I, for one, would really appreciate a touch of humility in your approach to dialogue.

On a lighter note, I'm really appreciating the back and forth between joedirt and hug46. The whole internal/external thing completely boggles my mind. It's hard not to wind up pondering solipsism.

And is my colon really inside or outside of "me"? With permeable membranes and the whole topology of biological forms, it's not hard to get yourself turned inside-out!

It makes me wonder if there is some similar topological aspect to consciousness. Is there a permeability to awareness? Maybe, like the internets, it's just "a system of tubes"

...back to the topic of free will: I tend to think at the moment, that true freedom paradoxically requires surrender. Like, you have to give up control in order to really be free. This seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of my own deeper trips and those that I hear about from others. "just let go." "don't fight it." "relax... just breathe." "trust the process." etc.

Sorry Joe i can get that we are both conscious and on different parts of the planet but i just cant grasp the universe being conscious through me bit. But i am the kind of person that needs clearly annotated diagrams in order to fully comprehend some things. If i am asleep or unconscious am i still tapping into this non local consciousness?



That"s like me saying 2 and 2 equals 5 and saying "i"m just giving a different interpretation of the data".



All of them.

As far as i can see i am just a glorified pocket calculator that takes in information, stores and arranges it and uses it to make choices in order to survive. There is no freewill involved, we are all just designed to survive whether we are sunflowers or Albert Einsteins. Would consciousness exist without information? If there is nothing to be aware of is there awareness?

No need to apologize brother, but as long as your game I'll continue trying to explain it.

Ok Let's try it one question at a time. Is there any part of you that is indistrinquishable from the universe?
I'll wait to hear your response before moving forward.



No not at all it's not. I absolute am not deviating from science in any fashion like you suggest. Instead of making that assumption try a little harder to understand what I'm really saying.

Please answer the first question I asked above with a simple yes or no answer.. I mean either you are distinguishable from the universe or you are not. By distinguishable I mean is there a part of you that isn't part of the universe... You have already stated you don't believe in any sort of free will.... Im not going to belabor this though until you answer that one question as it's paramount to understanding what I'm saying.



How you can say that... and then argue that the universe is not conscious through you is staggering to me. Seriously I have this conversation with lots of scientists and they all seem to get it and none seem to think I'm deviating.. Not just scientist, but software engineers, cooks, people of all random walks in life. It's not really a hard concept to get.

So hugs. Is there any aspect of you that is separate from the universe at a large? A free entity if you will?




In fact that has indeed been my experience as well. The less 'me' involved the more freedom is experienced. It's quite the strange paradox for sure.



Solopsism would be an egocentric view as well. I'm essentially arguing that there isn't any real me, or you. We are just labels that divide up the universal whole, but when we are examined in close detail at our core we find that we are completely conditioned and as such we have no core essence that is our own. And of course I'm not denying that you are you and I am me and we each experience the universe differently. I'm just arguing that in a very real fundamental way 'we' are just the universal whole experiencing itself via different conduits or different conscious forms...

Joe i am sure that you are aware that one of the fundamental laws of nature is that it is impossible for someone to answer a question with a simple yes or no when debating. However i will say that yes i am a part of the universe. A rock is a part of the universe, but it is not conscious through me.



All of the things you listed that i said were conscious are living things that process information. They have been made up from parts of the universe and become "conscious". Like making a model out of meccano (sorry going down the mechanistic route again). Before you make the model it"s just a pile of metal.

I looked at the split screen experiment on Wikipedia and yes it seems that the photons could be making a choice on which direction to take but could it not be that they are coming into contact with some kind of particle that we haven"t yet discovered and getting randomly buffeted this way and that.

You may have had conversations with scientists and chefs and they appeared to get it but have you ever had a conversation with someone from another country who doesn"t speak the same language as you and you sort of get what they are saying but not really, so you nod your head and go "yes , yes. Ok i understand" so as not to appear stupid or rude. I do not mind if i appear stupid. It could be that my views are obstinate, ignorant or possibly even genius. The world was staggered by the views of Galileo to begin with, but he was right!

I will re-iterate that i could be talking complete and utter balderdash because i do not know what consciousness is. Who does? Maybe it is a purely subjective concept.

Don't dance around this. This can be answered with a straight yes or no. I suspect you just don't want to up and say you are indistinguishable from the universe because once you do it becomes quite obvious that the universe gave rise to consciousness.. and is thus conscious through you.. I think that statement feels like whoo to you, but I'm not thinking in any sort of whoo terms. Screw whoo (I hear he's a jerk anyway )

You use the analogy of rock. Sure a rock isn't conscious. Are your bones conscious? Are your bones you? So the universe has large sections that aren't conscious..just like a human body.

Saying you are a part of the universe allows you to continue clinging to you as somehow separate..which is odd since you don't think you have any sort of freewill and assume that you are just a calculator.

You breath in the universe.. and exhale back to the universe. True based on science.. Agreed?
Does this air ever become you and not universe?

You take in food from the universe and excrete back into the universe. Scientifically True?
Exactly when does the food stop being the universe and start being you?

Your body arose from the universe and will dissolve back into it. Scientifically True?
Exactly when in this process did the universe stop and you begin?


To argue that you are only a small part of the universe is a partial truth at best... though I understand why you might argue that. But you don't exist without a biosphere with air. this biosphere doesn't exist without a perfectly aligned solar system. The solar system doesn't exist with a perfect... etc, etc, etc... all the way to infinity. The whole sheebang from top to bottom, left to right is completely and utterly connected and dependent upon itself.

To say we are a part of the universe is to simply invoke a mental label... to divide a universal whole into it's component pieces. It's quite useful as human to do this. But can't you see that on a larger level these divisions are arbitrary?



All of the living things I mention are also utterly indistinguishable from the universe..

You say they have been made. WHO/WHAT made them if not the universe?

You say you can't get behind the universe being conscious through you... Well why not? If not the universe then what exactly gave rise to your consciousness?

To be fair, the idea he is talking about is central to the psychedelic experience for most people, and this being a psychedelic forum, he is probably a bit surprised by your rejection of it. Just thought I'd chime in, not to take one side or another, but rather offer a potential explanation to help diffuse any tension.

Also, let me also offer a potential explanation of the idea not to convert, but rather so everyone reading this thread is on the same page when debating it. Think of the whole universe as a soap bubble full of tiny soap bubbles. Two of these tiny soap bubbles are conscious, but separated by what for them is a large distance. One could say that they are simply two soap bubbles experiencing the interior of a larger one. What if however, the tiny conscious bubbles can only form and exist inside that one soap bubble, and those bubbles are actually made of and a part of the soap bubble (so imagine the two bubbles now as sitting on the inner surface of the bubble)? They would be inseparable, you could not have conscious tiny bubbles without a normal soap bubble. Then, conscious soap bubbles would be an inherent property that normal soap bubble. This is closer to what joedirt is saying, while the initial metaphor may have been closer to your initial interpretation.

If that doesn't make sense or is what you already thought but still don't agree with... eh, whatever. I've never been a great debater, especially since persuasion isn't my goal.

Come now Joe. I was not dancing around the question, i just didn"t give the answer that you wanted. And it is a blatant fact of life that no one ever answers a question during debates like this with a simple yes or no. It"s simply not done! There is a "yes" or a "i agree" that is ALWAYS followed by a "but". But whoo away. The whoo is one of the reasons that i like to hang around here.



If you are saying that rocks and bones arn"t conscious then there is a large part of the universe that isn"t conscious through me. I am a part of the universe because my body is made up of various elements of the universe. If i was indistinguishable from the universe then i would be made from every type of atom that is available in the universe. Maybe i am being too literal.



Yep cause and effect. I am connected to the universe like a connecting rod is connected to a piston in an internal combustion engine. The piston pushes on the rod which turns the crankshaft which, eventually, pushes the wheels. The connecting rod is a part of the engine but not indistinguishable.



Pybin i am not rejecting anything and , by saying that there is a possibility that i am talking nonsense, i believe that i am being very fair. The psychedelic experience for me (i am not mega experienced with psychedelics but i have been doing them on and off for over 30 years now) is that there are so many different opinions as to what really is going on and that it is important to doubt the veracity of ones own opinions on a daily basis. There is no tension between me and Joe but i sincerely appreciate the fact that you would want to defuse any possible tension.

If free will were an illusion

It'd be a really useful illusion

That we best not debunk

Because if we do, completely on all levels of feeling,

We'd die of laziness/victimhood.

It's best that we think we have a say in the matter of things

So that we do awesome stuff

As humans

~~~

Tryptamine-heavy realms of thought tend to veer toward illuminating the illusory nature of reality, its oneness, interconnectedness, etc.

But, if you do something kappa-opioid heavy like Salvia or Iboga, you will be reminded quite starkly that you have a self, that this is real, and you DO have free will, and damn, boy, you better use it responsibly.

i agree. it is an obligatory illusion for the continuation of the human race. I have no problem being under such illusions.

My approach is simple: Our will is as free as it possible can be, and not free at the same time.

Why

The expections usually are a problem, can we expect our will to break the laws of our universe (assuming we stay in ours) ? No. From my materialist view with the creation of the universe information matter (& energy) and laws were created. A status quo from which, if I were aware of all laws of the universe, one discrete status quo and had the computing power, I could calculate exact determined states of the matter (& energy), information and laws at any other given time.

Therefore my mind, to me being matter (brain) and energy (electrons) forming information together, can not break the determining laws and states of the universe, but is absolutely free inside of its laws. The laws of the universe just dont leave any room at all, to be free

I hope that makes aaaany sense to someone, to me its like that.
I dont suffer an illusion, at any point I know everything of the past (and the yet unknown of the future) couldnt happen any different.

option A - there is free will

option B - there is no free will

but this is only duality

since there is something beyond good and evil , there is something beyond free will and no free will , its the third option

knowing that is the answer

Perhaps free will and no free will are just inventions of the human mind, and things just are.

If one drug leans towards uncovering the illusory and another towards freewill, which experience do you have the most faith in? How do you define the responsible use of freewill?





If the past, present and future are all happening at once and we are using the concept of linear time to help us navigate existence then i agree with the above statements.

I believe that my work here is done in this thread so i shall leave you with the wise words of Socrates

Just wanted to comment that I mostly agree with many of the things you say. IMO what we think of as free will is just an expansion of options given to us that wouldn't normally be there through knowledge/wisdom ect ect. People certainly can answer yes or no to a question if they are debating if they are using the socratic method, and that quote by dear old Socrates is, the only true knowledge is knowledge that I know nothing. I'm kind of a philosophy nerd, you bring up a lot of good points it is certainly a hard thing to swallow for most people that's for sure!