29/09/2021
WHAT IS FREE WILL?
Free Will means that our conscious mind, the “I” is unbiasedly sharp, focused, stays independent of the subconscious influences and can objectively make its own
decisions.
THE SIMPLE TRUTH
If our internal beliefs are ultimately responsible for our final decisions, then where does the concept of Free Will come from? Where does it get its sovereign independent powers to override the dogged views of our influential core beliefs that subconsciously drive us in every situation?
CONSCIOUS MIND PARALYSIS
When we encounter a life event, the conscious “I” within us is never directly consulted or engaged about what is really happening. The first step is automatically taken by our subconscious mind that gets immediately triggered by the unfolding event, quickly draws its emotional conclusions based on the maturity of its existing held views and finally it begins to dictate to the conscious “I” how it should perceive the situation and how to react to it.
Through the circulation of blood tinkered with emotional signatures, the subconscious mind influences us directly at the cellular level. As a result, our subconscious biased chemical charges (Neuropeptides) begin to travel in our blood stream, and they instantly make our conscious objectivity uselessly redundant.
Basically, we do as we are told by our subconscious mind and yet unconsciously, we are convinced that our Free Will made the decision for us.
This scenario is similar to being injected with a powerful hallucinogenic drug and at the same time are expected to ignore our drug induced state, as if we have total mental clarity, and also reminded that our action is purely governed by our Free Will.
CONCUSION
The only glimmer of possibility for us to be able to exercise our Free Will could ONLY eventuate when we have mustered the ability to totally bypass our mind generated biases, use a blank slate for thinking, or deeply immerse ourselves into a meditative state beyond our finite everyday mind.
Unfortunately, such superhuman disciplines are reserved for only a few mortals on this planet. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, sorry to disappoint, we don’t have any opportunity to exercise Free Will, at least not in the true sense of definition.
The absurdity of the idea that we have ‘Free Will’ is mainly due to our social indoctrination that we are free independent individuals, totally in charge of our minds and immune from the forces that can influence our objectivity. Subsequently, the propagation of such false social views has resulted in many people forming a rigid belief that they are actually their mind and nothing else. In such a perspective, the notion of “I” is only to be sought within the confinement of the limited mind. They never entertain other possibilities for example, the explanation of “I” could be more akin to the idea of ‘an observer’ of the mind and not the mind itself.
Many of the new age movements and progressive sciences such as quantum mechanics often grapple with the concept of the ‘conscious observer’ and definition of ‘imagined self’ verses ‘true self’.
Hamid Soltani