Evolution of freedom

The long road from illusion to the genuine article

I recently watched a New York Times opinion video called “Dying in the Name of Freedom.” This prompted me to put down some thoughts on the freedom of our will, with ample quotations from Sri Aurobindo.

In the 12th Century, the Persian poet and mystic Jalalu’ddin Rumi remarked that the disputation between the necessitarians and the (philosophical) libertarians are going to continue till mankind is raised from the dead. The libertarians believe that what we choose and how we act is up to us, and that we could have chosen or acted otherwise than we did. The necessitarians believe that our actions and choices are consequences of natural determinisms and events in the past. According to them, the idea that anything is up to us is an illusion.

There are two gaps in the phenomenology of volition: a gap between thinking about what to do next and taking a decision, and a gap between the intention to carry out a particular action and the performance of that action. Reflection does not appear to be causally sufficient for taking a decision, and intention does not appear to be causally sufficient for carrying out the intended action. While folk psychology fills these gaps with a self-in-charge — I reflected, I decided, I acted — all that is warranted by introspection is that thoughts occurred, a decision was taken, and an action was performed. We find nothing to back up our claims of authorship or the conviction that we could have decided or acted otherwise.

What we have is evidence to the contrary. We have the sense of authorship where it is clearly illusory. It is pretty well documented, for instance, that we remove our hands from a fire before we feel the pain, even though it seems to us that we remove our hands in response to the pain. Another example: You are driving on a highway, and a deer crosses the road. You slam on the brakes. This is the sequence of events that you believe happened: you noticed a deer and, as a result, pushed the brakes and turned the car. In reality, your motor reaction time is much faster than the time required for awareness. You slammed on the brakes before consciously noticing the deer. We seem to be designed to entertain illusions of authorship, and this not merely in the metaphorical sense in which advantageous motor responses are said to be “designed” by natural selection.¹

An even stronger case against the libertarian notion of free will derives from the testimony of yogis, mystics, and (more generally) those who have been able to probe beneath their surface consciousness and become aware of the actual origins and determinants of their thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions:

a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner subtle-physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves with it, we can observe the springs of our thoughts and feelings, the sources and motives of our action, the operative energies that build up our surface personality. (LD, 552)²

This is how we discover that

[t]he apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we are so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. (SY, 59–60)³

Our waking state is unaware of its connection with the subliminal being, although it receives from it—but without any knowledge of the place of origin — the inspirations, intuitions, ideas, will-suggestions, sense-suggestions, urges to action that rise from below or from behind our limited surface existence. (LD, 443)

As long as we live in the ignorant seeming, we are the ego and are subject to the modes of Nature. Enslaved to appearances, bound to the dualities, tossed between good and evil, sin and virtue, grief and joy, pain and pleasure, good fortune and ill fortune, success and failure, we follow helplessly the iron or gilt and iron round of the wheel of Maya. At best we have only the poor relative freedom which by us is ignorantly called free-will. But that is at bottom illusory, since it is the modes of Nature that express themselves through our personal will; it is force of Nature, grasping us, ungrasped by us that determines what we shall will and how we shall will it. Nature, not an independent ego, chooses what object we shall seek, whether by reasoned will or unreflecting impulse, at any moment of our existence. (SY, 95–96)

The only free will in the world is the one divine Will of which Nature is the executrix; for she is the master and creator of all other wills. Human free-will can be real in a sense, but, like all things that belong to the modes of Nature, it is only relatively real. The mind rides on a swirl of natural forces, balances on a poise between several possibilities, inclines to one side or another, settles and has the sense of choosing: but it does not see, it is not even dimly aware of the Force behind that has determined its choice. (SY, 96)

That clear inclination of the mind which we call our will, that firm settling of the inclination which presents itself to us as a deliberate choice, is one of Nature’s most powerful determinants; but it is never independent and sole. Behind this petty instrumental action of the human will there is something vast and powerful and eternal that oversees the trend of the inclination and presses on the turn of the will. There is a total Truth in Nature greater than our individual choice. And in this total Truth, or even beyond and behind it, there is something that determines all results; its presence and secret knowledge keep up steadily in the process of Nature a dynamic, almost automatic perception of the right relations, the varying or persistent necessities, the inevitable steps of the movement. There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. (SY, 97)

Our notion of free will is apt to be tainted with the excessive individualism of the human ego and to assume the figure of an independent will acting on its own isolated account, in a complete liberty without any determination other than its own choice and single unrelated movement. This idea ignores the fact that our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. Our total being can rise out of subjection to fact of present Nature only by an identification with a greater Truth and a greater Nature. (LD, 960)

Rising out of subjection to present Nature and identification with a greater Truth and Nature is the very goal of the this evolutionary manifestation of the One:

To know, possess and be the divine being in an animal and egoistic consciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical mentality into the plenary supramental illumination, to build peace and a self-existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitory satisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering, to establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents itself as a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and realise the immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant mutation,—this is offered to us as the manifestation of God in Matter and the goal of Nature in her terrestrial evolution. (LD, 4)

How does one — or how does the One (as defined in this post) — establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents itself as a group of mechanical necessities? Suppose that you want to experience the evolution of total freedom. Where would you start? Arguably, you would begin by having the illusion of freedom, and this even a paramecium may have.

To give the individual plant or protozoon the sense of being an agent with a stake in the proceedings, all that may be needed is lawful stimulus-response relations. Stimuli may be accompanied by pleasant or unpleasant feelings, so that the responses can seem to the paramecium to be caused by its own likes and dislikes, rather than by a lawful physical relation. Indeed, “single eukaryotic cell organisms (protozoa) such as paramecia show remarkable, seemingly intelligent abilities without the benefit of a single synapse,” Stuart Hameroff wrote.⁴ The same point was made by the famous neuroscientist C.S. Sherrington⁵:

Many forms of motile single cells lead their own independent lives. They swim and crawl, they secure food, they conjugate, they multiply. The observer at once says “they are alive”; the amoeba, paramecium, vorticella, and so on. They have specialized parts for movement, hair-like, whip-like, spiral and spring-like. Sense organs, beyond a pigment spot, seem to inspection wanting. Of nerve there is no trace. But the cell framework, the cyto-skeleton, might serve. There is therefore, for such mind as might be there, no need for our imagination to call halt and say “the apparatus for it is wanting”.

At what point in evolution does free will cease to be wholly illusory? Most systems of Indian philosophy share the fundamental distinction between self (Purusha) and nature (Prakriti). Prakriti, which encompasses not only our bodies but also our minds, functions deterministically. (Indian philosophy virtually takes for granted that the consciousness belonging to the self must be distinguished from the operations of mind.) Purusha, identifying himself with certain physical and mental operations of Prakriti, wrongly believes that he chooses when in fact she (Prakriti) chooses. But the Purusha is also capable of becoming aware not only of his independence from Prakriti but also of her dependence on his sanction.

[T]he mental human being is not aware of a soul in him standing back from the mind and life and body, detaching itself, seeing and controlling and moulding their action and formation: but, as the inner evolution proceeds, this is precisely what can, must and does happen,—it is the long-delayed but inevitable next step in our evolutionary destiny. There can be a decisive emergence in which the being separates itself from thought and sees itself in an inner silence as the spirit in mind, or separates itself from the life movements, desires, sensations, kinetic impulses and is aware of itself as the spirit supporting life, or separates itself from the body sense and knows itself as a spirit ensouling Matter: this is the discovery of ourselves as the Purusha, a mental being or a life-soul or a subtle self supporting the body. (LD, 886)

The Purusha is the “giver of the sanction,” anumantā. The determinisms of nature could not function without his permission. He can learn to withhold his sanction, to either accept or reject her suggestions, to choose.

If the Purusha in us is passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a constant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental, vital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its formation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance. If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul’s freedom; for it becomes detached, and it is possible then to know Nature and her processes and in all independence, since we are no longer involved in her works, to accept or not to accept, to make the sanction no longer automatic but free and effective; we can choose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from her works and withdraw into the Self’s spiritual silence, or we can reject her present formations and rise to a spiritual level of existence and from there re-create our existence. (LD, 363)

At bottom, there is only one way that genuine freedom is possible: to be the sole determinant of all that happens or is the case in the world. Essentially we are that. Potentially we can become that. Needless to say, rendering this identity fully conscious and wholly effective entails a series of transformations which extend a great distance into our evolutionary future.

You may (or may want to) recall that Sachchidananda’s descent into involution begins with the individuation of its self or consciousness and ends with a single indeterminate substance — the One effectively deprived of its innate consciousness and self-determining force (see Intentionality and A reality worth being part of). Evolution begins when this indeterminate substance enters into spatial relations with itself. While the initial departure from the original poise of Sachchidananda (in which there is but one self) gives rise to an apparent multitude of selves (“apparent” in the sense that the many selves are different standpoints from which the one self experiences and acts in the world), the first departure from the end result of involution (where all there is is a single indeterminate substance) gives rise to an actual multitude of spatial relations (relative positions and relative orientations) and an apparent multitude of relata. The relata are known as “fundamental particles” and generally thought to be the ultimate constituents of matter. Their manyness is “apparent” because the spatial relations that obtain between them are reflexive: they are self-relations entertained by the One qua indeterminate substance. (More on this here.)

Evolution starts out not with one but with two multitudes: the (apparent) multitude of fundamental particles and a multitude of disempowered selves. Like the selves that are brought into being by individuation (the initial departure from the original poise of Sachchidananda), these disempowered selves are true individuals in that each is a particular form taken by the essential quality and delight (ānanda) which is the fundamental nature of Sachchidananda. Each of these disempowered selves has its own essential nature and truth of being (svabhāva). Unlike the selves brought into being by individuation, they are deprived of the power to express their svabhāva. While the former have unlimited power to develop their essential nature into spontaneously self-realizing ideas, the latter have neither the power to develop their svabhāva into expressive ideas nor the capacity to realize ideas in material form.

Between these two multitudes there thus yawns a gulf. While the individual selves lack the means to issue ideas that are expressive of their svabhāva, the so-called ultimate constituents of matter lack the means to implement ideas — except for those we refer to as the laws of physics, whose sole purpose is to set the stage for the drama of evolution.

Evolution may therefore be likened to the construction of a bridge, a construction that takes place from both sides. The first principle to emerge from the “outer” side is life, which in essence is the power to realize ideas in material form. This is followed by the emergence of mind, which in essence is the ability to generate ideas.

The bridge building from the “inner” side begins in earnest when the Purusha disengages himself from the deterministic operations of Prakriti, becoming first a passive witness and then an active giver or withholder of sanctions. Becoming aware of his svabhāva, the Purusha begins to modify the determinisms of Prakriti in its light. In this way an initially disempowered self evolves a dynamic personality, a “psychic being” as Sri Aurobindo calls it, which “rests its formation, its dynamic self-building on the power of soul that has been actually and more or less successfully, against the resistance of the Ignorance and Inconscience, put forth in the evolution upon the surface” (LD, 928).

There thus evolves a “soul dynamism,” which enables Sachchidananda, via the svabhāva of each of its individual selves, to modify the deterministic (physical and mental) dynamism supporting our surface existence. One can foresee a progressive integration of these dynamisms: nature force becoming increasingly susceptible to modification by soul power, until it ceases to exist as a separate dynamism. If this were to happen, Sri Aurobindo writes, “[a]ll antinomy of the Purusha and the Prakriti, that curious division and unbalance of the Soul and Nature which afflicts the Ignorance, would be entirely removed” (LD, 1037).

Also entirely removed would be any possibility of discord between the actions of Sachchidananda’s many selves. The world action in its totality and in every detail is an unceasing and unhampered expression of the infinite quality at the heart of reality. And since the svabhāva of each individual self is an indispensable aspect of the infinite quality at the heart of reality, the action proceeding from each individual would perfectly express not only the individual’s svabhāva but also the infinite quality at the heart of reality. Anything that prevents the individual from expressing its true nature or the truth of its being would be a limitation of its freedom. Since there would be nothing left of this kind, each individual would act in genuine and total freedom.

Did I mention that we are looking a great distance into our evolutionary future?

1. David Chalmers, who became famous for drawing attention to the “hard problem of consciousness,” wondered: “Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does” [D.J. Chalmers, Facing up to the problem of consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3), 200–219 (1995)]. If it is “objectively unreasonable” that cognitive systems engaged in visual and auditory information-processing should give rise to conscious experience, then it is equally unreasonable to assume that conscious experience should confer an evolutionary edge.

2. LD = Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 2005).

3. SY = Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1999).

4. S.R. Hameroff, Quantum coherence in microtubules: A neural basis for emergent consciousness?, Journal of Consciousness Studies 1 (1), 91–118 (1994).

5. C.S. Sherrington, Man on His Nature, Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 1951).