In this context it is interesting to note that the decision to take an action is made before we are conscious that we make a decision. This has been shown by Benjamin Libet decades ago. When we think that we are going to act, the decision has already been made on another level of consciousness. Who then decides and under which conditions?
Nothing surpasses the emotional richness of Hindu cosmology. It received a proto-geometric vase from the Greeks and turned into real substance, a spiritual delicacy of epic proportions. The only thing I have issue with is the suggestion of an evolution happening “through time”, as of course what we are referring to here does not happen “in (physical) time”, but in that thing that we might want to call the absolute present. Otherwise, it might seem that something we voluntarily “do” or “stop doing” would make “a difference”. Which is obviously not the case. That’s the way the Greeks, which is to say the Romans, congratulated with their local deities. We admire Ashoka (and Aurobindo) more for what they saw than for what they did. His remarks (Aurobindo’s) about our subjection to Nature are so accurate and clear that is hard to to add anything. The logical conclusion, which is what everyone is oblivious about these days, and he probably had the discretion of not to mention it, is that if we carry on “in that direction” of a false emancipation through our individual pitiful egos, that will precisely be the ultimate triumph of Nature over mankind. When you pay the ultimate price, everything has been taken from you.
As regards to the eukaryotes, Gould couldn’t have agreed more with your comments. They are not only volitional subjects, but alongside bacteria they will outlive us by billions of years.
Back to NK though (and Kant): “L'établissement de ce monde objectif requiert qu'il existe à son fondement un apriori consistant, pour le particulier, à contenir l'universel. C'est par conséquent notre volonté qui inclut l'universel dans le particulier. On peut affirmer pour cette raison que le «monde empirique » s'établit par l'apriori de la volonté. L'autoéveil qui constitue le fondement de l'objectivité de la connaissance ne pourrait s'établir sans l'autoéveil volontaire. L'agir et le connaitre s'unifient dans l'autoéveil, lequel réside dans cette union. [...] Comme y a insisté Kant, notre « monde empirique » est construit du fait que les formes de la pensée se combinent au contenu sensible. Le «je» du «je pense» ne pourrait pas construire un monde objectif unique en combinant la raison et le contenu empirique s’il était une conscience normative transcendant complètement l’individu.”
Adrian: The only thing I have issue with is the suggestion of an evolution happening “through time”, as of course what we are referring to here does not happen “in (physical) time”, but in that thing that we might want to call the absolute present.
As a matter of fact, I have stressed elsewhere that evolution involves two kinds of causality, a "horizontal" or trans-temporal one and a "vertical" or atemporal one. The evolution of freedom could be characterized as a progressive disentanglement of the evolving consciousness from the horizontal or physical causality and and its increasing participation in the vertical causality, which proceeds from the individual's svabhava or from the quality/delight of the Everpresent Origin.
Here is a paragraph from my textbook (2nd edition 2018), echoes of which also occur in some of my papers: Because the manifestation of the world includes the manifestation of space and time, it cannot be conceived as a process that takes place in space and time. We keep looking for the origin of the universe at the beginning of time, but this is an error of perspective. The origin of the universe is a Being transcending spatial and temporal distinctions, and the manifestation of the world is an (atemporal) transition from undifferentiated Being to a world that allows itself to be described in the classical language of interacting objects and causally related events—a transition from absolute unity to the multiplicity of the macroworld.
While I cannot speak for Ashoka, I most certainly admire Sri Aurobindo for what he *did* (rather than merely for what he saw), which can be inferred, for instance, from the extract from an autobiographical note that I quoted in https://aurocafe.substack.com/p/august-15th.
I intentionally did not mention Libet’s experiments. I mentioned the drawing-of-hands-out-of-fires example as a fairly solid piece of evidence that free will can be and often is illusory. It was only meant as a transition to the *stronger* evidence *for* the illusoriness of free will that is provided by yogic experience. But let’s stay with the automatic/involuntary drawing of hands out of fires and the illusion that it was a voluntary act. I heartens me in two ways. First, I am thankful to the autonomous motor system, which is much faster than any conscious intentional action could be. Second, I appreciate the ingenuity of staging the drama of evolution as a transition from illusory freedom to genuine freedom, so as to make it experience all the way from the beginning.
I agree with your estimation of Dennett, Dawkins. Harris, Pinker and their ilk. However, I don’t think you can base the free will of folk psychology on the will as conceived by the Upanishads, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Bergson. For while these sources affirm the existence of a genuine free will, they either are insufficiently specific about who enjoys it or insist that several radical transformations of consciousness are needed before we can fully participate in it. Sri Aurobindo:
“This question of free will or determination is the most knotty of all metaphysical questions and nobody has been able to solve it—for a good reason, that both destiny and will exist and even a free will exists somewhere—the difficulty is only how to get at it and make it effective.” (Letters on Yoga-I, p 516)
I also agree with you that the (individual) nature v nurture (collective nature) debate is important, but since both are manifestations of Prakriti, it does not seem germane to the evolution of freedom from both kinds of nature (individual and collective).
I love the Whitehead quote: “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving themselves purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.”
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).
Simplicity of Image.
Did I mention that we are looking a great distance into our evolutionary future?
With Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's help and your encouragement may mankind make some progress along that distance towards that station on the horizon.
In this context it is interesting to note that the decision to take an action is made before we are conscious that we make a decision. This has been shown by Benjamin Libet decades ago. When we think that we are going to act, the decision has already been made on another level of consciousness. Who then decides and under which conditions?
Nothing surpasses the emotional richness of Hindu cosmology. It received a proto-geometric vase from the Greeks and turned into real substance, a spiritual delicacy of epic proportions. The only thing I have issue with is the suggestion of an evolution happening “through time”, as of course what we are referring to here does not happen “in (physical) time”, but in that thing that we might want to call the absolute present. Otherwise, it might seem that something we voluntarily “do” or “stop doing” would make “a difference”. Which is obviously not the case. That’s the way the Greeks, which is to say the Romans, congratulated with their local deities. We admire Ashoka (and Aurobindo) more for what they saw than for what they did. His remarks (Aurobindo’s) about our subjection to Nature are so accurate and clear that is hard to to add anything. The logical conclusion, which is what everyone is oblivious about these days, and he probably had the discretion of not to mention it, is that if we carry on “in that direction” of a false emancipation through our individual pitiful egos, that will precisely be the ultimate triumph of Nature over mankind. When you pay the ultimate price, everything has been taken from you.
As regards to the eukaryotes, Gould couldn’t have agreed more with your comments. They are not only volitional subjects, but alongside bacteria they will outlive us by billions of years.
Back to NK though (and Kant): “L'établissement de ce monde objectif requiert qu'il existe à son fondement un apriori consistant, pour le particulier, à contenir l'universel. C'est par conséquent notre volonté qui inclut l'universel dans le particulier. On peut affirmer pour cette raison que le «monde empirique » s'établit par l'apriori de la volonté. L'autoéveil qui constitue le fondement de l'objectivité de la connaissance ne pourrait s'établir sans l'autoéveil volontaire. L'agir et le connaitre s'unifient dans l'autoéveil, lequel réside dans cette union. [...] Comme y a insisté Kant, notre « monde empirique » est construit du fait que les formes de la pensée se combinent au contenu sensible. Le «je» du «je pense» ne pourrait pas construire un monde objectif unique en combinant la raison et le contenu empirique s’il était une conscience normative transcendant complètement l’individu.”
Adrian: The only thing I have issue with is the suggestion of an evolution happening “through time”, as of course what we are referring to here does not happen “in (physical) time”, but in that thing that we might want to call the absolute present.
As a matter of fact, I have stressed elsewhere that evolution involves two kinds of causality, a "horizontal" or trans-temporal one and a "vertical" or atemporal one. The evolution of freedom could be characterized as a progressive disentanglement of the evolving consciousness from the horizontal or physical causality and and its increasing participation in the vertical causality, which proceeds from the individual's svabhava or from the quality/delight of the Everpresent Origin.
Here is a paragraph from my textbook (2nd edition 2018), echoes of which also occur in some of my papers: Because the manifestation of the world includes the manifestation of space and time, it cannot be conceived as a process that takes place in space and time. We keep looking for the origin of the universe at the beginning of time, but this is an error of perspective. The origin of the universe is a Being transcending spatial and temporal distinctions, and the manifestation of the world is an (atemporal) transition from undifferentiated Being to a world that allows itself to be described in the classical language of interacting objects and causally related events—a transition from absolute unity to the multiplicity of the macroworld.
While I cannot speak for Ashoka, I most certainly admire Sri Aurobindo for what he *did* (rather than merely for what he saw), which can be inferred, for instance, from the extract from an autobiographical note that I quoted in https://aurocafe.substack.com/p/august-15th.
Hi Rich, thank you for your comments.
I intentionally did not mention Libet’s experiments. I mentioned the drawing-of-hands-out-of-fires example as a fairly solid piece of evidence that free will can be and often is illusory. It was only meant as a transition to the *stronger* evidence *for* the illusoriness of free will that is provided by yogic experience. But let’s stay with the automatic/involuntary drawing of hands out of fires and the illusion that it was a voluntary act. I heartens me in two ways. First, I am thankful to the autonomous motor system, which is much faster than any conscious intentional action could be. Second, I appreciate the ingenuity of staging the drama of evolution as a transition from illusory freedom to genuine freedom, so as to make it experience all the way from the beginning.
I agree with your estimation of Dennett, Dawkins. Harris, Pinker and their ilk. However, I don’t think you can base the free will of folk psychology on the will as conceived by the Upanishads, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Bergson. For while these sources affirm the existence of a genuine free will, they either are insufficiently specific about who enjoys it or insist that several radical transformations of consciousness are needed before we can fully participate in it. Sri Aurobindo:
“This question of free will or determination is the most knotty of all metaphysical questions and nobody has been able to solve it—for a good reason, that both destiny and will exist and even a free will exists somewhere—the difficulty is only how to get at it and make it effective.” (Letters on Yoga-I, p 516)
I also agree with you that the (individual) nature v nurture (collective nature) debate is important, but since both are manifestations of Prakriti, it does not seem germane to the evolution of freedom from both kinds of nature (individual and collective).
I love the Whitehead quote: “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving themselves purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.”
Thanks also for the interesting references.
Gratitude for the Clarity.
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).
Simplicity of Image.
Did I mention that we are looking a great distance into our evolutionary future?
With Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's help and your encouragement may mankind make some progress along that distance towards that station on the horizon.
Grace and Blessings
Michael