The Incoherence Of Free Will And The Paradox of Freedom
Free will is one of those topics, along with religion and politics, that should not be mentioned at the dinner table. Many of us cling to the idea of it for dear life, and perhaps never think to question it. And many of us develop a casual attitude toward it that insinuates its obvious reality. I grew up in the Mormon Church, and the one thing we were reminded of, again and again, is that God gave us free agency. When I was forced to stand up on the podium to give a testimony of the Church — which really consisted of stuttering pronouncements so that God would forgive me — I was told to say, “I know the church is true and I am grateful for the privilege of free agency that God has given me.” What we decided to do with the free agency would determine whether we go to the terrestrial kingdom, telestial kingdom, or celestial kingdom in the afterlife. Questioning free agency in the Mormon religion is the equivalent of blasphemy, a profane and stupid thing to do. After all, if we don’t have free will, what do we have? Lifelessness? Hopelessness? A mechanistic universe? No responsibility? What is there to do if one is bound by the chains of God? Or how are we to get out of bed if, underneath it all, we are only puppets to forces we cannot and will never control?
These are serious questions that many scholars, theologians, and philosophers have invested a lot of their time and effort to answer. Fortunately, the unmentionable topic begged mentioning, stuck its head out, and forced its way out and through their curious minds.
In this paper, my goal is to convince the reader that free will simply doesn’t exist, or rather, it doesn’t exist in the way we usually think it does. By directing the reader toward the nature of experience and sharing a story of my own, I also hope to convince the reader that a lack of free will does not equate to a lack of freedom. These two words — freedom and free will — are often used synonymously, because we think of freedom as the freedom to control. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for instance, it states that “Free will has emerged over the past few millennia as the canonical designator for a significant amount of control over one’s actions.” (O’Connor, Timothy and Christopher Franklin, 2021) In contrast to free will, I am going to argue that freedom has to do with identity, not control; who we are, not what we do; our Being, not our actions.
If, for instance, you came to the realization that your true nature is free, transparent, clear, and pristine, lacking in all qualities that cause suffering, would it matter if you weren’t in control? If one day, you woke up from the dream of life and knew yourself to be the dreamer, the seer behind the play of phenomena, the witness of all the comings and goings, even of the body and mind, would being in control matter very much?
For those who are familiar with Stoicism, this is by no means a new idea, though they would probably define self-realization a little differently. For the Stoics, “To be free was to live in conformity with God’s will, and what mattered finally in life was the virtuous state of the soul, not the circumstances of outer life.” (Tarnas 1992, 76)
Ramana Maharshi, who is renowned for being one of the greatest sages to have walked the earth, said it rather bluntly: “He who thinks he is the doer is the sufferer.” Similarly, Nisargadatta Maharaj — a non-dual Advaita teacher — often reminded people “To let actions come through you. Don’t take yourself to be the doer.” In a rather paradoxical twist, these teachers embodied freedom by realizing they weren’t in control, by “living in conformity with God’s will.”
A few questions may be coming up to the surface for the reader at this point, and I think it’s important to address them. The first question may be, “What is God?” The second question may be directed toward me and go something like this: “Preston, why do you place so much trust in sages like Maharshi and Maharaj?” This paper is not going to go very deep into the nature of God; it is an age-old debate that simply cannot be answered through symbols, language, arguments, and words. It — whatever “it” is — has to be experienced for oneself. To answer the second question: I place trust in these sages because I believe they came to realize the ineffable nature of God, and therefore represent a level of Being that seems adequate for the purpose of inquiring into the nature of reality.
Even for new-age folks, the idea that realizing we are not in control leads to freedom can seem a bit too far-fetched. How could we reach the promised land by taking the backward step into non-doing, by letting go of control? These are not questions we can answer with the conventional mind, for when it comes to spiritual life, what makes sense is often always beyond the conventional mind. Everything is turned inside out and upside down. It is no coincidence that one of the qualities embedded within the mystical experience is the simultaneous existence of paradoxical truths. For instance, Evelyn Underhill would often say that the goal of the mystic is to “die in order to live.” For the conventional mind, this type of statement is illogical. How could it be that the very thing we need to stay alive is the very thing that brings life to an end? It may be a wonderful poetic utterance, but surely it cannot contain the truth. Lest we remember that the greatest spiritual truths were displayed through poetic utterances, not philosophical treatises. The yoga sutras and the Upanisads are perfect examples of this. Edwin Bryant, in his commentary on the sutras, points this out:
“As with the Upanishads in general, we do not find a systematic philosophy here, but mystico-poetic utterances, albeit profound in content.” (Bryant 2007, xxii)
Without some profound and direct experience with spiritual contemplation and the mystical life, mystico-poetic utterances are filled with nonsense, and certainly, the Richard Dawkins’ of the world would ignore them and cast them aside. However, if one is enmeshed in the spiritual life, there is no denying the truth embedded within them. Many realized Beings spoke in parables and illuminated truths with wordplay like this: on the other side of contraction, there is expansion. On the other side of pain, there is pleasure. On the other side of death, there is life — even if we cannot conceive of it.
The opposites we consider to be so different from each other often work together in a manner that is difficult to fathom. This is what Hegel alluded to in his logic of the Absolute, “which leads from an initial position through opposition or negation to a new position that includes (or, to be more precise, simultaneously transcends, includes, and negates) the initial position along with its apparent opposite or “antithesis.” (Kelly 2010, 15). What is it within us, then, that makes us skeptical of the possibility that by letting go of control, freedom can be attained? Could it be the case that these two movements in life work together, complement each other, and bring us to greater clarity?
At this point, I would like to interject with a story the reader may find useful. A few weeks ago, I broke down on a wooden platform outside my house because of some psychological trauma that rose up to the surface. Before this moment, I was in some trance: everything my partner said to me went straight over my head, and the world seemed to reflect the darkness of my inner state. I knew I was in big trouble, but I couldn’t get out of it. Hell became a place on earth — a dwelling I’d be for all eternity. The moment I sat down on the platform to chant a mantra, tears started pouring out, and for the first time in a long time, I prayed from the depths of my soul and asked for this heaviness to be lifted. It is difficult to describe what happened next, but without going into too much detail, everything I was carrying — all the psychic weight that was bringing me down and clouding my perception of reality — somehow vanished. I went from being a complete mess, a sheer and utter ball of confusion and chaos, to feeling at one with the universe and in harmony with the ten thousand things. One of the biggest realizations I came to after the entire experience had to do with free will. To think that I willed myself into my trauma and then into this place of inner peace seemed absolutely ridiculous. The whole experience was forced upon me; I was not invited or asked if I wanted to go through with it. The universe threw a party without my permission. My trauma captured my consciousness — which was completely out of my control — and then catapulted me into the sky until the “me” was seen for what it is: a complete and utter farce. It reminded me of a quote by Sam Harris that I read in his book, Free Will:
“Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.” (Harris 2012, 4 )
Within this place of spacious awareness after the experience, I became the witness to everything that was happening. The body and mind did what it had to do — drank water, cooked food, went to the toilet, hugged and kissed — but the sense of “I am” remained the same. If you are familiar with Ram Dass book, Be Here Now,there is a quote which reads, “You’re standing on a bridge, watching yourself go by.” That is what it felt like on a deeply experiential level. The body and mind were living out its life, dancing in space and time, and there I was, untouched and unphased, stable & free. The “I” was not of the world, but the body and the mind were. I was free, but I was not in control: there was a movie taking place, a script already written, but now, for the first time, I was not identified with the script or the story — I was simply a witness to them. I was the screen on which all the pictures were appearing, but I was not at all affected by the content of the pictures. The body and mind seemed to be clocking in their karmic time in order to pay back some karmic debt, but the awareness behind it was in complete and utter acceptance of it all. It was unaffected by the destiny — or prarabdha karma — of the mind and body called “Preston.”
This got me thinking about the saints and mystics who would declare that free will is an illusion without blinking an eye. The reason they were so confident in telling it like it is, I concluded, was because they saw through the problem in actuality — not in theory. It’s one thing to argue for — or against — free will in a philosophical way; it’s quite another thing to get a glimpse into the nature of reality and experience it for what it actually is. When you hear Saints like Neem Karoli Baba say, “God does Everything,” or hear the potent words of Ramana Maharshi when he says things like, “you are not the doer,” it’s not because they read a bunch of books or agreed with an author after reading a philosophical treatise; it’s because they experienced it for themselves. Their statements at a certain point stopped becoming philosophical and instead reflected the way things actually are. This does not mean we have to blatantly agree with them, but it may point toward the fact that we have been looking in the wrong direction or using the wrong tools. If they have not sexually assaulted someone and caused a ridiculous amount of controversy, realized beings represent a standard of truth we should investigate thoroughly with devotion and sincerity.
If you are not convinced that free will is an illusion after reading my story and hearing my praise of Indian saints, I don’t blame you. Anyone with their wits about them has the right to be skeptical of everything I just shared. After all, you do not know me; I could be a charlatan of some sort. You are probably skeptical of gurus as well, which is for the best, considering how many of them are steeped in controversy. So, let’s go about this in a different way by pointing to your direct experience. After all, as Spira points out in his book The Nature Of Consciousness, “All that is known, or could ever be known, is experience.” (Spira 2017, 6). This is rather self-evident, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of critical thought to realize that we often believe in God’s we’ve had no contact with, create systems of metaphysics that have no relation to our lived experience, and rub shoulders with opinions that have no objective truth to them.
Let’s examine this slowly, particularly with a unique thought experiment that I got from Sam Harris, a modern philosopher and neuroscientist.
Close your eyes and think of a movie, any movie, and pay attention to what the experience is like. In my experience, the movie, “Terminator” somehow made its way to the front of my attention. What is more interesting to note, however, is the fact that I did not will myself to think of the word “Terminator” — it simply appeared out of nowhere. It just happened. Instead of thinking about it to select it, it announced itself. What is perhaps more interesting is the fact that out of all the movies I had to choose from, somehow this is the movie that came to mind. I imagine the same experience happened for you. Now, do you think you were free to choose from the list of movies that didn’t occur to you? If there is such a thing as free will, the movies you didn’t select could have been selected, but they weren’t. From the moment I asked you to think of a movie till the moment you decided on a movie, you were not in control. There was a cause to you thinking about a movie and a cause that made you select a certain movie — but there was no subject in control, no self to navigate the situation. Maybe you decided to think of three movies before selecting one, but the fact remains that you were not free to select those three movies either; you did not will them into existence. They “popped” into your head. As Sam Harris points out, selecting a movie — any movie — is as free a choice as you will ever have. However, when we are sensitive to what actually occurs during this process, there appears to be no free will whatsoever.
One of the main reasons we believe we have free will is because we think we are the thinker of our thoughts. We have mistaken ourselves for being a skin-encapsulated ego, as Watts liked to say, and therefore believe that we go toward our thoughts and select the ones we want to have. But nothing can be further from the truth. As long as we are wrongly identified with a “me”, there will always be mishaps and mistakes in our ontological and psychological relationship with the world. This goes back to what Ramana Maharshi said: by thinking of ourselves to be the doer, we are diluting the light of the infinite and always, in some way, misinterpreting reality. To put it in more secular language for people who aren’t very fond of the idea of the infinite, “Subjectively speaking, as a matter of experience, there is no thinker to be found in the mind apart from thoughts themselves… there is no subject in the middle of experience.” (Harris, Sam 2021) When we see this with the utmost clarity, free will no longer becomes a matter of such contention. In fact, when we come to realize that there is no “I” to hold onto, most of the world’s problems are clearly seen as conflicts over identity. And who we identify as matters because it affects the manner in which we perceive the world and treat others.
From wrong identification comes controversy, ignorance, conflict, war, and environmental issues. The finite mind, as Spira likes to call it, superimposes its limitations onto the world and fights to keep those limitations in place. Free will is no exception. As long as we think there is an “I” behind the head, we will fight to keep that “I” in place. I have seen many philosophers, for example, arguing for free will based on the assumption that they are somebody. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how grandiose your argument may be, if your foundation is built on this false premise — which can be easily discarded when we are sensitive enough to the nature of experience — reality will always be misinterpreted, and our conclusions will reflect the bias we have superimposed onto the world.
The people arguing for free will are people arguing for their sense of identity, their “somebodyness.” But if there is no “I,” where is the self in control?
At this point, free will is not even an illusion — it’s simply unreal. Unlike a mirage in a dessert, which has some type of reality behind it, free will is simply non-existent, like a squared circle. It’s not there, and never will be.
To finish off, I want to remind readers of something extremely important: if you are someone who is now convinced that free will is unreal, nothing drastic needs to change in your life. There is no need to panic either. What’s going to happen is going to happen. That’s how it has always been — and how it will always be. Even if you tried to stay in bed after reading this paper to prove a point, you’d certainly not stay in there for very long. You’d get hungry or thirsty, and eventually get up and get on with your day. In the same way that pointing toward the existence of a hurricane does not stop the hurricane, seeing through the incoherent concept of free will does not stop us from acting.
Yes, it may very well be the case that you feel a little freer now that you have reached the end of this paper, but that’s not because you feel free to control your actions; it is because you are now aware that the person you mistook yourself to be was an illusion. Knowing there is no “I” can liberate us from the shackles of suffering and allow us to participate in the world a little more gently, with more forgiveness in our hearts. That was the whole point of this paper — to facilitate a feeling of freedom, for once the “I” is released, an immense amount of peace can arise from it.
References
Spira, Rupert. The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter. Oxford, England: Sahaja Publications, 2017.
Kelly, Sean M. Coming Home: the Birth & Transformation of the Planetary Era. Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 2010.
Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
Harris, Sam. Free Will. New York: Free Press, 2012.
O’Connor, Timothy and Christopher Franklin, “Free Will”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/freewill/>.
Bryant, Edwin F., Patañjali, and Patañjali. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: a New Edition, Translation, and Commentary: with Insights from the Traditional Commentators. New Delhi: Macmillan, 2018.