Do we have Free Will,if so,What is it?

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by Aaron Lowe

I've tried (just to test I had free will) and suffered, and keep suffering.

Makes me wonder if it's good just to have it but never use it. Just keep choosing the best choice and never know what it's like not to.

yeah the way things are currently set up it seems 'obvious' which way is correct and which isn't, and that you need to steer towards what is 'correct' at all times. Usually for some variation of the same reason you've given.

Unfortunately, the way things are set up some of us also don't always get that option. We are kinda forced to live without this treasure that everyone else has? And then if we have an inquiring mind we start searching for the reason why it can't all be candy and flowers lol! But as it turns out, when you've been down that road what seems so obviously correct may not be the correct path after all. Hard to live with that though, because we really really want to partake in what others are eating!

[edit] I wanted to say, god could have made computers if he wanted obvious paths to always be taken, computers are very literal. But they wouldn't have presented some other things that men would be capable of, if they didn't insist on always doing the obvious.

[winter light]

We only have the free will to change our attention and project a sense of self. But even in this it may be distracted we are by circumstances or limited by our conditioning, which is yet another circumstance. The more will we project the more we become defined by circumstance. So free will in this regard is literally self-limiting.

Free will in the material sense is based on a perception of self involving memory of the past and projection into the future in relation to self and circumstance. There is no influence on the material world in the present except for a careful balance which can only exist as long as ones attention and one's sense of self are surrendered to present action of the whole. Free will from the separate self is only real as it is an extension of the whole and any causes as though from a separate self only exist as illusion.

[Morpheus]

Perhaps we ought to think about our situation with respect to space and time.
What do the physicists tell us "space/time" really is.
Can you say?

What of prophecy in the Bible?

[Aaron Lowe]

Do we really need other people to tell us what space and time is? It's common sense.

[Morpheus]

Aaron, as I've said elsewhere. There is the "street" view and perspective, and then there is the "satellite" view, and perspective.

What has science been telling us since Einstein?

[Aaron Lowe]

No idea? Do you know? If so, say it

[Morpheus]

"Time and space are modes in which we think, and not conditions in which we live."
A.E.

[Aaron Lowe]

I've experienced time when is exists no more, so I know it is an illusion. I also know it is created in the mind to make sense of reality.

Maybe that is what Einstein was saying. A mode is just a way of thinking. So, if time is just a mode then it is just a product of thought.

I even know why it is that time is created in the mind. Because thought needs time to exist. Thought has cause and effect so it cannot happen without time. So, time is created in the mind as the thought happens.

The more you think, the denser time becomes, as your mind creates more and more time to harbour the thought.

It is possible to perceive without any time or space. I've done it. Not saying it's easy but it is possible. Actually, in a way we are all doing this but we have become so unaware of it it is as if we are not doing it.

Time and space are pure illusion. That was the post I made before but it got lost and I was too tired to post it again.

I also know why it is designed that thought creates time. This is something that Buddha would keenly understand. I know a lot but knowing is just the start. What you do with the knowledge is the challenge.

[Morpheus]

For one, if it's a long post, post after a few sentences. Then edit it and you shouldn't get logged off in the editing. Have you read Tedmark's "Mathematical Universe" yet? Also "The Holographic Universe"?
Very good reads, and also Julian Barbour's,
"The End of Time".

[Aaron Lowe]

Originally Posted by Morpheus

For one, if it's a long post, post after a few sentences. Then edit it and you shouldn't get logged off in the editing. Have you read Tedmark's "Mathematical Universe" yet? Also "The Holographic Universe"?
Very good reads, and also Julian Barbour's,
"The End of Time".

No, I avoid reading books because they push out my own understanding. Holographic Universe sounds like something my dad would have liked to read, or maybe he did, I don't know.

The problem with reading books is that what you read isn't based on direct experience. Therefore you can never be 100% sure from a book whether any part is true or not. If you can't be sure then it all becomes one massive theory. Eventually this theory of everything becomes so unwieldy that you're forced to let it go, because without direct application it can never become reality.