Hi folks,
It occurred to me the other day that we may be living in a time paradox -which is the best way I can think of describing it. In Bob Monroe's books he describes meeting his INSPEC who acted as a guide to him in his explorations is OOBEs and other dimensions of being. Much later on he discovers that his INSPEC guide is actually himself in the future.
So if this is true (and I have no reason to believe that it isn't) and our 'higher selves' or 'Total I theres' are just us in the future, then does that mean that we've already 'made it' -achieved realisation and joining with the other parts of our disk in the future? As all time is one out there (wherever there is), then does that mean that we ultimately have no freewill because what's going to happen has already happened? Or do our choices affect the rate of progress we make in this path?

Any comments gratefully received, otherwise I'l have to start watching Star Trek more often for ideas  ;D

Best wishes,
David.

Hi David,

What you're saying sounds like we are the aspects left behind from a previous life? That the former and fuller us lived on Earth previously?

Hmm-mm, well, that's a blow to the old ego. Still, the former us could still have had free will though, right?

Bets

:D :D  David, check out our posting times-- I hope I didn't  reverse your idea  like I did your post time.

I think I get it...and to push the envelope further...there is some dimensional talk about everything in our third dimension has already happened...all time as we know it has already happened in an instant.  All that is left is to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of the events through which we have already lived.  And then experience alternative events and "roads not taken" through the "holo-deck", for you trekkies.

No answers, but easily fogged issues... 

... so all possible futures are 'out there' and free-will involves choosing to experience the one we want ? So there are futures out there where we blow up the planet and others where we live in harmony with eachother ?

heisenberg69 wrote on Feb 25^th, 2010 at 12:07pm:

... so all possible futures are 'out there' and free-will involves choosing to experience the one we want ? So there are futures out there where we blow up the planet and others where we live in harmony with eachother ?

Yup...and with enlightenment comes the ability to swing between each dimensional possibility and experience their differences.  The possibilities are endless...

......cool !

betson wrote on Feb 25^th, 2010 at 8:53am:

Hi David, What you're saying sounds like we are the aspects left behind from a previous life? That the former and fuller us lived on Earth previously? Hmm-mm, well, that's a blow to the old ego. Still, the former us could still have had free will though, right? Bets

Hi Bets,
interesting idea but I don't think that's what I meant  :(
If all time is one (IF?) then our I there's are complete in the future. But then they can come back to help us work through stuff because they know what we went through while we are going through it. (It's doing my head in trying to get a handle on temporal paradoxes  :o) But then we don't know what we're about to go through although our future selves do and that's why they come back to assist.
Am I making any sense here?

I don't think we're necessarily aspects left behind from a previous life, but an earlier version of the complete I there (the caterpillar before the butterfly, if that's a suitable analogy?).
In linear time, the I-there's are in the far future, we're here, and our past lives are in the past. Outside of ELS, aall time is one, so everything's happening now. But does this mean that we alter our path by freewill, or is it already preordained that we'll make one particular decision anyway.
Again to quote Star Trek (who were quoting it from somewhere else presumably) for every action there are an infinte number of possibilities, and our choices determine which one we experience. So does that imply that all possible options are all occurring at the same time and that other parts of ourselves are experiencing them?
So somewhere in the universe Hitler won world war 2, America's still a British colony  :P :-[ and I'm still married to my first wife!  :'(

Best wishes,
David.
:)

Yes, when all else fails, turn to Star Trek.  Replicators, the ability to teleport...life is good. 


I too look at the analogy of my higher, total self as my "future" self, and I do that because it is the easiest way that I can understand and use it's Guidance in guiding me along my path in the here and now.  I use that analogy so that I can and do feel like I have total free will in the here and now, projecting my thoughts to my "future" self and ask questions, ask for guidance, and keep my present-day self's mind on the track of my choosing, as if I have a "me" out there who has already tackled this hard road and already knows the best course of action for me, and that this person will guide me if I ask for it.  But that the decision is mine to make.

I don't think of it as we have no free will and that everything is already planned and set out and we're just going along for the ride.  I do believe we always have the free will choice and freedom to use our consciousness to do, think, and feel what we want to experience. 

But I also believe, in a way, the future is already planned out for the most part.  It is a paradox, and it is hard to explain how I believe this.  But it's kind of like this...who we are and what we have come here to accomplish in this life is what we free-will planned before coming here.  And our higher self knows this and is there to guide us along that path and plan.  As we are living here, we are not sure what we want, how to make it happen, and we change our minds, etc.  But the plan is still in existence.  We may not even accomplish all of that plan, for one reason or another. 

And as we live our lives, we also have free-will in the here and now, and in some ways our choices we make here may seem to defer the free-will plan we chose to accomplish before we got here. 

In essense, I believe we always have the ability to use free will in the moment.  I also believe we are likely to make the choices we will make, no matter what.  Like, if given the chance to live this life over again, we will likely make pretty much the same choices and take the same courses in life.  It may be that we learn a lesson with this person or that person, but the point is the lesson, not who we learn it with.  Know what I mean? 

Vicky

Well stated, Vicki, and it resonates nicely.  I still like a friend's theory that each decision we make spurs another reality that lives on, only we are not conscious of it...I just cannot seem to even get my mind around the difficulties, much less try to resolve them. 

heisenberg...very cool!

David

I don't know if you've read any of Jane Roberts/Seth's work, but similar to Monroe, Seth claims to be a future version of Roberts who has evolved far beyond our current system of consciousness.  Seth even had an even future version of himself which, if you believe it, would be channelled first through Seth and then through Roberts.

Anyway, I likewise don't see any good reason why this couldn't be the case.

I don't believe that the principle of no time negates the principle of free will. It is more of a matter of whether we view the decisions our soul makes one at a time or all at once.

There have been numerous times throughout my life where it was clear that I had a choice. I could respond to circumstance in either a negative or positive way.

The key is to realize that we can be influenced by our psychological conditioning and find a way to not allow it to do so.

I figure that one of the reasons we incarnate into this World is so we can learn to make use of our creative awareness in a wise and loving way.

I have another suggestion: Free will (a sort of) is only possible without the common linear time, as linear time (or our image of it) means that every moment is part of a chain of moments, influenced by the former moment. There's no space for free will, as to be free it needs to be independent of the former moments/history.
   Now, if those moments were not connected to each other within a cause-effect chain, only then there could be a free will. But then, "free" would not mean much anymore, as in this case there would be no past and no future. Just this moment.

   I don't think time paradoxa can ever be solved by mankind.

Spooky

spooky2 wrote on Feb 27^th, 2010 at 10:48pm:

I have another suggestion: Free will (a sort of) is only possible without the common linear time, as linear time (or our image of it) means that every moment is part of a chain of moments, influenced by the former moment. There's no space for free will, as to be free it needs to be independent of the former moments/history.    Now, if those moments were not connected to each other within a cause-effect chain, only then there could be a free will. But then, "free" would not mean much anymore, as in this case there would be no past and no future. Just this moment.    I don't think time paradoxa can ever be solved by mankind. Spooky

I do not know about a resolution of time paradoxia being solved by us, rather we need to know how it works in order to use it properly.  With that said, I think that it is possible to act freely without basing that action on the action just taken or the time just passed. 

Because my son just earned a disciplining moment, does not mean that my daughter, also recalcitrant, is going to receive the same level of discipline.  We choose where and when to exercise the appropriate response for the actions noted.  One is 10 years old the other 16...their actions, their sex and their ages each require different methods of treatment.  And while it may be a chain of moments, I do not see it as linear time dependent, nor does it follow that one action requires a strict and uniform response to the exclusion of free will.

Often what our experience tells us is better than what our intellect tells us.

Try this, when you have occasions to make some sort of ethical/moral decision, listen to what your heart tells you, and then ask yourself if you simply responded according to what a chain of cause and effect required, or if listening to your heart provided you with freedom beyond such a chain.

Our bodies abide in time, but our souls abide beyond time. If we listen to our heart, we listen to our soul.

recoverer wrote on Feb 28^th, 2010 at 2:29pm:

Our bodies abide in time, but our souls abide beyond time. If we listen to our heart, we listen to our soul.

I like that alot...

When we do what our heart tells us, then what we do for sure is influenced by what our heart tells us. Why isn't this cause and effect? And, if it wasn't, then it won't be something we could ascribe to a time-enduring person, as every act of free will necessarily can't be a result of the past, or it won't be called free.

And, of course we make decisions. But this decision-making process isn't an indicator of a person's free will.

Spooky

spooky2 wrote on Feb 28^th, 2010 at 9:02pm:

When we do what our heart tells us, then what we do for sure is influenced by what our heart tells us. Why isn't this cause and effect? And, if it wasn't, then it won't be something we could ascribe to a time-enduring person, as every act of free will necessarily can't be a result of the past, or it won't be called free. And, of course we make decisions. But this decision-making process isn't an indicator of a person's free will. Spooky

I'm sorry, but I do not understand what you are saying.

My point was that free will exists and it is not reliant on the immediate past for it to be an independant action. from my standpoint, time paradox is subordinate to the actions we enact in this life as we have the illusion of actually living those decisions.

Quote usetawuz:
"My point was that free will exists and it is not reliant on the immediate past for it to be an independant action."

That's what I'm saying, it's even that free will must not be reliant on the past in order to be free. But when we accept free will, we have to bury the image of a world of cause and effect, and furthermore the image of a person which endures over time. Because every moment then would be a single moment, if you so want, in every moment the world would be created new, with no respect to any other moment.

Spooky

Regarding what Spooky said, the thing is, the things we experience including different moments of time are connected to each other so relationships can be established and something meaningful can be experienced.

We need to make certain that we don't go too far with our philisophical sophistry. People who do so sometimes get to the point where they use their intellect to negate that which is experienced, which is kind of ironic, since that which does the negating is a part of what is negated.

Say a person is in a relationship that isn't beneficial. If he (or she) gets caught up in emotional attachments, such as he can't do without a person who is a negative influence in his life, he won't end the relationship.

On the other hand, if he doesn't allow an emotional attachment to bind him, then he will have the freedom to make the decision that best suits his needs.

His freedom in such a situation doesn't get negated because there are a limited number of options or because he chose to rely on the "enabling" wisdom of his soul that is partly based upon past experience.

Life isn't a game of philisophical intellectualization that is defined by whatever supposedly sophisticated concept we came up with. It is a reality that is based upon how we make use of the creative aspect of our being.

If a person studies and practices really hard so he can create music that touches the hearts of others, their inspiration dooesn't get negated by claiming that free will has nothing to do with it.

If a person relies on his intellect, he will never find the fullfillment he seeks. Only his heart, aided by a reasonable amount of rational thinking, will enable him to find what he wants, including the ability to respond to each situation in a manner that is most beneficial.

If it is more benefical to be treated with love rather than hate, the fact of how there is only one fullfilling answer in this situation, doesn't mean that freedom is negated.

The idea of having the ability to act in a manner that is completely independent of the circumstances one finds one's self in, has nothing to do with reality. Why encase one's self in a way of thinking that doesn't have anything to do with reality?

There are occasions when something doesn't become true, simply because we can think about it.

Just as the rules of football don't apply to the game of baseball, sometimes the rules of our philisophical ideas don't apply to life as it actually is.

Just in case this was missed (hello Spooky, I see you're on line :)).

Just as the rules of football don't apply to the game of baseball, sometimes the rules of our philisophical ideas don't apply to life as it actually is.

Hi Recoverer,
yes this can be so. In this case though, it's that I came (and I'm not the first one) through some simple steps of thinking to the insight, that the free will of a person, the existence of a person, and the existence of time and causality cannot be true alltogether. It is not sophism, it is simple philosophical thinking. I can't even say that I sympathize with the idea of a world either without causality or without free will. But I can't change my thoughts on that only because "free will" is a traditional, common used term. I have not yet read your response in full.

Spooky

Recoverer wrote:
"On the other hand, if he doesn't allow an emotional attachment to bind him, then he will have the freedom to make the decision that best suits his needs."

He will chose depending on his experience, on his thinking, on his analysis of the situation, on what his heart tells him. If you so want, that is his freedom. But that doesn't mean he has free will. Because every dependance would make the will dependant, therefore not free. The term "free will" doesn't allow to use "free" in a relative sense, like we can say someone who has more money is more free in order to chose things to buy than someone who has less money, no, every little bit of dependance renders "free will" impossible and, the other way round, every bit of free will would break the continuity of a person and makes the existence of a person as an enduring entity impossible.
------------------------
Recoverer wrote:
"Life isn't a game of philisophical intellectualization that is defined by whatever supposedly sophisticated concept we came up with."

Yes, but "free will of a person" is as well an intellectual concept.
------------------------
Recoverer wrote:
"If a person studies and practices really hard so he can create music that touches the hearts of others, their inspiration dooesn't get negated by claiming that free will has nothing to do with it."

Of course not, because if I would say that free will has nothing to do with it, I actually would appreciate that person for his/her inspiration. In contrary, if I would say free will had something to with it, I would not appreciate that person, but some free will. Because it can't be the free will of this person, because every act of free will would cut the continuity of a person, as free will would not be related to the past, and so cannot be owned by a person. Person and free will are two incongruent concepts.
-----------------------
Recoverer wrote:
"The idea of having the ability to act in a manner that is completely independent of the circumstances one finds one's self in, has nothing to do with reality. Why encase one's self in a way of thinking that doesn't have anything to do with reality?"

Yes, that's why I criticize the "person's free will"- concept.
-----------------------
Recoverer wrote:
"There are occasions when something doesn't become true, simply because we can think about it."

Yes. But it is even less probable that something which is contradictive can be true.
-----------------------
Recoverer wrote:
"Just as the rules of football don't apply to the game of baseball, sometimes the rules of our philisophical ideas don't apply to life as it actually is. "

"Free will" IS a philosophical idea! As well as "cause and effect". Our most basic ideas of reality, if not the basis of this physical reality itself, are such ideas. If they are correct or "right", we don't know. But we can investigate if ideas can be together true, or if they are contradictive. To think about this can uncover and destroy incoherent belief systems.
-----------------------

Spooky

Spooky, you have written several times recently about your view of free will.  My sense is that your definition of free will is more "far end of the spectrum" than what most of us think.  If I face a situation in which I have two alternatives, two paths in a wood, say, my choice of one and not the other is an act of free will, even though which I choose may well be influenced by all sorts of things that have happened to me.  Influenced, but not dictated. 

So, I don't think free will means a choice made with absolutely no reference to anything in the past.  But it certainly means, and maybe only means,  that I am not absolutely bound to make only one "choice" (which then wouldn't be a choice) in a given situation. 

Yeah, what Pat said. :)

When we are involved with a particular set of circumstances, why would we act in a manner that has nothing to do with these circumstances?


Pat E. wrote on Mar 1^st, 2010 at 2:30am:

Spooky, you have written several times recently about your view of free will.  My sense is that your definition of free will is more "far end of the spectrum" than what most of us think.  If I face a situation in which I have two alternatives, two paths in a wood, say, my choice of one and not the other is an act of free will, even though which I choose may well be influenced by all sorts of things that have happened to me.  Influenced, but not dictated.  So, I don't think free will means a choice made with absolutely no reference to anything in the past.  But it certainly means, and maybe only means,  that I am not absolutely bound to make only one "choice" (which then wouldn't be a choice) in a given situation.

I believe what Kathy (Lights of Love) and Pat E were talking about on the new age values thread Don (Berserk) started sort of relates to this discussion (the part that related to Tom Campbell).  They basically state that we seek to develop ourselves in a  balanced (organized) way, which would be impossible if we didn't have free will in some way.

Pat, thanks for your input.
Yes, it must seem a bit far out to deny free will. But after a while of thinking I came to the result that actually proposing free will while at the same time accepting cause and effect is the thing which is far out.
   Let's take your case with the two paths in a wood. Sometimes I would think a while about which way to go, have I been there before, is it safe, is it going in the right direction, and many other things would come into my mind and finally I would decide from that which path I use. Sometimes I don't think much about which path I should chose, one of them just seems right and I walk that path.
   But this all is not an indicator of free will. It is all an indicator of our continuity of our person in time (if we assume there is time). I think this is the normal view. A much more bizarre view (for most people I think) would be we'd have free will, so that our decisions are made by (at least an element of) a time- and cause- independent source, which would result in the fact that there would be deeds done for no reason, no cause, uncaused.

Recoverer wrote:
"When we are involved with a particular set of circumstances, why would we act in a manner that has nothing to do with these circumstances?"

The answer is: We would act in a manner, which would have nothing to do with the circumstances, if we had free will.
   That is the consequence when assuming free will. Independence of the circumstances. Or is it not?

Recoverer wrote:
"They basically state that we seek to develop ourselves in a  balanced (organized) way, which would be impossible if we didn't have free will in some way."

"Developing" requires to build on something which is there. It needs history. Just like learning, evolution etc...
   Free will is the opposite. It breaks the continuity. It is the very meaning of "free will" that it does not depend on anything else. Can't you see how ridiculous that is together with the assumption of "cause and effect"?

   If you really want to stick to "free will", the only logical solution would be to deny linear time together with causality, and propose that only the moment, the now, the present is real, and the "past" only is an imagination in this moment.

I don't say it's this or that, I only want to show the possibilities and non-possibilities, how they are in my view.

Spooky

I suspect that the problem arises because we are trying think from within the perspective of the physical (subset) space/time illusion something which is a larger reality issue. If, as the mystics assert, oneness is the greater (superset) reality then believing in 'absolute' free will would be like declaring we have freedom from ourselves; I would think a logical impossibility.

However, I believe that a 'relative' free will is possible because from our perspective we cannot know all the antecedents which precede a choice or decision; it is simply too complex and of course every decision made adds to the complexity.

Thanks for the interesting replies folks.
However, I had a far more prosaic hypothesis in mind.
Various times in my life I have met people through 'seeming chance' who have been pivotal or important in my life, either for many years, or just a short while.
So, to give a theoretical scenario:
You travel to work one day by a route that you wouldn't normally take and as a result you meet someone who will be important in your life -it could be a future partner, employer or co-worker, guru, or someone who is (pre-life review) destined to help you in some way. That scenario unfolds.
But if on that particular day you decided to travel to work by your usual route or an entirely different route, then you wouldn't meet that person and that scenario wouldn't occur.
Has your freewill changed the future? Does the option of meeting that person still exist in a parallel universe somewhere? Has our total selves experienced ALL the possibilities that we could have experienced through all the freewill decisions that we have made /are going to make/ missed out on this time?
Or do we have to wait for another incarnation to meet that particular person and play out what we should have done this time around?
I've heard it said that in each life we have probabilities of what will happen to us and the people that we will meet, but the free will that we exercise is constantly changing the future in the details, but maybe not in the broad outline. What we decide can change things, and our guides, Inspecs and Excoms have to resort to 'Plan B'.

Any comments?

Best wishes,
David.

I'll give an example from my life. I was best friends with a chap called James when I was a boy. We left school and went our separate ways off to different  Universites and lost contact. Several years later I felt an urge to phone him up. He was pleased to hear from me and commented I was lucky to get him as he was just about to move house in a house share with 2 work colleagues (female). I ended up agreeing to help moving his stuff using my brother's van. Doing this I met his 2 housemates....7 months later I was married to one of them ! Twenty years later we are still together with 3 great kids.

I don't think without that call I made this would have happened because after University I was looking to move out the area. I guess the free will aspect was that I could have ignored the urge to make the call, because I did procrastinate before making that call as it was out of nowwhere. I can't speculate what gave me the urge only marvel at the result - all those new eventlines spreading out into the future.

Dave

detheridge wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2010 at 10:51am:

So, to give a theoretical scenario: You travel to work one day by a route that you wouldn't normally take and as a result you meet someone who will be important in your life -it could be a future partner, employer or co-worker, guru, or someone who is (pre-life review) destined to help you in some way. That scenario unfolds. But if on that particular day you decided to travel to work by your usual route or an entirely different route, then you wouldn't meet that person and that scenario wouldn't occur. Best wishes, David.

If the two people are destined to meet for a purpose, I believe it will happen.  Maybe it didn't happen that day, but why couldn't it be arranged to happen on another day under other circumstances? 

We here in the physical have free will, but we as our higher selves also have free will.  Before we came into this life we used free will to make plans to meet, then here in the physical we have to contend with all sorts of obsticles that make life challenging.  But there isn't just one chance to get things right.  We get many chances.  We also get help that we don't know about.  This is what is meant by synchronicity, coincidence, and serendipity, and terms like that, where we go "Whoa, what are the odds!" 

I'm sure it's likely that not every plan gets carried out according to plan.  But maybe when the time came down to it, other circumstances were more important?  Maybe something changed, or maybe one of those people chose not to follow through with the plan?  We can only be responsible for our own choices and have to allow others to be responsible for theirs. 

And to add to that, I really do believe that any given moment in time our conscious intent can override some of those previous plans and make them "outdated" so to speak.  I say this because I believe we come into life with lessons to learn.  If one lesson gets learned more easily and quickly than planned, it might make some pre-arranged meeting not be necessary anymore.   

So maybe it's a matter of being the optimist or the pessimist.  Rather than looking at things as being something missed out on, maybe it is a case of being a necessary change that holds a higher purpose than we are aware of at the moment.  Maybe something even better is in the works at the moment, trying to unfold. 

We must place more importance on the now moment than on "what is meant to be".  Because if what is meant to be really does happen no matter what, then it will happen no matter what, right?  But if our conscious will and decisions really do hold the power to make a change and make a difference, then we should never be afraid of anything. 

But I'm a Libra.  I think there's a balance to all things, even if we'll never figure out what it is and how it works. 

Many, many thanks, Vicky.
You've provided answers to questions I've had for years!!

Best wishes,
David.

detheridge wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2010 at 10:51am:

Thanks for the interesting replies folks. However, I had a far more prosaic hypothesis in mind. Various times in my life I have met people through 'seeming chance' who have been pivotal or important in my life, either for many years, or just a short while. So, to give a theoretical scenario: You travel to work one day by a route that you wouldn't normally take and as a result you meet someone who will be important in your life -it could be a future partner, employer or co-worker, guru, or someone who is (pre-life review) destined to help you in some way. That scenario unfolds. But if on that particular day you decided to travel to work by your usual route or an entirely different route, then you wouldn't meet that person and that scenario wouldn't occur. Has your freewill changed the future? Does the option of meeting that person still exist in a parallel universe somewhere? Has our total selves experienced ALL the possibilities that we could have experienced through all the freewill decisions that we have made /are going to make/ missed out on this time? Or do we have to wait for another incarnation to meet that particular person and play out what we should have done this time around? I've heard it said that in each life we have probabilities of what will happen to us and the people that we will meet, but the free will that we exercise is constantly changing the future in the details, but maybe not in the broad outline. What we decide can change things, and our guides, Inspecs and Excoms have to resort to 'Plan B'. Any comments? Best wishes, David.

Far from prosaic, and very similar to my own ideas...

My example was after a class, two friends and I were driving into town to have dinner and I happened to turn into a bar that none of us had ever entered for a beer noone had requested.  None of us had ever heard of it or even noticed it and it was just a hole in the wall next to the campus. 

We stood at the end of the bar for awhile and in mid conversation I turned around and saw a woman on the other side of the bartalking to another man.  I asked the bartender for a white wine (what she was drinking) and another beer.  I took both my glass and hers over to her, handed her the new glass, took the old one and interrupted her conversation.  We couldn't take our eyes off each other until our friends each hauled us away to continue our night.  We went out the next night and were inseperable for the next nine months.

I am not the type to initiate conversations with complete strangers in bars, but in this case I sensed she was not a stranger...although this was my first introduction to her in this life, as we have been married in prior lives many times as I have come to find out.
 
I don't know if it was free will that caused me to turn into this bar, but I certainly had no obvious external forces pushing me there.  In doing so I met someone who drastically changed my life.

heisenberg...your experience, and David's posit, both brought this event to mind.

As I re-read these comments and David's rephrased question...is this free will at all or some level of divine direction telling us to go where we need to go in order to meet someone we had planned to meet? 

I am told all the time that "the universe will ensure you meet who you need to meet when the time is right."  My comment being "what if I miss the train" or "don't make the light"...thinking of the movie "Sliding Doors" with Gwyneth Paltrow missing the tube.  I was again instructed that despite my failings, I would meet who I intended (pre-birth) either sooner or later...that "the force" would not allow my mundane issues to get in the way of a karmic meeting.