Do I Have Free Will?

Our belief in free will is based on the intuition of the freedom inherent in the essential nature of the mind, pure Consciousness. We are free to exercise that freedom in the service of the love and peace inherent in Consciousness, or the fear and desire inherent in the separate self.

Video Transcript

There’s no individual agent inside the body orchestrating the activities of that particular body and mind. Just ask yourself, for instance, how many activities and chemical reactions are going on in the body right now. 

I don’t know, thousands?

I think billions is probably closer. Let’s say lots and lots of zeros. Even from a conventional point of view, how many of those do you have control over?

I would say none.

Okay, you say none. Most people would say my thoughts and my movements. Most people would say one or two. What kind of control is that – to be able to control one or two things out of billions? Even from a conventional point of view, the idea of there being a controlling entity inside the body or the mind is absurd. Contemporary biology and science and physics are now recognising this. 

Just take our thoughts. Obviously, what everybody wants more than anything else is to be happy. And what prevents us from being happy is the thought that says ‘I don’t like what’s going on’.  So, obviously the first thing we would do if we could control our thoughts, would be to choose for our thoughts to be totally okay with what’s going on. [For instance, in response to] ‘My wife’s just gone off with a neighbour’, we would think ‘That’s fine with me’. If we can control our thoughts, shouldn’t we be able to have that thought? And wouldn’t that be the thought that we would choose, because then it would be fine. There would be no problem. 

Can we do that? No we can’t. Just that should be enough to persuade anybody, everybody, that they don’t control their thoughts.

So, is there any suggestion as to how to live our lives? We tend to make plans. For instance, I have to get on a plane tomorrow.

Whatever God places in your lap is just what you get. The feeling of hunger just appears. You don’t create it. After the sensation of hunger appears, the thought appears “Okay, let’s call a friend and go out to dinner at a local restaurant’. Or, the thought appears ‘Let’s see what I’ve got in the fridge’. You can’t do anything about it. One of those two thoughts or some other thought is going to appear. Whichever thought that appears, your body is going to go either to the local restaurant or to the fridge or whatever. So, just everything that you need will be provided.

But if the thought is one of apparent destructiveness, like ‘Oh there’s a bottle of whiskey. I’ll have that.’

Okay, if that thought appears to you, you’re going to find yourself going to the bottle of whiskey and drinking too much of it.

I don’t like whiskey. I like wine.

The fact that you don’t like whiskey is just a part of the conditioning of your body which you have absolutely no control over. You might have been given a body that liked whiskey. Did you choose not to like whiskey and to like wine? No. Not at all. It's just the way you found yourself.

So if somebody has a behaviour, whether it’s anti-social behaviour or criminal behaviour or addictive behaviour, that’s just what’s happening?

Yes. There’s no entity that is responsible for that behaviour. That behaviour is a response that has been conditioned. The thoughts and feelings that lead to that behaviour are just a result of that person’s conditioning, plus genetics, plus whatever it is that conditions any single action. But there’s no individual responsible.

There’s no responsibility?

There’s no personal responsibility and, strangely, understanding this doesn’t make us behave in irresponsible ways. It’s when we believe there is personal responsibility, that we find ourselves behaving in irresponsible ways. It's when we feel ‘I am a separate person’.  It is that feeling that gives rise to irresponsible behaviour. 

Let’s take an extreme. What enabled Hitler to behave like he did? What was the founding thought behind his behaviour?

His egoic belief?

His deep sense of being a separate self. Without that feeling it would have been impossible for him to think, feel, act and relate like he did. So it’s the apparent presence of the separate self that makes us behave in irresponsible ways. When that sense of separation goes, we don’t find ourselves going around trashing people and behaving in unkind, ugly, irresponsible ways. No, our behaviour is in line with the totality and serves the totality.

About Rupert Spira

From an early age Rupert Spira was deeply interested in the nature of reality. At the age of seventeen he learnt to meditate, and began studying and practicing the teachings of the classical Advaita Vedanta tradition under the guidance of Dr. Francis Roles and Shantananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of the north of India, which he continued for the next twenty years. During this time he immersed himself in the teachings of P.D.Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Rumi, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, and Robert Adams, until he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, in 1997. Francis introduced Rupert to the Direct Path teachings of Atmanada Krishnamenon; Jean Klein and the tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism; and, more importantly, directly indicated to him the true nature of experience.

In his meetings, Rupert explores the perennial, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mystical Christianity, Sufism, Zen etc., and which is also the direct, ever-present reality of our own experience. This is a contemporary, experiential approach involving silent meditation, guided meditation and conversation, and requires no affiliation to any particular religious or spiritual tradition. All that is required is an interest in the essential nature of experience, and in the longing for love, peace and happiness around which most of our lives revolve.

Rupert is the author of nine books, with his most recent book, Being Myself, published this year.