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Chapter 1. How I
Came to See My Causal Will
Growing up, there are things that we
want – things that we want to
happen, ways we want to be, and
things we want to do. There is much
we would prefer to be a certain way,
but we realize, "Wait a minute. I
can't be the way I want to be. I
can't do all the things I want to
do.” That's what happened to me
growing up. There were many things I
wanted to do, ways I wanted to be,
and goals I wanted to meet. Yes,
some I accomplished, but some I did
not. It seemed that regardless of
what I did or didn't do, it became
evident that certain goals just were
not going to happen. I began to
understand that free will is an
illusion, and that our lives and
human will are causal.
Writing this book is not something
that I had planned five or six years
ago. So, what led me to it? It was a
series of events, a series of
situations. I had two friends years
ago, Trish and Andy, and we did a
cable TV show on spiritual and
psychological issues called
Conversations in Mind. It was
great fun, and, after 30 episodes, I
decided to do a TV show on happiness
called The Happiness Show. I
produced and hosted 138 half-hour
episodes over three years, and
gained invaluable experience in
doing that kind of explanatory show.
The key thing here is that the
conditions that led up to this book,
and everything else I'm doing now,
were not really up to me. In other
words, of the two friends with whom
I did the first show, one I
happened to meet at a nearby
singles dance, and the other I
happened to meet through other
unplanned circumstances.
These things that I didn't have
control of shaped my reality, and
led to my ultimately writing this
book. In part and principle, that's
how I came to understand free will
to be an illusion.
Think about human will relative to
the people you’re close to, that you
love and care about. I came to
realize that we all want our
relationships and the rest of our
lives to go as pleasantly and
morally as possible. If we had a
free will, our lives would go that
way, at least in terms of what we
say to each other, and how we feel
about each other. If we had a free
will, we would be completely good,
and, not incidentally, completely
happy. I came to realize that I
can't behave the way I would like to
with everyone that I would like. If
I truly had a free will, I would be
a perfect angel always. I would
always know what to say. I would
choose to feel only very positive
feelings toward everyone and
everything. That's one of the
strongest understandings we gain
from our personal lives that, no, we
don't have free wills, and that free
will is an illusion.
I’m describing to you how I came to
this causal will understanding, but
I want the explanation to relate to
all of us because we all experience
this reality. We’re born into a
world where the causal past is what
makes things happen. It’s all about
cause and effect. What happens at
one moment causes what happens at
the next moment, which causes what
happens at the next moment, and
onward causally into the future.
This causal chain naturally
regresses back in time to before we
were born, and is also what, very
ironically and curiously, has led us
to believe we have a free will.
There are various illusions that
nature has us perceive. For example,
many years ago we were all quite
convinced that the world was flat.
It couldn’t be round, or an orb like
what we now know it is, because the
people on the bottom would fall off!
It seemed so very simple. Ultimately
we learned that it is gravity that
keeps us glued to this Earth, and
the idea that our world is an orb
made sense.
Mother Nature loves to play tricks
on us. Another illusion is that our
world is completely motionless. I
don’t feel anything moving.
Everything seems completely still.
But the reality is that we’re
hurtling around the Sun at over 60
thousand miles per hour. It goes
beyond that because the Sun, the
whole solar system, and the whole
galaxy, are all traveling through
our universe at great speed. The
point is that, yes, there are
illusions. Mother Nature does love
to play tricks on us. Most of us are
familiar with the mirage illusion.
You’re driving on a straight highway
on a hot summer day. You look into
the distance, and could swear
there’s water there. For some
reason, the causal past – and you
could describe the causal past
within a religious context as God -
has determined that the vast
majority of us believe that we are
the masters of our fate, and that we
can always do whatever we want, and
say whatever we want. It’s an irony
that objective causal reality would
compel us to see life through this
lens of illusion, to have us believe
we have a free will. This may not
make complete sense to you now, but
as we go through the chapters,
you’ll likely come to understand
that free will is, in fact, an
illusion – that it has to be an
illusion. Over the years, not being
able to be the kind of person I
wanted to be, (I would, of course,
see this in others also) and not
being able to do what I wanted to do
brought me to understand that we
don’t have a free will. It seems
that the causal past, what really
controls everything, is now
determining that it’s time for us
all to understand this reality.
Evidence is mounting that we’re in a
period – more like the beginning of
an age – where all of humanity is
coming to understand that free will
is an illusion. This is a very, very
powerful understanding, because it
changes everything.
We’re hard-wired, biologically, to
seek pleasure and avoid pain. That’s
who we are; that’s what we do. Other
organisms share this with us. And
there are other imperatives. Seeking
pleasure and avoiding pain is a
hedonic imperative. There’s also a
moral imperative. We always do what
we consider right at the time. In
hindsight, it may not always be
right, but we are biologically
compelled to do what we think is
most right, and makes the most sense
– what we think is the greater of
two goods, or lesser of two evils.
We’re always trying to do things as
well as possible, and to be as good
as possible. This is actually
related to the hedonic imperative,
because when we’re “good,” we create
happiness. Think about this. We
can’t but seek pleasure and avoid
pain. When we’re in a certain
circumstance, and we’re given a
choice between two options – what to
eat, what movie to see, what friends
to be with, we’re always going to
choose the one that we believe will
bring us the greatest pleasure. But,
it’s not just about us; it’s about
other people too. So, sometimes we
seek the greatest good for the
greatest number. We can’t avoid
that. We’re programmed to always do
what we think is going to bring us
happiness.
Two friends of mine had a falling
out. They’re good friends, but they
had not talked to each other for
months. One of them tells me that
the other is acting in a certain
way, and doing such and such, and
that she can’t take it anymore. I
ask her, “Why does your friend act
like this? What’s causing her to act
in ways that you find upsetting?” We
have a back-and-forth dialogue, and
I keep asking, “Why?” She might say,
“Well, that’s just the way she is.”
So I ask her, “Why is she that way?”
After our series of questions and
answers, my friend ultimately
realizes that her friend acts as she
does because her parents raised her
in a certain way, because she was
raised in a certain environment, and
because she had a certain genetic
predisposition. Our personalities
are about 50 percent genetic, and if
our genes aren’t determining our
personality, then it is being
determined by our upbringing and
environment. So, it’s easy to see
how if our parents raised us a
certain way, and we were taught in
certain schools, and we met certain
people – if certain environmental
influences molded who we are – we do
not have a free will. Ultimately, my
friend came to see that her friend
had to be the way she was. She
couldn’t help it. It’s all about the
causal past. That’s the reality, and
it’s not a pleasant reality for some
people, because they conclude, “Aw
gee, if we don’t have a free will
that means we’re just robots, we’re
just puppets, we’re just
automatons.” Well, yes, that’s the
reality. I’ve understood this for
years. You get accustomed to it, and
it can actually make our
understanding and experience of
reality more pleasant and wonderful.
Let’s say you believe in God. I
equate God with the universe. If God
is everywhere and God is everything,
then God is the universe. I ascribe
to God more wisdom and understanding
than I would to an individual. If
you’re not so comfortable with the
reality of our wills being causal,
that God is the only power on Earth,
and that the causal past is
determining everything today,
perhaps you can appreciate that God
would likely be wiser than we are.
You may then want to conclude that
it’s probably better for all
concerned that reality is causal, or
God-willed. If our choices were up
to us, we’d probably make fewer good
choices. How else did I come to
realize and discover that free will
is an illusion? One way has been
through basic education. I’ve read
many books about psychology, and
taken psychology courses, and one
thing you learn in psychology is
that we all have an unconscious.
Freud popularized this fact, and we
all understand it now. One important
thing we know about the unconscious
is that it is always awake. In other
words, our consciousness will go to
sleep, and we won’t remember much of
what happened when we were asleep.
But our unconscious, when we’re both
asleep and awake, is always working.
It’s always active, and influencing
our reality.
There has been empirical evidence
since the time of the discovery of
hypnosis that a person’s unconscious
can control, or decide, one’s
thoughts even though one thinks one
is making the choice. Through
experiments with hypnosis, and now
also in neuroscience, we’ve
discovered that even though we think
we’re making choices, it is actually
our unconscious that is making those
choices. Your unconscious is your
memory store – your store of
feelings, of experiences, etc.
That’s where everything is stored,
and you’re unaware of all that is
there because you can’t be aware, at
least in real time, of what is
unconscious. This is how it made
sense to me. If your unconscious
never sleeps, and is a part of every
decision you make, then that is a
very clear way to understand that
free will is an illusion. We can’t
control our unconscious. That’s the
point. Our unconscious, by
definition and experience, is
something we’re not conscious of.
It’s operating behind the scenes.
When we say that we have a free
will, basically we’re saying that
everything we decide is up to us –
that we can consciously decide what
to do or not. But if our unconscious
takes part in our every decision,
and we don’t know what the
unconscious is doing, then the best
we’re left with is a
consciousness-unconscious
collaboration on every decision. If
that’s the case, and we can’t
control our unconscious, you can
understand how our unconscious makes
free will impossible.
We don’t have a free will. We can’t
be as happy as we want to be. We
can’t be as good as we want to be.
Five seconds from now, I have no
idea what I am going to say. These
thoughts I’m saying right now are
just popping into my head. I have a
basic understanding of what I want
to do, but I purposely didn’t
over-prepare this show because I
wanted to demonstrate how these
thoughts are coming to my mind from
who knows where. Naturally, what I
say is a result of my having
researched this topic, having
thought about it deeply, having
talked about it often and at length,
and having finally come to very
clearly and strongly understand that
free will is an illusion. All these
things are a part of what’s causing
me to say what I say, but from a
moment-to-moment perspective, these
thoughts are just coming to me.
Thirty seconds from now, I have no
idea what I’ll be saying. Thoughts
just come to us, and that is another
way of understanding why free will
is an illusion.
I want to end with a very positive
point. Giving up the illusion of
free will doesn’t actually make life
worse, or less meaningful. It
actually makes it better because
when we give up the illusion of free
will and other people do wrong, we
don’t blame them. We don’t say, “Oh,
you’re a bad person. You did
wrong.” We understand that they were
compelled to do wrong, and we become
more understanding, and forgiving,
and compassionate toward them. When
we do wrong, we will not blame
ourselves because our wills are as
causal and compelled as anyone
else’s. So, we don’t feel the pain
of guilt. When others do something
really great, we sometimes feel
envious, but we wouldn’t under a
causal will perspective because we
would know that whatever they did
was not up to them; it was
completely compelled by factors
outside of their control. Our world
is changing, and once humanity
understands that we don’t have a
free will, everything will in many
ways be profoundly new.
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