New member: Information

[Ravisankar S. Mayavaram]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 15:27:28 +0000
From: Ruth Sperber <sperber at acy.digex.net>
To: aum at unix.tamu.edu
Subject: Re: ADVAITA-L: sperber at ACY.DIGEX.NET requested to join

Thank you for this subscription. I am interested in understanding how to
practice advaita or non-duality - as The Crest Jewel of Shankara
mentions. I have studied and practiced Yoga from a Hindu Yoga master for
some years and wish to further my understanding of Self-Realization.

Ruth
>From ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU Mon Jun  2 12:14:45 1997
Message-Id: <MON.2.JUN.1997.121445.0400.ADVAITAL at TAMU.EDU>
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:14:45 -0400
Reply-To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Jonathan Bricklin <brickmar at EARTHCOM.NET>
Subject: The non-reality of free will
Comments: To: Advaita <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
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Preceding the most recent exchange on the nature of free will, Allan Curry
had posted the following suggestion:

"Somehow the question of whether the will is free or not doesn't seem as
interesting as considering  the source of the will. Perhaps the question of
its freedom or lack thereof will be solved by investigating its source?"

The more I read of the debate that followed this suggestion the more timely
it seemed.  I don't think there is much debate on this list server that
there is one source of everything.  The question is, how does that one
source allow for free will as that term is commonly understood?  For those
of us, like myself, who do not believe in free will, the answer is that it
allows only the appearance of free will, and therefore to locate the source
of free will is to locate the source of an illusion.  The following
account, from William James's Principles of Psycholgy, is, I believe, the
best account we have of that source:

                "We know what it is to get out of bed on a freezing morning in a room
without a fire, and how the very vital principle within us protests against
the ordeal.  Probably most persons have lain on certain mornings for an
hour at a time unable to brace themselves to the resolve.  We think how
late we shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer;  we say, 'I must
get up, this is ignominious,' etc.;  but still the warm couch feels too
delicious, the cold outside too cruel, and resolution faints away and
postpones itself again and again just as it seemed on the verge of bursting
the resistance and passing over into the decisive act.  Now how do we ever
get up under such circumstances?  If I may generalize from my own
experience, we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision
at all.  We suddenly find that we have got up.  A fortunate lapse of
consciousness occurs;  we forget both the warmth and the cold;  we fall
into some revery connected with the day's life, in the course of which the
idea flashes across us, 'Hollo!  I must lie here no longer'--an idea which
at that lucky instant awakens no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions,
and consequently produces immediately its appropriate motor effects.  It
was our acute consciousness of both the warmth and the cold during the
period of struggle, which paralyzed our activity then and kept our idea of
rising in the condition of wish and not of will.  The moment these
inhibitory ideas ceased, the original idea exerted its effects."

        Although James very much wanted to believe in free will, he nonetheless
believed that this meditation (his term for it) "contain[ed] in miniature
form the data for an entire psychology of volition."  The data can be
broken down into three parts.  First, thoughts arise.  Second, thoughts
have an impulsive power of their own, a direct link to our motor
operations, and do not require a super-added willforce to explain their
efficacy.  And, finally, the feeling of will and effort is derivable from
the interplay between opposing thoughts.  All of which, I believe, can be
read as a gloss on 7.12 of the Bhagavad-Gita:  "And whatever states of
being there may be, be they harmonious, passionate, slothful--know thou
that they are all from Me alone.  I am not in them;  they are in Me."


Jonathan Bricklin