Poemander

There is no choice as there is no time. Not that there is no free will, no, it is available in abundance to those who are willing and have the power. The choice is a play of perception: it exists in the mind fooling itself into thinking that it is making the choice, while in reality what the mind does – it hesitates and trembles. Heart doesn't make choices, heart acts, heart doesn't have the time to hesitate, if it does, it will miss a beat. A saying, “choose with your heart”, laterally means – don't choose with your mind, let your heart act, let your heart do what needs to be done. Without the mind there are no choices as there is no timeline; we think that our decision is important because of the effects and the outcomes that will follow. What we miss though, is that our decision itself is the outcome and the effect. This is a chain of causation which looks like choices only if you have an expectation of an outcome. Without such an expectation, you are the choice; you are the doer and the object at the same time, you are the victim and the assailant. The only real choice you have, if any, is to be conscious and observe or to close your eyes and fall asleep.

So how do you reconcile 'no choice' with the free will you may ask me. First of all, not every question has an answer, at least not the one we can expect to be told. Some answers require more work then the movement of lips or a stroke of a pen; nevertheless, lets draw the line and see where it leads.

The choice is as illusory as time: it appears real when you see it coming, it feeds you with hopes as it approaches closer, but leaves you hopeless as it goes by without any care about your aspirations and wishes. Looking back one sees that there was no choice, no other course of action was possible. Free will, on contrary, is coming from within, it needs no hopes, no rationale to nourish it. It beats your expectations in the face by expecting nothing.

Universe is a theatre where living beings are the actors. It contains just enough amount of different roles to be assigned to each individual entity, or an event, for this matter. The illusion of choice is in thinking that through conduct one can change the outcome of a given story line. The reality of free will is in individual power to swap roles and create new plays altogether. Free will is your power and capacity to see yourself beyond the masquerade. Free will is the noumena of the phenomenal universe.

Lets now say that choice is only a part of the phenomenal world where everything is pre-determined, including the idea of making a free choice. This is the world of an absolute determinism in every sense. Every story line has been unfolded with its past and the future. Free will and the intent (to execute free will) are rooted in the other world, the world of uncountable possibilities, the world of potentials. They produce these story lines, events, objects, worlds as pairs of opposites: past and future, light and dark, positive and negative. Once unfolded (since there hardly any better concept to explain of something appearing without the dimension of time), the clockwork sets in motion and every item is executed as intended, nothing can be changed because it is a line and no leeway is available. Instead, a new story line, or an event can be unfolded by the free will, but this cannot be done from the realms of the phenomenal world, the actor must be able to 'slip' with the free will into the infinite possibilities of the Noumea.

Therefore, for the sake of visualisation lets imagine:

1. There is a shallow world (or worlds) of phenomena – the wold of decorations, our grasp here is reason. No choice is available here despite the illusion of free choice as it is a world of absolute determinism – everything has been pre-set.

2. There is a deeper world of ideas, our grasp here is will and intent. You are free to do anything here, subject to your power and imagination, and this will affect the shallow world of phenomena.

3. There is an incomprehensible world of no name, the ultimate reality. No one and nothing has a grasp of this world and the only peephole to it is consciousness.