Is everything predetermined, or just the big stuff?

Q. 


 I read your blog post.  I find it very interesting.  It is a very good warning of the perils of becoming attached to any type of levels of meditation.  However, your final sentence struck me the most and it leads me to a different issue.  Your sentence reads:

"you will be drawn to whichever path you are drawn to and whatever path you take is not in your control, just as it was not for "me"; just be aware of what occurs on your path"

My belief--and I am slowly coming to see it as that rather than as an "understanding"--is that our lives have a predetermined path that is highly probable to take place, but that there is also the opportunity for us to exercise our free will to modify this path if we choose.  So rather than being merely predestination or free will, my belief leans toward a mix of the two.  It seems here you are pointing to predestination alone.  In this the case and have you come to this conclusion as a result of your experience?

G.

One of the most surprising elements of the "awakening" process was the fact that i came to the clear conclusion and understanding that in fact everything, everything, even the most simple action, must be predetermined.

When thoughts stopped, after all of the deconstruction of the I/me/my, there was this deep, pervasive stillness with no "doer" and no "movement" of any kind.  This great stillness was so dramatic that it overwhelmed anything as intellectual as consideration of the implications for determinism.  As i had been one of the most driven, self-deterministic folks you could imagine, and this stillness had appeared because of the deconstruction of the I/me/my, it should have been "logical" that there was going to be a problem "doing". 

 In fact, the only "remembrance" of the turning of the page, was the "now you've done it, how are you going to go to work today?" sensation.  There was no "doer", and with 1000 folk,  four research labs to run, and a $260 MM budget, it was going to be "interesting"....  It worked out perfectly, in fact, better and more easily than before.  No one even noticed as nearly as i could ascertain.   (Which may say something about the importance of Senior Vice Presidents in Fortune 500 companies, but that is another discussion.)

Eventually i was moved to trying to "understand" how this was all working.  

my teacher, Ramana Maharshi, had been questioned: 

               "Are only the important things in a man's life, such as his main occupation or profession, predetermined, or are trifling acts also, such as taking a cup of water, or moving from one part of the room to another?

To which Ramana replied: 

              "Everything is predetermined".

i had read this quote many times, but it seemed so absurd that i had just rejected it as hyperbole.  Now when i read it, it was true, absolutely true, and i could see it minute by minute.

i also found that another key figure for me, Albert Einstein, had made a surprisingly similar statement:

            "Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control.  It is determined for insects as well as for the stars.   Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance, by an invisible piper."

Einstein also went on to say, which helps to deal with our pervasive sense of "free will" that:

             "You can will what you want, but you can't will what you will".

i gave a talk on this subject at the first Science and NonDuality conference in San Francisco in October 2009, which had the theme "free will", entitled ""Everything is Predetermined": Einstein (and his friends) and Ramana Maharshi".  The talk is also in three youTube videos on "free will".

In that talk i discussed the seminal experiments of Benjamin Libet at UCSF in 1983 which has been widely argued, reproduced, updated with much better equipment and technology, etc.  The main thrust of this work is that the brain's motor cortex initiates our actions, even simple ones, about 350 milliseconds before our "I" is even told about it, which is about 200 milliseconds before it occurs, i.e our actions are not in "our" conscious control but are initiated by the brain, ergo "free will" is an illusion.   

There is a fascinating youTube video on a BBC reporter's visit to a German research institute in which the lastest technology is used to demonstrate this phenomena about as unequivocally as it could be.  It was the "headline" video for the Science and NonDuality Conference.  Strongly recommended.

in "my" talk you will see support for "predetermination" from genetic causation folk like Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, Edward Lorentz's work on chaos/complex systems theory culminating in the "butterfly effect", cognitive neuroscience research on complex problem solving, and game theory as applied to everyday life.

This is scientific work, not philosophical analysis, done after Ramana Maharshi and Albert Einstein made their statements.  How did they make the deductions that it extends to everything, as opposed to just "big" things?  

In discussing this with folk, i point out that we are now so massively interconnected that no one can "step outside" the stream of "cause and effect".  Everything that we do has countless, unknown effects on unknown others and events.  we have no idea whether they will be "good" or "bad".  we have no knowledge of everything that had to happen to bring us to this point.   If even the smallest thing had happened to our great grandmother on the way to that dance, or dinner, we wouldn't be here. 

Trust this is useful.

stillness