Is it Free Will?

The question of free will versus determination is huge, of course. In the one reality, every pair of opposites is ultimately an illusion. We’ve already blurred the division between good and evil and life and death. Is free will going to turn out to be the same as determinism? A lot seems to ride on the answer.

Free will is: Independence, Self-determination, Choice, Control over events, Future is open.
Determinism is: Dependence on an outside will, Self determined by fate, No control over events, Choices made for you, Future is closed.

These phrases sketch in the common understanding of what’s at stake. Everything in the free will list sounds attractive. We all want to be independent; we want to wake up with hope that the future is open and full of endless possibilities. On the other hand, nothing seems attractive in the determination list. Emotionally at least, the prospect of free will has already won the argument.

And at a certain level nobody has to delve any deeper. If you and I are marionettes operated by an invisible puppeteer–call him God, fate, or karma–then the strings he’s pulling are also invisible. We have little proof that we aren’t making free choices.

There is a reason to delve deeper, however, and it centers on the word Vasana. In Sanskrit, a Vasana is an unconscious cause. It’s the software of the psyche, the driving force that makes you do something when you think you’re doing it spontaneously.

Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004).

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So what do you all think? Do we live by free will or determinism?

Combination.

We do whatever we want but there are times when we are pushed a certain way.

I had this conversation with a friend the other day. Her arguement was the free will was marred as it is a reaction to a chain of events, therefore lessening the "free" ascpect of free will.