An excerpt from the book of Lama Anagarika Govinda
A view into space is
at the same time a view into the past. Space is visible time-visible, however,
only in one direction. We are like travelers on the backseat of a fast-moving
vehicle, from which can be seen only what has passed by, not what is coming.
However, who knows whether we do not move in a circle, so that a view into the
remote past would be equal to a view into the future? Even if the circle would
not be closed, but develop into a kind of three-dimensional spiral, there would
be a great deal of similarity between past and future. However that may be:
we might compare the circle to the rigid law of governing all merely relative
processes, while the deviation from the circle into a three-dimensional spiral
(by which the movement enters from the second into the next higher dimension)
indicates a certain measure of free will in the higher forms of life.
The discovery that no straight movement can be found in the universe, but that
everything, including the light, moves in curves, justifies the above-mentioned
idea. "The extended theory of relativity," says Haldane in Possible
Worlds , seems to lead inevitably to the view that the universe is finite, that
progress in any direction would ultimately lead back to the starting-point."
We can see worlds which are many thousands of lightyears away, and perhaps even
more distant worlds may be discovered, until one day we may find out that one
of them is our own world - however, not as it is now, but as it was billions
of years ago. And this is perhaps why we shall never discover, or rather, recognize
it, and why we shall go on penetrating the universe without ever coming to an
end. Because space (though it may be finite in the form in which we know it),
ever recedes before us and transforms itself under our very eyes into a new
infinity, namely, that of time.
Thus, if we contemplate the starry sky, it is not the present universe which
we see with our eyes, but a universe of the past - and what is still more remarkable-a
universe of which the different parts have not even existed simultaneously (but
some a few minutes and others some millions of years ago), though we see them
in the same moment.
But do we not live, even in our nearest surroundings, more in the past than
in the present? Do we not almost live in a world of phantoms, if we are conscious
of the fact that our bodies themselves are actually the visible appearance of
our past consciousness, which has built u this material form according to its
particular tendencies and state of development? This is perhaps the reason why
all our bodily sense-organs are toward the past, i.e. toward the consolidated
forms vibrations emanating from them, but not toward the the present in the
real sense.
The body by its nature is actually materialized karma, the consciousness of
past moments of existence made visible. Karma is nothing else but the acting
principle of consciousness which as effect (vipaka) also steps into visible
appearance The appearing form is thus essentially "past," and therefore
felt as something alien by those who have developed out of and beyond it.
The hybrid position of the body as the product of a long-passed consciousness,
and the basis of the present on presses itself also in the fact that one part
of its functions is conscious and subject to our will, as for example the movements
of our limbs, the faculty of speech, etc.-while another part runs its course
unconsciously and is not subject to our will (and therefore to our present consciousness),
as for example the circulation of the blood, digestion, internal secretions
the growth and disintegration of cells, and so on. Breathing holds an intermediate
position, because it can be raised from an unconscious into a conscious function.
Thus breathing is able to combine the present with the past, the mental with,
the corporeal, the conscious with the unconscious. It is the meditator, the
only function in which we can lay hold of what has become and what is becoming,
through which we can master the past and the future. It is therefore the starting
point of creative meditation.
We live mostly in an indirect, reactive world, and only rarely do we experience
actual reality and thus live in the present. Our usual reactions are habitual,
due to routine and therefore based upon the past, stored up in form of instinct,
memory, conceptual and emotional associations, etc. Though these functions are
necessary for the coherence and continuity of our mental and physical life,
they form only the substructure of our existence, the passive side of life;
they are our individual as well as our common inheritance. As long as this inheritance
predominates, we live essentially in the past.
Our consciousness, however, is not bound to one direction, like the body and
its senses, but partakes of the present and the future as well-provided we give
it an opportunity, by freeing it at least temporarily from the burden of the
past.
This happens in moments of contemplation or intuition (in religious contemplation
as well as in the contemplation of works of art or the beauty of nature), in
states of profound absorption or concentration. In such a state every object,
whether mental or material, is turned into a subjective and direct experience,
in which no previous associations disturb the freshness or distort the originality
of the impression.
To live in the present means to see everything with a perfectly pure, unprejudiced
and open mind, to experience everything as profoundly as if we had never known
it before. It means to retain (or to restore) the freshness and alertness of
mind which is the characteristic quality of genius.
Generally we live away from life, either by being occupied with the past, or
by anticipating the future. Both these attitudes of the mind mean bondage, karma
in its active as well as in its reactive form. To overcome one's sankharas is
equal to overcoming and Freeing ourselves from the past.
Therefore the Buddhist meditation has no other purpose than to bring the mind
back into the present, into the state of fully awakened consciousness, by clearing
it from all obstacles that have been created by habit or tradition. I have heard
a lama say that the part of a master, adept of the "Short Path," is
to superintend a "clearing." He must incite his novice to rid himself
of the beliefs, ideas, acquired habits and innate tendencies which are art of
his present mind, and have been developed in the course of successive lives
whose origin is lost in the night of time. On the other hand, the master must
warn his disciples to be on his guard against accepting new beliefs, ideas,
and habits as groundless and irrational as those which he shakes off. The discipline
on the "Short Path" is to avoid imagining things. When imagination
is prescribed, in contemplative meditation, it is to demonstrate, by that conscious
creation of perception and sensations, the illusory nature of those perceptions
and sensations which we accept as real, though they too rest on imagination;
the only difference being that, in their case, the creation is unconsciously
effected. The Tibetan reformer, Tsong Khapa, defines meditation as "the
means of enabling oneself to reject all imaginative thoughts together with their
seed."
From this standpoint the words of Tilopa gain special significance:
Act so as to know thyself by means of symbols in thine own mind, Without imagining,
without deliberating, without analyzing, Without meditating, without introspecting;
keeping the mind in its natural state.
As long as we live in the past, we are subject to the law of cause and effect,
which leaves no room for the exertion of free will and makes us slaves of necessity.
The same holds. good for what we call "dwelling in the future," which
generally is only a state of reversed memory - a combination of past experiences,
projected into the future. When, however, the past or the future are experienced
in clairvoyant states, they become present, which is the only form in which
we can experience reality (of which the other forms are so to say "perspectively
distorted reflexes"). Only while dwelling in the present, i.e. in moments
of full awareness and "awakedness," are we free.
Thus we are partaking of both: the realm of law or neccesity as well as the
realm of freedom. Science-which is only concerned with that which has become,
with the consolidated form, but not with the nature of reality or the actual
process of becoming, and thus deals with a reactive rather than an actual world-can
only conceive of a universe in which law or necessity governs supremely and
exclusively.
Science, therefore, cannot be a judge in the question of determinism or indeterminism,
or free will with respect to living things, i.e. "self-regulating and self-preserving"
organisms endowed with consciousness - nor can philosophy be so long as it relies
on scientific facts and methods, such as logical deduction, etc., which all
belong to the same reactive world, to the same secondary time-dimension. Abstract
reasoning will always lead to an extreme and one-sided result, by reducing the
problem to a number of solid concepts and ideologically watertight compartments,
which are shifted about on an artificial plane (which in reality exists as little
as those conceptual units) and allow themselves to be neatly grouped either
on this or on the opposite side of the equation, so that the result will always
be either positive or negative, or at any rate a definite decision between the
two sides.
The tacit assumption that the world which we build up in our thought is the
same world which we experience in life (to say nothing about the world "as
such") is the main source of error. The world which we experience includes
the world of our thought, but not vice-versa. Because we live in several dimensions,
of which the intellect (the faculty of thinking and reasoning) is only one.
If we intellectually reproduce experiences which belong to other dimensions,
we do a similar thing to the action of the painter who represents three-dimensional
space on a two-dimensional surface. He can do this by sacrificing certain qualities
and by introducing a new order of proportions, which are only valid within the
artificial unit of his painting and from one particular viewpoint. The laws
of this perspective correspond to the laws of logic. Both of them sacrifice
the qualities of a higher dimension; they select and confine themselves to one
viewpoint, so that their objects appear from one side only (namely, the side
which is related to their preconceived viewpoints, and under different proportions,
namely, foreshortened.
But while the artist consciously translates his impressions from one dimension
into the other - and not with the intention of imitating or reproducing objective
reality, but in order to express a certain experience or attitude towards it
- the intellectual thinker generally believes he has reproduced reality in his
thoughts, mistaking the foreshortening perspective of his two-dimensional logic
for a universal law. The use of logic in thinking is as necessary and justified
as the use of perspective in painting-but only as a means of expression and
not as a criterion of reality.
Thus it cannot be the business of philosophy to decide whether determinism or
indeterminism is the real character of the world, for there is no "either-or"
- no two possibilities between which we have to decide or to choose - but only
two sides of the same phenomenon. The problem consists only in the definition
of the relationship between the two sides.
If the logician cannot combine these two sides of our experience in his picture
of the world, in other words, if he finds it incompatible with the laws of logic,
then he only proves that his logic is unfit to deal with reality. Because here
we have to do with the most direct form of reality, with the most fundamental
facts of human experience, which neither philosophy nor religion can dare to
deny or to neglect:
1. The fact that we feel free and responsible for our actions, and that this
innermost experience of free will is the conditio sine qua non of our very existence
as conscious individuals. Without free will we would be reduced to the state
of automatons and the faculty of consciousness would not only be superfluous
but a positive hindrance.
2. The fact that we live in a world governed by laws which, though they restrict
our freedom, give us an opportunity to regulate and to direct and plan our actions,
thus bringing our behavior in harmony with our surroundings.
We cannot change the law of causality, but as soon as we know that certain causes
produce certain results, we are able to decide between several courses of action
open to us. Once chosen, we are bound to follow the course of events, resulting
from our first step.
It may be comparatively seldom that we are confronted with a genuine opportunity
to choose, because generally one situation grows of necessity out of another
and calls for a definite course of action. But the fact that we exercise our
faculties of discrimination, reasoning, and decision cannot be denied, nor can
the fact that if different individuals were confronted with the same situation,
their decisions would differ from each other.
Here the determinist will say that this proves no free will, because each individual
simply acts according to his inborn character, to which he is fettered like
the stone to the law of gravitation. This is an objection which is as silly
as it is logical, because here we begin playing with words, regardless of their
relationship to living experience (as if each individual were a reality in itself
or a mathematical magnitude with a fixed value).
Free will means the expression of one's own will, that is, the will that corresponds
to one's own nature. Thus the expression "free will" already presumes
and includes the idea of individuality or individual character. Will itself
can only arise in an individual, and if it is free, it expresses the particular
character of the individual.
The difference between a law of nature and free will is that the one acts automatically
and with universal sameness, while the other is conscious and individual. A
will which would act incoherently, and without relationship to our own nature,
would be meaningless and could certainly not be called free will, though it
were free from any conceivable law. We would rather call it madness.
Thus we can summarize:
1. Free will (or freedom in general) is not arbitrariness.
2. Free will can never be an object of observation, but only a subjective experience.
The problem of freedom and necessity is an entirely subjective problem and can
never be solved objectively (by science or philosophy).
3. Free will is a relative term, signifying the relationship of a conscious
individual towards its surroundings or towards a certain situation.
4. Therefore, there can be no absolute free will.
5. Free will means the freedom to express one's own will according to one's
own nature and insight (degree of development) in contrast to a mechanical reaction,
which follows a general law without insight into or understanding of its nature.
6. Free will does not imply that it has no law, or that its own law is in opposition
to general laws. It may or may not follow general laws, and in many cases it
modifies them and converts them into individual law.
We may compare our individual will to a railway engine, general law to a system
of railway lines. The engine can choose the line it wants to travel along, but
it cannot change the line.
The two apparently contradictory realms of freedom and necessity (ethos and
logos, free will and law) have their meeting-place in the human individual.
What appears as necessity from outside may be the most genuine expression of
freedom, of free will, if it coincides with the inner law or nature of the individual.
And here arises the main question: Are not perhaps the laws which we objectify
and which consequently we regard as imposed upon us against our own will, are
not those very laws our spiritual creation and therefore intrinsically the expression
of our own innermost will? How can the philosopher assume that he stands outside
the world and the individual, and pre- tend to be an "objective" observer
in a matter where inner experience (upon which the very laws he wants to examine
are based) is the only source of information? He is like a man in a moving vehicle,
who speaks about movements around him, without being aware that he himself is
moving.
We may fittingly sum up our situation in A. Eddington's significant words (in
Space, Time, and Gravitation): "We have found a strange foot-print on the
shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another,
to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature
that made the foot-print. And Lo! It is our own!"
With this admission science enters a new phase of its course, in which the physical
and the metaphysical are no longer contradictions, and in which the exploration
of the universe will lead to the discovery and recognition of new dimension
of the human mind.