I tend not to agree with Barry about free will, but then this is a subject whose resolution seems impossible to determine. One of my early spiritual experiences was about free will and determinism. My interpretation of that experience was that they were equivalent, like the faces on the same coin, differing views of the same process. I had been having experiences like this for about two years. I had also just learned TM a few weeks before, and it did not seem to be the trigger for such experiences, though it may have greased the wheels a bit. Experiences like this come when the mind is fully engaged with the world.
One of the first spiritual techniques I encountered were insults. Now normally insults do not result in spiritual awakening or even understanding, but in a proper context they can. I do not think FFL, even though it nominally is about spirituality, is a useful context. Insults in a useful context however can highlight conditioned responses. Whether or not there is such a thing as free will, the human sense of freedom depends on how many output options we have available for a given input. With some people, if you say to them, 'you are a fucking goddamn ass hole, and your mother slept with a dog' your best option is probably to run for your life. So I was sitting with this group, doing guided meditations etc., before I learned Zen meditation, and before other techniques and before I learned TM, and the instructor started hurling insults. Some people got really upset, would stand up and say they felt really insulted and that they deserved some respect. They did not get any. But later on it became evident that this was a technique to highlight one's conditioned responses to verbal input. It was the context of this particular event that made the insults a piece of valuable information and experience, because what followed them provided the insight into what was really happening in our minds. The following historical story highlights a use of the technique: The Prime Minister of the Tang Dynasty was a national hero for his success as both a statesman and military leader. But despite his fame, power, and wealth, he considered himself a humble and devout Buddhist. Often he visited his favourite Zen master to study under him, and they seemed to get along very well. The fact that he was prime minister apparently had no effect on their relationship, which seemed to be simply one of a revered master and respectful student. One day, during his usual visit, the Prime Minister asked the master, "Your Reverence, what is egotism according to Buddhism?" The master's face turned red, and in a very condescending and insulting tone of voice, he shot back, "What kind of stupid question is that!?" This unexpected response so shocked the Prime Minister that he became sullen and angry. The Zen master then smiled and said, "THIS, Your Excellency, is egotism." Take a thermostat. It has basically one or two outputs to input. The temperature goes down, it closes a circuit and starts a heater; when the temperature rises, it opens the circuit and the heater stops. A slightly more complex system adds cooling: if the room gets too warm, it starts air conditioning as well. Some people do have about this many options to respond to input, even though the neural networks in the brain are far far more complex than a thermostat. Part of spiritual discipline is dealing consciously with one's conditioning that limits responses. Now in TM philosophy, the processes of de-conditioning, and the understanding of conditioning do not seem so overtly expressed as in some other traditions. In Zen, koans deal with various facets of the mind's conditioning by forcing an experience that goes beyond bipolar logic. On FFL, most responses to certain kinds of verbal input, what appears to be an insult, is simply to respond with another insult. Thus you have elevated your consciousness to the status of a simple thermostat. So part of the game of 'becoming free' is to widen options of response to inputs. We have lots of conditioned responses, some of them hard wired (the knee jerk reflex for example), but quite a lot are programmed into us by our parents and culture. Look at any government where there are parliaments with two more or less equal parties with opposing views, and you can predict responses of the two sides fairly accurately. Spiritual practises like meditation help to loosen the mind's grip in this respect, but some form of conscious highlighting the fact we have such conditioned responses really needs to be in operation. It is difficult to be really aware of how mechanical we are until 'Brahman consciousness' begins to settle in. It is only then that the mind becomes aware of how much its interpretation of the world of experience (that is, all of it) is simply a complete and utter lie. Brahman consciousness is just a label that is equivalent to the Buddhist nirvana, or the Christian Kingdom of the Father, or the Tao (the Way). As the Zen Sandokai says, if you cannot see the way, you cannot see it even if you are walking on it. Simple intellectual knowledge of these ideas does no good whatsoever, the thinking mind's domination has to be overthrown if you want to experience this. But these endless arguments go on on FFL because you are all a bunch of deviant cretins, devious bitches and deranged bastards with the spiritual intelligence and depth of pond scum. You have all been sucked in by a bunch of gurus that have absolutely nothing to give you except fancy words and unprovable abstract concepts and you lap it up like baby milk thinking you are going to get something significant out of it all. Well, you got nothing. Except for 'me' of course. See the halo? See the halo? No? Well you are fucking blind as well. With all of your high minded concepts, you might as well be working in the sewer for all the good it has done you, with that consciousness of a moist and fragrant turd. You are just bags of vomit and shit with vacuous aspirations of moral supremacy. Jai Guru Dev indeed. What a joke.
