Free Will and nonduality. So, there is a big debate going on right now about whether or not people have free will, and I’d like to talk about that from the point of view of nonduality. The answer is, in short, totally irrelevant. It doesn’t matter, and let me show you maybe a little explanation that’ll help you understand it.
So, I recently watched this TV show, a movie where there was a guy, a young man, and he was talking to the older, wiser guy. He was saying, ‘I feel like I’m split, like there’s a good me and a bad me, and these two things are fighting for my attention.’ And the older guy’s advice was, ‘Oh, you need to choose between the two.’ They had this big discussion, and I’m just sitting there going, ‘You’re like so missing the point.’ Because in this discussion, what they didn’t notice they were talking about these two things, they didn’t notice there were actually three beings being talked about. So here, I have a little demonstration. This is our guy, my Pink Flamingo, and he is talking about having these two beings that he’s constantly having to choose from. One’s good, I guess, and one’s bad, or it was almost like one was smart and one was dumb, something like that. One got him in trouble, and one kept him out of trouble.
So meanwhile, here’s our two beings. We have our mother turtle and the baby turtle. So, see how we have these three beings that we’re talking about here? This is the guy, these are his two projections. Let’s just call them projections that he thinks he has to choose from. And because we’re in a society that just has this good and bad thing, he thinks one of them’s bad and one of them’s good. The problem is that neither of them is him. They’re just floating around imagination he has that he’s fixated on. What he needs to discover is: who am I? Once you discover this Singularity, this just goes away because now you know who you are. You’re not going to follow this projection around anymore. We blindly follow this projection.
So, this whole discussion on whether we have free will or not is talking about the projection. Does this turtle and her baby have control over the real person? That’s the flamingo. The answer is no. This is just a projection. It doesn’t even exist. Buddhists said it, all the enlightened Masters have said it. This is what you call an illusion.
So now, we’re having this discussion on whether this turtle has free will. This turtle does not have free will. This turtle literally has nothing at all to do with our Flamingo, except maybe they’re, you know, life. So, the point of nonduality is to realize you are the singularity, and the turtle goes away.
Now, does the singularity have Free Will? From the point of view of this nonu state, it’s still a moot question because you are so thoroughly intertwined with all of existence that your actions are part of everything that’s going on. Okay, oh, hey, the bird actually makes a whole lot of sense. I don’t know how flamingos fly, but you know, you see the flock of birds and they fly. Every single one of those birds has agency, but every one of them also is part of the wave. So, it just literally, from either point of view, from the point of view of the divided self or the point of view of the united self, talking about Free Will makes no sense at all. It’s just a concept that some philosopher invented, and then everybody is sitting around just talking about it and arguing about it as if it’s important. And it’s not. I mean, it’s literally like what if I just invented some word, BL bubble blub, and then I’m like, ‘FL bubly blub is really important, let’s argue about it forever.’ And everybody starts arguing about it. Does it exist? No, I just made it up.
So, the whole thing about free will just doesn’t make sense from the point of view of nonduality. What does make sense is: do you know who you are? And does who you are, are you the singularity? Do you have agency? And the answer is, as long as you’re being captured by your illusions, you do not have agency. They’re in charge. As soon as you are in charge and you’re the master of yourself, then yes, yes, you have agency.