DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM
The kind of life most persons choose largely conforms to what they already are. This fact provides jobs for all psychiatrists and psychologists. Most persons choose to limit their freedom to the bounds of their heredity and environment.
For example, children tend to believe that they are what their parents tell them they are, whether such assessments are positive or negative. Most people choose to conform their entire lives to their parents, and others, judgments about them.
In other words, most people’s choices conform to whatever they have already been determined to be. This happens because most people live in the past. Even if the past is painful, most people feel that it is safer than the risky present. For this reason, psychological studies tend to be accurate in predicting what certain kinds of people will choose to do in a given situation.
Some people, however, awake to realize that in the present, they are free. They realize that within themselves they possess a present choice to conform to their past or to rebel against it. They further realize that absolutely nothing can prevent them from attempting to be different from their past, or to be the same if they like what they are. Those who realize their freedom and choose to stand up to absolute nothingness, become real individuals. Those who gain this courage become what the existentialists call an authentic individual.
For example, a person who has inherited a talent and love for music has been taught in the past that music is a waste of time and so he chooses to ignore his talent. However, one day he wakes up, so to speak, and realizes that no one and no thing can prevent him from pursuing his talent for music if he wills to do so. At that moment, his way of life shifts from the past to the present. He realizes his freedom.
His fear of absolute nothingness had, at first, prevented him from pursuing his talent because of his belief that it was a wrong combination for him. However later, when he realized his freedom and moved his life into the present, he became aware that absolute nothingness could not hinder his pursuit of his talent. He gained creative freedom over absolute nothingness. His authentic individuality became a reality.
Yet, any person who chooses freedom will soon learn that he has set a very difficult task for himself. Being free is not easy. His past will constantly exert a powerful influence on his present, especially if he has emotional impairments. The free individual must work diligently every day, despite setbacks, to remain in a present freedom.
Some people succeed in their task of recreating themselves. They are able to turn their potential reality into a true reality. Their wills become directed toward the future. Instead of shrinking into the past, they learn to emerge into existential time. For example, the potential musician who works diligently to become a good musician will seldom fail.
Existential; that is, subjective time, is the only real time. Both the freedom and determinism of one’s life subsists in subjective time. Objective time is merely a regulated form of subjective time. Objective time is that measured time on which everyone must agree in order to understand each other so that actions and events can be coordinated.
Objective time is based on the motions of the earth and moon. However, without the observation and memory of these motions, there could be no regulated time. In other words, there can be no objective time without its being timed, and only duality can make an object of time so that it can be timed. In some strange way, time and its being timed is the same thing.
The past exists nowhere except in minds or in devices invented by minds to record the past. The only real past is the recorded past. The unrecorded past passes into absolute nothingness. In other words, the past exist only in memory, in writing, or, in modern times, in various forms of recording devices such as computers.
An observed object in motion continuously emerges from absolute nothingness and into observation. The only reason that duality sees motion is that it remembers where an object has been as well as observing its present position. Its motion is that its present position constantly changes into remembrance. Thus, reality is a constant link between consciousness of the remembered past, the present as a revelation, and future as potentiality. The observed present can be described as the constant flight of reality from absolute nothingness and toward future being. In the absence of duality, there can be no present reality and therefore no passage of time.
The present is a continuous revelation of reality as it passes through the universe. The present is a moving suspension between absolute nothingness and the potentialities of the future. Even the past is carried along in the present by duality. The present is like the crest of a wave of duality passing through the universe.
Some contend that the fact that the past is etched onto the present; for example, in evidences of the age of the earth, that this proves that there was a passage of time before the evolution of duality. However, if our universe had remained a consciousless universe, then this etched-on past would have passed into absolute nothingness as surely as would have the objects on which it was etched. An etched-on past must be observed and read by duality before it can become a real past.
The future exists as potentialities but only duality can make potentiality real. The finite set of simple true ideas is used to create true and false combinations. True combinations are useful in the present, but they also tend to reveal future potentialities that can be made real. False combinations reveal the excess baggage of absolute nothingness that finite duality must carry. Wherever systems do not work, or do not work well; wherever there is uselessness, there absolute nothingness hides behind the idea of nothingness.
Infinite Duality determines the infinite set of true simple ideas to be real. For Infinite Duality, there can be neither past nor future. There is only the eternal present which contains all true combinations.
Where can the present be in a consciousless universe? No wave of duality passes through it. There is no present to divide the past from the future. The past, present, and future equal absolute nothingness. A consciousless universe possesses no real existence nowhere and at no time.
Some argue that a consciousless universe can possess a past in the formations of stars that result in a build up of elements that leads to the formation of life on some planets. However, such a universe simply has no wave of revelation passing through it. All of its times are equal. It can have no passage of time. The only possible reason that finite duality can observe a past in our universe is that the past must have real existence as a constant present revelation to Infinite Duality. Should anyone doubt this conclusion, let him describe the development of a consciousless universe without using his mind. A consciousless universe can not be imagined except as passing through time, but then it is no longer consciousless. Duality is indispensable to the passage of time. The most that can be said about a truly consciousless universe is that it would have to go out of existence at virtually the same time that it came into existence.
In a consciousless universe, all potentialities would be equal. Such a universe would be swamped by its potentialities. No particular course could be chosen and thus nothing determined. In other words, all possible physical laws, all possible energy states all possible motions would be equal and undetermined. A consciousless universe can be but merely a chaotic universe.
Any researcher, sitting at a computer console plotting the courses of possible universes, forgets that he has already used his mind to determine beforehand the parameters of such universes. He must make such universes real before he can observe them. A true consciousless universe can not separate potentialities. All potentialities are equal at the same time, which is equal to no time.
Our universe is finely tuned to certain mathematical constants which allows for life to exist. This means that there must be an Infinite Duality who overcame chaos by determining the exact course for our universe that would allow for life to exist.
Some argue that in any consciousless universe, mere chance determines its course, However, chance is always a future potentiality. All chances would be equal in a consciousless universe. In addition, there could be no passage of time for chance to operate within. Thus everything that could be and could not be potential would be at the same time and at no time. This is chaos again. The truth must be that there is an Infinite Duality who has chosen our universe to be exactly as it is.
Consider an illustrative example. A group of scientists are sent to a distant planet to conduct an experiment. This experiment is impossible on earth because it requires an abundant use of an element that is rare on earth but abundant on this planet.
The scientists arrive and set up the experiment, connecting it to a computer which will control its every step. Immediately after the experiment begins, the scientists receive an emergency call to return to earth. They blast off for earth but leave the experiment running. They plan to return at some future date to determine the results which the computer will record as being (a) (b) or (c). However, because of the severity of the emergency, neither these scientists nor any others are ever able to return to that planet to find out the results.
Therefore, the potential results (a) (b) and (c) are known, but that one actual result never becomes known. The three potential results remain forever equal to each other, but the one result must remain forever equal to absolute nothingness precisely because nothing about it can ever be known.
This same condition obtains in a consciousless universe, except that not even the potentialities can be known. Every potentiality is equal, but no particular potentiality is ever realized because no duality exists to determine it. Reality must have particular effects that are localized in time and space. Duality is the only known entity that can accomplish this task. In addition, duality is the only known entity that can determine the real existence of itself. This condition leads to an infinite advancement which tends to show that Infinite Duality is real.
Einstein once said, "God does not play dice with the universe." True, but God can roll a seven every time.
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