How do we have free will – how much can we use it?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
what is the deal? how do we have free will? how much can we use free will? suppose a cat sees a rat can the cat think today is Ekadashi the cat is driven simply by instincts it pounds on the rat and eat it if it is hungry so now we may see some food we may also have the instinct to eat it but we can have other factors in there when Newton saw the fruit falling if a monkey had been sitting there the monkey would have simply eaten the fruit and gone now Newton may also have got the fruit and let me eat it but he also had an instinct so we have an instinct which drives us instinct basically means there is this stimulus, there is this response it’s instinctive but although our instincts push us, they don’t force us we can resist that force and that resistance to the force of instincts comes from our intelligence so by our intelligence we can act not impulsively but from a long term perspective with intelligence now the scope of our free will depends on how we have used our free will in the past so for example if somebody has given into impulse repeatedly say if a person, this is the home this is the office and in between there is a bar and that person has gone to the bar and drunk liquor repeatedly has given into the impulse the impulsive by repeated indulgence becomes compulsive and so when we give into the impulse each time we give into the impulse our free will shrinks we have free will even an alcoholic has free will but maybe the free will is whether to drink brandy or whiskey it is not whether to drink or not to drink so we always have free will but the scope of the free will it decreases or increases based on how we have acted in the past and bhakti spirituality in general and bhakti in particular what it does is it helps us increase the distance internally between stimulus and response see as long as we identify with our material side, the body is basically a machine and it will act mechanically, this stimulus, this response but to the extent we rise to the spiritual level, we understand ok this is the bodily stimulus and this is the bodily response that is coming but do i want this response or should i choose some other response so by deeper by our consciousness the more we become aware of our emotions the more we become aware of our consciousness the more we decouple sensation from action so sensation from action means that ok i see some food item i get a sensation, oh i want to eat it i get saliva on that oh i am fasting, i won’t eat this that decoupling between sensation and action sensation is like the stimulus action is the response decoupling between the two that is that is the that is central to the and when we become more by spiritual practices we become more conscious of our consciousness conscious of our consciousness, that means ok this thought has come inside me, this desire has come in me when we are not conscious of our consciousness, the desire comes in and immediately we act on that desire but when the desire comes in ok this desire is coming, should i act on it should i not act on it we become aware of it and by that awareness we can choose more wisely so the more we resist our impulses we don’t have to always resist our impulses, the more we become aware of our impulses, the more we evaluate our impulses then the more our free will increases and the more we give in to our impulses, the more our free will decreases so free will essentially is the gap, free will exists in the gap between stimulus and response the greater the gap, the greater the free will does it answer the question