On free will, emotions, freedom and more, Q&A with Francis Lucille

[Music] the subject matter chosen by morito is something like not knowing and spontaneity so if I had prepared something I would been knowing something and I wouldn't be spontaneous so our meeting is going to be an exercise in spontaneity and uh spontaneous question will trigger spontaneous answers hopefully if there are any question to disentangle after this week of entanglement or about entanglement uh I'm not an expert on entanglement or disentanglement for that matter but uh your questions are welcome yes hi Francis so today uh I attended a talk on Free Will from The quantum mechanics point of view so what is free will what does quantum mechanics say about free will you should have attended that lecture that what you should have attended that lecture because it was so Le let's talk let's try to talk about Free Will without going into quantum mechanics and the Free Will of particles or of waves and the I'm I'm looking for an answer from consciousness's point of view yeah the the first the question about Free Will is ambiguous Free Will for whom we have to be precise usually what is meant in the question is free will for a human being for a separate entity for an individual entity in fact such an individual entity a body mind is devoid of free will you can see that Within by seeing how thoughts arise in you they arise without you prech choosing them they arise unchosen you have nothing to say you not in control of those arising thoughts otherwise you could choose to be perfectly happy right or perfectly intelligent or perfectly to behave perfectly in all circumstances never get angry Etc obviously it's not the case therefore experience shows that as a separate entity entity we are not in control of our thoughts so as a separate entity experientially there is no free will we are like Coke vending machines the universe presses the various buttons it's hot and dry I get thirsty someone tells me you're stupid I punch the guy in the face you know it's just I put my dollar and I choose diet zero or regular right or root b or whatever the same so we are as human being we are like Co vending machines basically however we have this sense of Freedom that somehow decisions are us are ours and that understanding is ours if we understand something the decisions that flows from this understanding we own it fully you see if in a given situation we clearly see what we should be doing and if our heart and our intelligences and intelligence are in agreement then we have at the same time the feeling that this decision is truly ours that it comes from our freedom therefore that point at really an identity between intelligence or understanding heart or love and freedom a place in us from which this kind of decision originate originates and that's a place of freedom and also a place of spontaneity in us to please morito yes that I can kind of address the topic you just and you need to fulfill the mission so so but this place of freedom in US is not personal it is beyond the person and that's the big discovery of all this business in fact about whatever Enlightenment the spiritual path the big Discovery is this place of freedom in us this place of intelligence of Love of understanding of consciousness and The Liberation is the discovery that this place or this reality that perceives understands loves decides is universal rather than personal that in fact it is the universe who contemplates itself through all these eyes who who hears herself through all these years you know that's symbolically the myth you know when in the babad Gita Krishna uh envey for Arjuna it's frightening body his real body with many eyes and many arms that's what is meant in fact that we all these eyes here all of our eyes are the eyes of the eyes e ye s right are the eyes of one single SE that's a great discovery and this here is freedom itself can I follow on that please but when I'm a separate self right when I'm a separate self or if I if I'm in the space of being a separate self there is a sense of personal will of taking actions for example driving here yes and so are you saying that there is no fre free will or there's free will only when you're separate you can see I was I was trying to to point to the fact that in fact this this Freedom as a separate body mind is an illusion since we don't choose our thoughts when we make a decision it comes as a thought if we don't choose our thoughts we don't choose our decisions either so the the freedom we have as a Seer itself is an illusionary Freedom like when I was a kid as a toys there were these mock Wheels because the kids at the time there were no safety belts and they were allowed to sit on the passenger seat next to the driver so we had this little mock wheels that would Stu to the to the dashboard and the kid would follow the F know so the the road would turn to the left it would turn left turn right turn right and then all of a sudden the the road would turn left and the kid would try to turn right to no avail and discover that his freedom to steal the car was a mock Freedom was not real that's what happens here we believe to be free up until you we come to places like here then we realize that we believe to be in control but we aren't in control so another followup so you are not in control of this question that you are not going to so if I was going to decide between having a glass of beer or coming to francis's talk you're saying that's happening Auto autonomically and it's only afterwards that I my mind says that this is what's youa you claim the de the deciders ship or you claim the the authorship or the claims the doership as an afterthought my my teacher while using this beautiful analogy of the clown who takes a bow after the ballerina has performed to to take the Applause to to himself oras he has not perform right but he takes a bow and this illus entity which comes after as as an afterthought claims to be the decider claims to be the Doer hi Francis um I know that a really common question uh spiritual teachers often get is you know what to do with our emotions and um how to witness them and not to judge ourselves and I've heard some of your talks about not judging your judgment and just like you wouldn't judge the storm and um while I find these to be immensely helpful I was wondering if you could give us a little journey of your own personal Evolution through your emotions like how they started like how bad they were in the beginning and how they've changed throughout your Awakening um I'm trying to just paint a picture of a long-term emotional evolution of course what you're referring to are the negative emotion right to to to be in tears upon listening to a beautiful music or being the witness of a beautiful Act of love is not pro a problem right so you are referring to negative emotions and uh the first thing think I would say is to to realize that these negative emotions can always be traced back to the belief to be a the belief that we are a separate entity uh only a fragment a separate entity can feel threatened by people by events uh which triggers negative emotions or by a potential lack of something lack of being loved lack of being recognized because if I am not loved I am in danger you like a child so all of these negative emotions they are like like various uh uh uh elements hanging from the ceiling through a single cable at the root and the single cable being this belief to be a separate entity to deal with our emotions one by one retail so to so to speak is not going to be very efficient because the moment we have not eliminated the root cause even if after 10 years of therapy of whatever we have been able to master a specific type of problem or psychological problem or emotion uh manage our anger or our addiction or what whatever the fact that the the source of all emotions is still running uh we create brand new ones instantaneously so the once we understand this we change our process and we try to deal directly with with the source of all emotions which is the sense of being a separate Consciousness a separate self and then it has been my experience that these negative emotions they they vanish without us having to do really anything specific about them about any of them that's why I I don't really do psychology for instance since you you ask about personal experience in my case the apparent reason that took me to the spiritual search I was a scientist I was a materialist I was an atheist by formation and also by tradition from my parents and uh I was experiencing problems when I was in social situations with people with women especially with young and beautiful women and uh I was trying to solve this problem and one day I went to in Paris I went to this bookstore and I was looking at the psychology display you know for a solution to this problem that when you are in your 20s you know is an important one and and that's when I picked up this book that the spine of which was Krishna mes was there was some Indian flavor to it that somehow resonated with me and then I read the book and then almost instantaneously I understood that it was useless to try to deal with my shyness so my specific problem I became interested in what I am you know and it's a big question and I didn't think very much about this problem it seemed to me that it was there but I didn't take any steps about it and perhaps two years later one day I realized that the 90% of this problem had disappeared without me doing anything about it so the best way to deal with your emotion to put it in the nutshell is be interested in the big picture let go of the small pictures the big picture will take care of the small pictures thank you um hi I seem to have this well according to you I'm laboring under a delusion that I have free will I I cannot he well I seem to be laboring I don't know if I have free will but I seem to be laboring under this delusion that I do and you know I had an Awakening where I saw myself you know one with everything and I it felt like I chose a certain path I chose to not when I realized how important it was that my thoughts were that I chose to not go down the path of unforgiveness and to dwell in places where I knew what would be at the end of that path and and this seems to work for me to I don't know if it's true that I do have free will but it seems to work for me to make a conscious effort to look at my like meditate and so I have the ability to like observe my thought patterns that um that are very repetitive and to me that has worked for me to believe that I have a choice like my thoughts are very I have the same thoughts over and over and over and I notice that when I meditate and so slowly when I see that I seem to be able to choose oh I see that and then just kind of have some space between me and these repetitive thoughts and that seems to kind of cure it and to keep me from um being the way I was before I had this and to me that's very different than what you're saying I don't know if I understood you correctly so um did I understand you correctly or what do you think of my what what what your I'm not getting do you think that I believe do you think that um people have free will to choose to to like forgive or choose to believe that the world is friendly because I seem to believe that whereas before I would choose to believe that you know I have to stay angry at people to protect myself and oh yes that sort of thing you have the choice to believe and you have the choice not to believe belief is always an option because belief is is not a fact uh belief is something for which you have no evidence but that nonetheless you choose to validate as being true you know for instance uh we don't have direct evidence that some miracle happened in the distant past we can choose to believe that it was true if even in the absence of I don't know of a video or solid evidence but there is always something flimsy when we believe in that way you see uh there is a big difference between beliefs and experience U lasting peace can only be achieved through experience never through belief could you say that again lasting peace can only be achieved through experience not through belief because beliefs are never secure but it seemed to um play out that when I um before I had the experience and I just didn't watch my thoughts you know I just let them kind of go down that road that there would be at the end of the road there would be result and I could see that and so I've chosen to uh be mindful and to meditate and to notice patterns of my thinking and that seems to go down another path that has served me a lot better and so to me that is kind of like a internal test that I've used in my own life to say okay I can change the way I think and it results in this thing over here and I can see how the other way you know was not a good experience for me as I said earlier it it depends on what you mean by I who is it who can change the thoughts when I speak to you I don't speak to a machine I speak to that which really understands and I speak to that which is free and to that which is free to choose I don't speak to something which is dead and doesn't understand therefore I speak to the Consciousness in you and this Consciousness in you is free free to choose free to even to seek itself free to at the end of the search to recognize itself and to reveal itself to itself so there is freedom yes and uh your desire for the truth whatever took you here comes from this place of Freedom the mistake we make is to believe that that which is free in US is a body mind is a woman a man a human being a separate entity oh I I I get what you're saying there's this aspect of the infinite that is kind of more than just this person here that okay I get it that which perceives a person is not a person that which perceives the limitations is not limitted okay I I canot hear here thank you now yes yes good good um our thoughts and perceptions possible when the physical body is no longer activated in what we call Life the the perceptions the question is for Consciousness which is the absolute reality completely free to create is this free reality cered to perceive Solly through a body why limit God's Infinity however from that point of view is it possible for that which is considered to be thought to carry a line of linear what I call thinking of um a thought and a consequence and a further thought when the physical structure is no longer active like I sometimes think of the brain and the body as the software understand you you if we come from the vantage point that matter is Prim ofal and that thought is created by matter then of course the end of the body means the end of thought right but our Point of Departure is not a scientific one the conclusion we reach right if it is true that matter and body and brain creates thought then when the body is dead thinking is dead the logic is impeccable however the input which is implicit in the question yes According to which matter creates thought that is questionable you see it is it is a form of religion there is no scientific evidence that Mars creates thought it's a form of religion what is obvious is that there seems to be uh two-way correspondence between thought and matter since uh some physical phenomena can have an impact of of our thinking on onto our thinking and conversely if I decide to raise a hand I can raise my hand so this thought seems to be Cally followed by an event in in the in the in the physical universe so there seems to be this two-way interaction between matter and thought however there is a third possibility which is that they are both co-created from a different Source from a different reality that creates both both thought and matter and that explain that explain then the inter the consistency between the two you see that's the nondualist hypothesis uh if there is only one single reality it is the same reality that creates the physical Universe sustains it and that creates also mind and sustains it so then this interc consistency between thought and matter or this correspondence between thought and matter is explained a way in a non-materialist materialist and also in a non- idealist fashion thank you and from that perspective could it be stated perhaps that the soul has likened unto it that the soul the soul this what some religions might call soul uh s o um has unto it an aspect of being just like the particle has the wave and that part of the soul that is likened unto the wave to the particle allows for the what we well what I in a very limited type of thinking mind way might think of as parallel um experiences since that which you speak of comes from a place of non-time and space couldn't it be that that could explain the parallel lives theory of um being this incarnated in more than one place at a time because time and space don't really matter and that level of which we were speaking a moment ago well you I'm afraid you have lost me a little bit the well the but my my answer is going to to be gratifying everything is possible yes okay let me see raise your hand yeah hi so uh given that there is no free will thank you P given that there is no Free Will and given that uh we seem to be following some kind of historic predetermined things which are there in our brain which we consider as us there seems to be no point in really having an ambition or going after after anything or doing anything I mean what's if there is no free will which I can choose to be a doctor or engineer I could be anything and uh still I mean I'm just lost that when there's no free will what's the point of living what's the point of living you didn't listen carefully enough to what I I didn't say there is no free will period and their witnesses to [Applause] that I said the bad news is that as a separate entity we have no free will the good news however is that we are not a separate entity [Applause] is this son it's the song yeah oh wait we have two M from a n perspective uh when you play tennis do you keep score and yes and if so and if if so who wins what who wins and who loses who wins wins and loses if I if I play tennis always and oh the the winner is the loser and the loser is the winner very good oh Francis um you mentioned lasting peace and I just wondered if you believe in that is that your experience if I believe in lasting peace I don't believe me either just checking thank you doesn't mean there is no lasting peace but it can only be an experience not a belief what's the use of a belief it's useless stuff your experience the the lasting piece is not a personal experience it's our common background it's our common substance nobody can claim it as a person as a separate entity it is our home it is where it is a home we have never left just we dream we have left it sorry it's me again so if if I understood you correctly when you were answering what what if I understood you correctly when you were answering the question about therapy about therapy emotional psychological conditioning what you're saying just to clarify is that when I am aware when I'm in the presence of my own awareness then that takes care of all the conditioning that may have accumulated addictions sins I don't know greed seven deadly sins so by going for the big picture you're saying stay in that abide in that sense and the other stuff will take care of itself okay the the priority is to go for the big picture first and then you can and once you have dealt with the root cause let's assume you have a tree that every you don't an olive tree and you don't like to have all these olives on your loan right and you can choose of course to clean your loan to pick the olives one by one but you can choose also so it's more efficient to cut the tree then you can remove the olives you're certain you're not going to come back however if you just piig the olives right if you just pick the olives next year you have a new crop so that's the same with those negative emotions you first have to deal with the root cause and then you can deal with the symptoms and and the root cause being the belief to be a separate Consciousness right first we have to see that that which we really are is this presence which is hearing these words right here and then to ask the question how do I know that this presence is separate that it is dependent upon a body because I know that this presence is real think about it if Consciousness were not real how could I have access to anything real through Consciousness how could something which is not real perceive reality it's not possible to to to take a to use a mathematical metaphor uh Consciousness is actually le as real at least as real as everything it perceives if not the same thing what if not the same thing if not the same thing whatever but that there is a a blatant element of reality to Consciousness we cannot deny it in fact that's the only thing we can be absolutely certain of that that that's the only certainty we can ever have that's why Socrates Socrates said you know I know I know nothing he was not completely true he knew he was I know I am but besides that I know nothing really the rest is of a lesser level of certainty than the knowing of Consciousness the problem is that in materialism we have turned that around we believe that matter is more real than that which perceives matter and besides we don't know what matter is and that's why the more the more materialists the the ones who are are not the physicists whose job it is to study matter because they know they don't know however when you go up the food chain chemists biochemists uh biologists and then psychologists and then sociologist the further away you go on the food chain in Academia from physics the more they believe that the back stops with the physicist and that the physicist has the key but the physicist they know they don't know it's a house of Cs what's time what's space what's matter what's a what's a wave function what's a four-dimensional manifold what's uh energy stress denser what's a he Bel space these are words very complicated I was before coming here I was thinking if I had to explain entanglement how could I do that because it was a subject I came up with something like you have two subsystems S1 S2 of Dimensions D1 and D2 if they don't interact right more or less but if you put them consider them together the dimension of the hir space is going to be D1 plus D2 however if they interact is going to be D D1 * D2 so that gives much more freedom to the system that's the entanglement right that then instead of having a simple tensorial product we have a s a linear combination of tensorial product of the state vectors I hope you got [Applause] it that was basically some explanation of what matter is so I'd like to look at our title which is innocence and spontaneity what is consciences relationship to innocence or what is innocence Master defines to be what is to be poor in spirit which is the same as innocent and he says one is is poor in spirit is poor in spirit who knows nothing owns nothing means is attached to nothing and wants nothing which is in fact a definition of Consciousness Consciousness is not attached to anything just as a mirror is not attached to any reflection that appears within it it lets them come it lets them go it lets them be so innocence is our true nature in fact that's why as children young children we are innocent with lose it and then hopefully we go back to it and with innocence comes peace and happiness I thought he he was hinting at some time limitations in this illusion of a yes okay seven minutes five minutes one more question giv okay one more sorry I I was getting into feel and then I dropped it can you mind stand up oh yeah Francis what can we do to facilitate collective Enlightenment transformation or Awakening what what what can we do we do to facilitate collective Enlightenment we need to first to have ourselves and to be happy before trying to make the universe Happy who would go to a therapist who is depressed what sense does it make see what I mean so first help yourself before you help the world you know in terms of of Happiness there are other areas of help of course when you don't need to be happy but if you want to help the world in terms of Happiness which is kind of essential it seems to me you first have to secure it for yourself right and then hopefully if it overflows then it will go into the world you see the problem is that the world has known a lot of people who were wanted to save the world like Hitler Stalin paulp they all have the perfect solution to save the world they should have saved themselves first I think you know when I when I hear people telling me or telling us they are going to save the world I tend to take it with a grain of salt that's [Applause] [Music] it

Channel: Science and Nonduality

Views: 62,628

Keywords: Free Will (Quotation Subject), nonduality, advaita, Jean Klein, emotions, Yoga, Meditation, Consciousness (Quotation Subject), Awareness (Quotation Subject), freedom, science and nonduality, experiense

Id: 68yRlexJTJs

Length: 46min 30sec (2790 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 13 2014