The Illusion of Conscious Will

Note to readers: This post was originally posted on www.defundbakerplaces.blogspot.com on May 3, 2016. I would add these additional insights to the post: 1) The whole point of deactivating the ego brain (the level of consciousness which entitles awareness as a function and is more of an optical illusion than anything else) in order that the "Body Consciousness" is activated. This is part of a two-track system which includes our original state when we were born--free, flowing, energy that is boundless-- and the fairly destructive ego mind which allows for self-consciousness. One does not need to do anything to activate the "Body Consciousness" as it already exists; we just need to dissolve the ego. 2) In order to activate the body's consciousness, one must activate the transpersonal self outside the brain. This is necessary since how is the ego mind going to give up control? 3) Consciously Connected Breathing is an excellent practice for those who are waking up their body to a higher energy level.


The text, The Illusion of Conscious Will, (MIT Press, 2002) by Daniel M. Wegner, the late Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, offers an excellent overview of what is going on in the brain that is causing the illusion of free will. The key point: When you were, say 3 years old, things just happened; there is no self-consciousness and thus no free will. Then the brain played a trick--which apparently does not happen to other species--it created a recording device which made you believe you are a separate person. From a neurological standpoint, it probably is the case that the hippocampus, which converts short-term events into long-term memory, has been activated.

Professor Wegner's key insight: The experience of events is activated by another part of the brain than the intention of causing the event to occur. Events happen, say I intend to go to the store to pick up some item and then I think the thought, "I need to go to the store," and then I go to the store. The commonplace understanding is "I" willed this action. In fact, these urges came from another part of the brain, got translated into subvocal speech and then the action took place. The conscious you had nothing to do with it; another part of the brain did it independently of your awareness.

While Wegner's insight is correct as far as it goes, we need to go a step further in our casual analysis: What causes the urges to occur in the first place? No one knows. At this point, all the brain researchers will start "hand-waving" and offering pseudo-explanations such as "emergence of brain processes" (see  Daniel Dennett - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). While Professor Dennett certainly has some creative insights into the neurological processes of the brain, he still misses the point: What caused this emergence?

The two "best answers": 1) Consciousness, the intelligence using energy to create forms on a moment by moment basis; this is a spiritualized definition from Quantum Mechanics. 2) Agnostic, the position "we don't know." When one does a William James introspection, one finds the box is empty: Things happen and then you offer an invented story to explain it.

 Perhaps the reader can do a thought experiment: "How did I learn, grow, and do things when I was 4-years old and had no conscious awareness?"

Enlightenment is the seeing that the thoughts you have are fed to you by Consciousness. Until the transpersonal self, located outside the brain, is activated, you will be under the delusion that you created your thoughts (which obviously makes no sense). This understanding at an energetic level is necessary for further developments to happen. Otherwise, one will just keep repeating the same patterns which will keep you in a state of quiet desperation....