Holisticism and Fate

[Flynn]

As far as I can tell, there is very little wiggle room between looking at the world as a series of choices which we ourselves control, and looking at it as a complicated play of sorts, with every action, thought, and emotion scripted before we are born. Both are a bit bleak; one makes it seem that we have very little purpose aside from living out our lives looking for personal happiness, and the other would mean that we are not much more than minions of some higher being, doing their bidding working towards something we will most likely never understand.

I know many of you will disagree and say that life is not this cut-and-dried, but hear me out. If certain major (or minor) events are fated to happen, by default every other event that has ever occurred must have been scripted by whoever or whatever scripted that more "significant" event. Every thought that passes through our heads influences our actions and influences our other thoughts, even on a microscopic physical level. Every action we make influences some other organism or object on some level, no matter how small. This object or thought then influences others, and so on, in a sort of hypersensitive butterfly effect. Were any event/thought/action in that chain of events changed or removed, the entirety of the future would be changed along with it. Thus, fate cannot be looked at solely in the classical or biblical sense of great plagues and floods or great times of peace or societal revelation; fate on a large scale requires fate on a small, everyday scale.

I have my own personal reasons for believing this theory of a scripted universe, mainly my frequent encounters with premontion and supernatural-esque foresight. I often have dreams about events that occur the next day (never anything very special, just average things that happen to everyone). Also recently, as I have been working on trying to accentuate these dreams, I have been thinking of things before they happen while conscious. Quite often, I will have a song in my head a few minutes before I hear it, or think about a seemingly random topic before someone else brings it up in conversation. Some of these can be explained by hearing something and bringing it from my subconscience to my conscious mind unbeknownst to me, but many cannot. How can I explain these thoughts and dreams without believing that life is scripted. Many times I would not have experienced the event about which I dreamt if I had not dreamt it.

The Tao and Eastern holisticism explains these things perfectly: everything in the universe is interconnected, and therefore everything influences everything else, whether directly or indirectly. What purpose, then, do we serve in the world if all we do is follow a script? Can we ever know, or are we destined to be stuck here blissfully ignorant of something to which we are all connected?

 

I would appreciate your opinions on the subject. I'm off to think about what will happen to the rest of the world now that I wrote this...

[Wayfarer64]

I have my own personal reasons for believing this theory of a scripted universe, mainly my frequent encounters with premontion and supernatural-esque foresight. I often have dreams about events that occur the next day (never anything very special, just average things that happen to everyone). Also recently, as I have been working on trying to accentuate these dreams, I have been thinking of things before they happen while conscious. Quite often, I will have a song in my head a few minutes before I hear it, or think about a seemingly random topic before someone else brings it up in conversation. Some of these can be explained by hearing something and bringing it from my subconscience to my conscious mind unbeknownst to me, but many cannot. How can I explain these thoughts and dreams without believing that life is scripted. Many times I would not have experienced the event about which I dreamt if I had not dreamt it.

The Tao and Eastern holisticism explains these things perfectly: everything in the universe is interconnected, and therefore everything influences everything else, whether directly or indirectly. What purpose, then, do we serve in the world if all we do is follow a script? Can we ever know, or are we destined to be stuck here blissfully ignorant of something to which we are all connected?

 

I would appreciate your opinions on the subject. I'm off to think about what will happen to the rest of the world now that I wrote this...

 

Welcome to the Bums Flynn!

 

I am very glad to read this, as I too have had some similar experiences. I recently wrote a comment about these sorts of experiences in reply to an introduction by David S Verdessi -over at the Foundation site, which I had been asked to revisit -(and found wanting in many aspects as a path I would want to take)...

 

That you too can see ahead with directed intent is something I hope to learn more about. I have only been able to do this in regards to large events in my life that involve a real change of circumstances for me physically. I do not think I have had much ability to see larger, not smaller aspects and I would llike to know if there is a technique to focus or broaden these perceptive abilities.

 

With many thanks for keeping this topic alive - Pat

Edited May 14, 2007 by Wayfarer64

[thelerner]

I don't believe in such a predetermined universe. Maybe if I saw more direction in history I would. My next move isn't la;ksjfdsa;kldf written. I see actions as pushing over karmic dominoes, but the dominoes don't flow in straight lines, the interact w/ others and fall in unknown patterns.

 

As far as coincidences. I think we have far more choices then we consciously realize and the coincidences we notice are often just examples of greater awareness to a particular area.

 

Michael

[gendao]

This reply applies here too:

 

Who are you in your dreams? Do you have free will in them? Or are they predestined - and if so - by whom or what?

 

Do "you" have a "choice" in "your" dreams?

[Tao Parrot]

The Tao and Eastern holisticism explains these things perfectly: everything in the universe is interconnected, and therefore everything influences everything else, whether directly or indirectly. What purpose, then, do we serve in the world if all we do is follow a script? Can we ever know, or are we destined to be stuck here blissfully ignorant of something to which we are all connected?

 

My interpretation of the Tao is that there is no you to have free will. You, me, and everyone else reading this thread are all part of the whole and the whole follows the tao.

 

From Peter Merel's translation of the Tao Te Ching:

The Way is limitless,

So nature is limitless,

So the world is limitless,

And so I am limitless.

[Lozen]

I have a choice in my dreams.

 

I see the world as not at all predetermined, but with multiple options and a wide range of possible endings.

[mbanu]

As far as I can tell, there is very little wiggle room between looking at the world as a series of choices which we ourselves control, and looking at it as a complicated play of sorts, with every action, thought, and emotion scripted before we are born. Both are a bit bleak; one makes it seem that we have very little purpose aside from living out our lives looking for personal happiness, and the other would mean that we are not much more than minions of some higher being, doing their bidding working towards something we will most likely never understand.

I know many of you will disagree and say that life is not this cut-and-dried, but hear me out. If certain major (or minor) events are fated to happen, by default every other event that has ever occurred must have been scripted by whoever or whatever scripted that more "significant" event. Every thought that passes through our heads influences our actions and influences our other thoughts, even on a microscopic physical level. Every action we make influences some other organism or object on some level, no matter how small. This object or thought then influences others, and so on, in a sort of hypersensitive butterfly effect. Were any event/thought/action in that chain of events changed or removed, the entirety of the future would be changed along with it. Thus, fate cannot be looked at solely in the classical or biblical sense of great plagues and floods or great times of peace or societal revelation; fate on a large scale requires fate on a small, everyday scale.

I have my own personal reasons for believing this theory of a scripted universe, mainly my frequent encounters with premontion and supernatural-esque foresight. I often have dreams about events that occur the next day (never anything very special, just average things that happen to everyone). Also recently, as I have been working on trying to accentuate these dreams, I have been thinking of things before they happen while conscious. Quite often, I will have a song in my head a few minutes before I hear it, or think about a seemingly random topic before someone else brings it up in conversation. Some of these can be explained by hearing something and bringing it from my subconscience to my conscious mind unbeknownst to me, but many cannot. How can I explain these thoughts and dreams without believing that life is scripted. Many times I would not have experienced the event about which I dreamt if I had not dreamt it.

The Tao and Eastern holisticism explains these things perfectly: everything in the universe is interconnected, and therefore everything influences everything else, whether directly or indirectly. What purpose, then, do we serve in the world if all we do is follow a script? Can we ever know, or are we destined to be stuck here blissfully ignorant of something to which we are all connected?

 

I would appreciate your opinions on the subject. I'm off to think about what will happen to the rest of the world now that I wrote this...

 

Chinese astrology has an interesting theory on this. It divides all repercussions into the realms of Heaven, Earth, and Man, or in this case, Fate, Luck, and Personal Effort. They are all more or less the same, but on different scales.

 

At the bottom is Personal Effort, the choices that one makes as a human being with choices. However, a person does not exist in a vacuum. As they make personal choices, so too are millions of other individuals also making personal choices, and so have they been, collectively, since well before any one individual was born, and in all likelihood well after they will die. This is the trick to understanding.

 

When a bunch of people make decisions for themselves, they are usually only thinking of themselves, or their immediate friends and family, or their own family line. They are not working together as a species towards any particular goals, except those ingrained within biology to mate and die. Because of this, when taken as a whole, the combined personal actions of many people create a sort of turbulence. This turbulence is called Luck. Taken over a long span of time, Luck and Personal Effort create Fate.

 

For instance, the location of the United States is fated. Same with China. Same with England. However, it wasn't always so. It is fated because the decisions that cumulatively made it so went into motion long before the current generation of people were born, and the sheer momentum by this point has become so vast that any single person or even group of people would have trouble changing it. Untold numbers of people would have to be moved, untold amounts of property would have to be destroyed and rebuilt, and even then, there'd be the problem of history. All the history of the United States that makes it the United States already happened, and it happened with certain people, in certain places, that it is now beyond our power to change, even if it wasn't, several hundred years ago. That is Fate.

 

People have no control over their own fates, but then Fate, due to its nature, tends to be broad and sweeping. Fate provides the framework in which Luck and Personal Effort reside. Through their interaction, the people of today create the Fate of the people who come after them, as the people before us created our fates.

 

One leads to the other leads to the other.

Edited May 14, 2007 by mbanu

[Flynn]

Who are you in your dreams? Do you have free will in them? Or are they predestined - and if so - by whom or what?

 

Do "you" have a "choice" in "your" dreams?

 

 

To answer Vortex's question, I never really experience the dreams in terms of choices, or even like I am "living" them in the conscious sense. I see it more like I am watching my life through my own eyes on a tv screen. I am still myself, but I don't control it, I just experience it. I assume that this would imply that my dreams are predestined, and thus I am lead to believe that I was meant to have them. By whom or what I have no idea, but their frequency and accuracy cannot be coincidental.

 

People have no control over their own fates, but then Fate, due to its nature, tends to be broad and sweeping. Fate provides the framework in which Luck and Personal Effort reside. Through their interaction, the people of today create the Fate of the people who come after them, as the people before us created our fates.

 

One leads to the other leads to the other.

 

 

I entirely agree with mbanu on this point. Every action we make creates the fate for ourselves and our descendants. This, however, does not explain the phenomenon of premonition, which could not occur (at least successfully) without some original event being fated to happen. This original event (which differs between belief systems) set into motion every following event, and thus fated us. This would explain how some people (me included) can see events that have yet to occur. What or who fated that event? Was there an origin of everything, which came out of some sort of unfathomable void? Why are we fated to do what we do?

 

Thanks alot for all of your feedback, it has been very helpful.

[sean]

I hadn't read this before I made a recent post, but I think my thoughts in this thread are synchronistically relevant: You never had a choice.

[Flynn]

I hadn't read this before I made a recent post, but I think my thoughts in this thread are synchronistically relevant: You never had a choice.

 

I noticed this too, and I thought it perfectly exemplified what I was talking about in terms of everything being connected: two discussions one after the other on the same topic, the second completely unaware of the first. Great timing, yeah?

[Todd]

This, however, does not explain the phenomenon of premonition, which could not occur (at least successfully) without some original event being fated to happen. This original event (which differs between belief systems) set into motion every following event, and thus fated us. This would explain how some people (me included) can see events that have yet to occur. What or who fated that event? Was there an origin of everything, which came out of some sort of unfathomable void? Why are we fated to do what we do?

 

Thanks alot for all of your feedback, it has been very helpful.

 

As long as we are dealing with ideas, maybe I can add some to the mix, and things may or may not open a bit.

 

All of these questions are based upon an assumption, and any thought that goes into answering these questions, without first ascertaining whether that assumption is true, might be a really big waste of time. It might not be as well, but shouldn't we find out first? The more fundamental our questions become, the closer we are to the right question. If we ask non-fundamental questions we are always at risk of wasting time, since there are always unexamined assumptions behind non-fundamental questions.

 

So what is the assumption being made in all of the questions above?

[Flynn]

As long as we are dealing with ideas, maybe I can add some to the mix, and things may or may not open a bit.

 

All of these questions are based upon an assumption, and any thought that goes into answering these questions, without first ascertaining whether that assumption is true, might be a really big waste of time. It might not be as well, but shouldn't we find out first? The more fundamental our questions become, the closer we are to the right question. If we ask non-fundamental questions we are always at risk of wasting time, since there are always unexamined assumptions behind non-fundamental questions.

 

So what is the assumption being made in all of the questions above?

 

 

I never really see any conversation that makes you think as a waste of time; you are thinking about things which you might normally not have, and opening youself to new ideas (your own or others'). The assumption I am making is that I am not completely insane or hallucinating and I have actually experienced these things. I am assuming this is true only because I have learned to believe my experiences more than my teachings, or the latter after I have "proven" it to myself. I wrote this post to try to work towards the fundamental from a specific instance. I would love to hear your input on what exactly is the fundamental question here, as I have been looking for it myself. You can only find the right question after asking many wrong ones.

[Todd]

I wrote this post to try to work towards the fundamental from a specific instance. I would love to hear your input on what exactly is the fundamental question here, as I have been looking for it myself. You can only find the right question after asking many wrong ones.

 

I got the sense that you were looking for fundamental questions and that is why I replied.

 

When I spoke of wasting time it was just to point to something that wasn't being considered. Also, how many times have you come out of the trance of some thought stream based on an assumption you hadn't thought to question until just one moment when you did and the whole thing seemed so silly and freedom so present?

 

What I am really trying to point to has nothing to do with this particular situation. If I told you what I think the assumption is, that might or might not be interesting to you, and if we were lucky enough, there might even be a bit of that feeling of freedom leaking in. However, what might be even more interesting to you, is if you could tell when an assumption is being made so that you can look for it yourself, and verify it in your own experience as you say.

 

Actually, you probably already know how to do that. So I'll just say some things.

 

What if time, as you are thinking of it, didn't exist? What if there was no past in which you had an experience of the future? If this was the case would there still be predetermination? Would we still need to search for the prime mover of what amounts to a static universe (with no possibility of deviation from a set course once the first movement has occurred)?

 

You might ask, "Well what other options are there?" Just imagine that everything you remember about the past is being created by you in this very moment, which would include memories of knowing what would happen in this moment. However, since it is all being created by you in this very moment, who is to say that it might not be different in the next moment. Perhaps in that moment you will remember hundred of past lives, and milennia in the future with startling clarity. Perhaps in the next moment none of that will be present and all you will have is what?

 

I am not saying that this is true. But do you know it is not? Are these thoughts worth investigating for you?

[freeform]

Actually, you probably already know how to do that. So I'll just say some things.

 

What if time, as you are thinking of it, didn't exist? What if there was no past in which you had an experience of the future? If this was the case would there still be predetermination? Would we still need to search for the prime mover of what amounts to a static universe (with no possibility of deviation from a set course once the first movement has occurred)?

 

Yes - this was actually my first thought - the glaring assumption of time...

 

If you start looking at experience at a depth that allows the possibility of premonition, then you are not looking at 'ordinary' experience... just as scientists have to change their complete model of the universe to study very small things - and then when studying on the newtonian level they shift to our 'ordinary' model of the universe.

 

this 'predeterminant scripting' can only exist if you think whatever 'higher power' actually operates on the ordinary plane of things - for example in time and in space - and therefore in a dual (yin - yang) state... this predetermination function requires "time" to exist.

 

You know how your dreams sometimes are premonitions for real events? - Have you ever had dreams that weren't premonitions for real events? I'm sure you had - not all your dreams are premonitions, right?

 

So if you look from the point of view that this 'higher power' operates (as would be expected) with different rules and perhaps without a dual nature (time and space cant exist in a non-dual state) - then you could start to understand some of these things without resorting to 'scripting and predetermination' or 'complete mechanistic freedom'...

 

you could think of this higher level as a soup of potentiality, out of which arises the basic polarity (space and time) which creates the play ground - and perhaps you can notice how in nature the interaction between this polarised energy (yin and yang) flows in five distinct rhythms or phases or patterns... At least that's the Taoist model...

 

So when you go to sleep, you're in effect accessing this database of non-dual potentiality, and through your consciousness and physicality you create a 'dream' - which, when awake, you sometimes witness 'happening' and sometimes you dont... And in fact imo you waking moments are not so different - you and the universe is birthed constantly out of this non dual state, and you're experiencing the physical dualness of this (and when asleep you experience much more the non-dualness)...

 

Language is a little clumsy when talking about this - just as newtonian mathematics is clumsy when explaining quantum - level theories...

[Stolanis]

Uhm, hello? Is this thing on?

 

Yes, hello all. I'm absolutely new to this site, but this was the first topic I stumbled across, and the first to genuinely interest me. I know I can't really match up to anything that has been said before, but I felt the need to chip in my two cents, as t'were. So, here goes (wish me luck).

 

I have my own personal reasons for believing this theory of a scripted universe, mainly my frequent encounters with premontion and supernatural-esque foresight. I often have dreams about events that occur the next day (never anything very special, just average things that happen to everyone). Also recently, as I have been working on trying to accentuate these dreams, I have been thinking of things before they happen while conscious. Quite often, I will have a song in my head a few minutes before I hear it, or think about a seemingly random topic before someone else brings it up in conversation. Some of these can be explained by hearing something and bringing it from my subconscience to my conscious mind unbeknownst to me, but many cannot. How can I explain these thoughts and dreams without believing that life is scripted. Many times I would not have experienced the event about which I dreamt if I had not dreamt it.

 

I can very much relate to your experiences, Flynn. Several times in my life has my mind spawned ideas that seem completely and totally original to me at the time, only to be later proved to be quite startlingly unoriginal. My 'invention' of Holisticism is a prime example: my thinking had led me down the road of Buddhist philosophies and Holism, and I wanted to combine them and some other ideas into a... well, not a religion, but more a way of seeing the world. Thus was Holisticism born in my mind. I was as excited as an excitable person with a special reason to be excited, and went around telling everybody like an anthropomorphic bunny hopped-up on caffeine (please excuse the pun) that I was the founder, leader and sole proponent of a whole new -ism.

 

So you can imagine my surprise when I idly typed 'Holisticism' into Google one day (one is reminded of that fine song for the piano-forte called The Lost Chord: 'Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease / And my fingers wandered idly over the mighty keys') and discovered that, in fact, Holisticism had already been created. Well, that day was this day. I was properly knocked for six, I can tell you.

 

However, if one was to follow the tenets of Tao to the letter, would it not be highly illogical to plump for either fatalism or its logical opposite indeterminism? These things are binary opposites and, as represented by the Yin and the Yang, are neither more prevalent than the other - indeed cannot be, for the existence of each depends on that of the other, and therefore both ways of seeing fate and causality (or the lack thereof) are both equally correct and equally flawed.

 

For example, several times in my life have my thought processes run along paths that ended up mirroring those of others, and therefore foretold (without my knowledge) what I would see in my future. However, these could be said to be completely freak happenstances - what of the myriad thoughts and visions that did not come true?

 

Not that I believe that anything is a completely freakish event, of course. It is my view that Fate and Free Will are, like all the other dualities of the cosmos, constantly interplaying amongst each other. We cannot know the answer for certain (The closer one comes to the solution, the more problems arise.), but if I was to guess I would say that Fate and Free Will are both equally responsible for everything that happens - overall and on average, of course . Using the micro/macrocosm idea, t'would appear to me to be the only logical explanation.