IS THERE FREE WILL?

Physics: The Spectrum of Determinism

The Block Universe (Relativity): If space and time form a static four-dimensional continuum, the future already exists at fixed geometric coordinates. Under strict physical determinism, your decisions are the inevitable consequence of prior physical conditions.  

Quantum Indeterminacy: Quantum mechanics introduces fundamental probability via wave function collapse, breaking classical determinism. However, acting randomly is not the same as acting with intentional agency.  

Bohmian Holokinesis: In David Bohm's framework, individual volition is an explicate projection of the undivided whole. Choice is not an isolated ego acting on space, but the Universe unfolding a specific potential out of the Implicate Order.

Neuroscience: The Search for the "I", the "doer"

Unconscious Antecedents: Neuroscientific experiments demonstrate that neural readiness potentials build up in the brain up to seconds before a person becomes consciously aware of their decision to act.  

Biological Determinism: Thinkers like Robert Sapolsky argue that every choice is bound by prior neurobiology, genetics, and environment. The conscious feeling of willing an action is an downstream narrative constructed by the brain after the neural cascade has begun.  

If free will requires an isolated ego operating outside the causal fabric of the universe, it is an illusion. However, if free will is understood as the total Universe expressing choice through a localized center of awareness, action arises naturally from the Wholeness. When the illusion of being a solitary divided "doer" dissolves, the reality is the movement of the unitary undivided Universe.

A "decision" is a consequence of that what is. There is no "choice".

It's not only that there is a program/conditioning in the brain but the body/brain function in specific conditions and circumstances. For example one hospital is 1km away, and another 5km away. But the hospital that is further away is a modern one and I have a car. So the decision is to go to the modern one further away.

Can we call the movement of all the conditions and circumstances (which include the neuronal program/conditioning in the brain) the Universe?

 IT WAS NOT ME! :)

It is sure that there is no continuity (the "me"). It's a false movement produced by thought (and even given a name! :)

To be cont..

 MAGIC

They say that if you meet a ghost, you should ask the bugger for a loan :)

Does magic work in math? 

5 + 5 = 500 for example, I guess it would be great for our bankrupt economy!

I guess we have to tell that to the minister of finance.

 THE "REAL" SELF.. NOT.

Some people talk about a "real, true or deep self".. observing or doing something. That is not so.

In the true movement of reality there is no saying: "I am That". In the true movement of reality there is no language, time or self (the horizontal conflict).

So in that instant when it is said: "I am That", it is only thought doing its play of identifying itself with something. So it's not true.

The truth is that when That is (the contact with the Universal energy in the brain), you are not. When you are, That (the contact with the Universal energy) is not.

 THE HORIZONTAL CONFLICT: THE MECHANISM OF ILLUSORY FRAGMENTATION

In the fragmentary perception of thought reality is broken into "objects", which are identified, named and compartmentalized. This broken reality is a persistent recurring hypnotic fictional continuity produced by thought.

Other terms that can be applied to the fragmentary perception can be: the Horizontal Conflict, the Self, the I, the observer/ perceiver/ thinker/ controller. The reactions of this META process of thought are more thought.

This fragmentary perception is incomplete because the Self/ the I/ the perceiver is not included in the perception. Only the its objects are perceived (that what is observed - the observed).

Unitary Perception is the complete perception, which includes all that is happening: the perceived AND the perceiver (a product of thought).

In fact there are not two, the perceiver and the perceived. There is only one unitary movement and when that is realized, it means that the limited energy of thought has dissolved in the unlimited unitary Universal flowing movement (without a division/ fragmentation, control or a goal).

This complete flowing Unitary Perception is the primary function of the brain. UP is reflecting the reality that is not fragmented, because it's free of the horizontal conflict, the fragmentation of thought (into the self and not self). The fragmentation is the essence of suffering and problems.

The entity put together by memories (memory) called the "me", the self, the I is an illusion and the suffering and the problem. Its continuity is imaginary.

In fact there is only a transformation, one unitary flow of the Universal transforming energy and nothing that is not transforming, an unchanging "observer" is an illusion produced by thought.

The fragmentary false movement of clinging/ attachment and aversion, pleasure, fear and sorrow, means living in the "future", becoming, time, so not really living in the Universe of energy but in the hypnotic projection of thought.

UP is not an escape from the mechanism of thought, because all thought with its products (Horizontal Conflict, purpose, goal, pleasure, fear, sorrow, the self, self-pity, my will, effort, time, expectation, etc.) is enveloped in UP.

UP is the contact of the brain with the unitary energy of the Universe.

The fragmentary perception of thought is the contact with thought and its products.

ON MOTION

 

In David Bohm’s theory of the Holomovement (or Holokinesis), conventional movement from one isolated point in space to another ("from here to there") is not a fundamental reality. It is a secondary, surface manifestation.

At the deepest level of reality, there is only the Holomovement—the unbroken, non-local activity of total enfoldment and unfoldment of the entire universe.

1. The Surface Level: Motion "From Here to There" (Explicate Order)

What we perceive as an object moving through space from point A to point B belongs to the Explicate (unfolded) Order. In classical physics, an entity sits "here," travels through pre-existing space, and arrives "there."

In Bohm’s view, this spatial translation is only a kind of a projection created by a deeper process, much like a frame-by-frame film reel projected on a screen. The image on the screen appears to move across space, but in reality, each frame is being projected anew from a single source.

2. The Fundamental Level: Holokinesis (Implicate Order)

At the primary, Implicate (enfolded) Order, space and time are not external containers. An electron does not slide through space from "here" to "there". Instead:

• The electron at "here" enfolds back into the total fabric of the Universe (the Implicate Ground/ Order).

• An instant later, the universe unfolds a new manifestation of that electron at "there".

Because "here" and "there" are both enfolded within the same unitary undivided Wholeness, the movement is not a localized jump across a void, but a continuous re-creation of the Whole.

Bohm’s Ink Drop Analogy

To visualize this, Bohm used the metaphor of a droplet of ink suspended in a cylinder of viscous glycerine:

1. Enfoldment: When the cylinder is rotated, the ink droplet stretches out until it completely disappears into the glycerine. The drop is not destroyed; it is enfolded into the whole medium.

2. Unfoldment: When rotated in reverse, the ink droplet draws back together and reappears as a localized dot.

3. Apparent Motion: If you enfold a series of ink drops at slightly different positions and then unroll the cylinder rapidly, the dots will unfold one after another. To an observer, it looks like a single ink drop is moving from left to right across space.

In Bohmian physics, localized movement from "here to there" is an apparency. The fundamental reality is that there is only the Holomovement - he Universe perpetually folding into itself and unfolding into the Explicate Order of  "form".

ON TIME AND SPACE

In quantum theory time and space are emergent phenomena - secondary properties that arise from a deeper, non-spatiotemporal layer of quantum information (the Implicate Order?).

Just as "temperature" does not exist for a single atom but emerges from the collective motion of billions of atoms, space and time do not exist at the most fundamental quantum level.

Holographic projection of spacetime from quantum data. Source: Asian Scientist Magazine

1. Space as Emergent Entanglement

In modern theoretical physics (building on work by Mark Van Raamsdonk, Juan Maldacena, and Leonard Susskind), physical space is generated by quantum entanglement:

• The "Glue" of Geometry: If you reduce the quantum entanglement between two regions of space toward zero, the geometric distance between them effectively goes to infinity. Space "tears" apart.

• ER = EPR Hypothesis: This conjecture posits that entangled particles (EPR pairs) are connected by microscopic wormholes (Einstein-Rosen bridges). Smooth, continuous space is literally woven together by a dense network of quantum entanglement.

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2. The Holographic Principle

Modern physics demonstrates that a universe with gravity and spatial depth can be mathematically translated into a lower-dimensional boundary that contains no gravity and one less spatial dimension.

This shows that spatial depth ("distance") can be viewed as an emergent projection—much like a 3D hologram projected from a 2D sheet of encoded quantum information.

3. The "Problem of Time" in Quantum Physics

When physicists attempt to apply quantum mechanics to the entire universe (Quantum Cosmology), time disappears entirely:

• The Wheeler-DeWitt Equation: 

  
  
  This equation describes the quantum wave function of the entire Universe, and it contains no time variable (t). From the outside perspective, the Universe is frozen and timeless.

• The Page-Wootters Mechanism: Time only "appears" when an observer inside the system correlates one quantum subsystem (a clock) with another subsystem. Time is a relational perspective between entangled parts, not an absolute background flow.

The Connection to Bohmian Reality

To quantum physics, spacetime is real to our macroscopic perception, but it is not fundamental. At the Planck scale, there is no physical distance or temporal tick - there is only a non-local network of quantum states exchanging information.

This directly aligns with David Bohm’s model: what we perceive as space and time belongs to the unfolded Explicate Order, while the primary reality is the atemporal, non-local Implicate Order.