Sdestiny, karma, causality, laws of nature, determinism - these are all different expressions of the idea that the universe follows a predictable logic. They imply that what has happened has arisen logically from what has gone before and that the present is also determined by what has gone before. We consider this logic to be reasonable and rational, logically correct. However, if we assume that the future is also determined by the present and the past, we dismiss this as superstition, irrationality and unscientific. We resist this with all our might - at least in Western cultures.
None of this is true. The future is not determined, the past cannot be described in a purely logical, rational, scientific way. The science of history shows this with its methodological disputes, psychology offers numerous paradoxes that go back to Zeno's paradoxes, which show that time is not a measurable quantity, but as a duration is a quantity of the world of experience, i.e. of consciousness.
"Everything is predetermined, our fate is written in the stars." This idea is actually a beautiful image, as it points to something bigger. However, instead of placing our own fate in the hands of simplistic stargazers, we should understand this image as an indication of larger contexts. The cosmos does not follow our little rational logic, the universe is not written in a linear book of life, where sentence follows sentence, page follows page, event follows event, but from today's scientific point of view, the 'book' of life is more like a quantum book or a neural network, but certainly something completely different. The 'book', which in prehistoric times, before the invention of writing, was the cycle of the sun and moon, the stars and the seasons, became a narrative through written language, a mythological story that sorted and structured phenomenological experiences. In modern times, rationality took up the sword and cleared the ontological garden with Occam's knife. Everything that could not be explained rationally was put to the test and bracketed. Some things could not yet be explained rationally. And because this advance of rationality was so successful, as it boosted science and fed technological progress, the central questions of consciousness, the soul and meaningfulness were put on the back burner. I think we are beginning to realize that this was perhaps not a good idea. These new ideas of quantum physics and neural networks show us that there are alternatives to linear causality, determinism, fate and karma. They are as complex as the starry sky. In a way, we are going back to a state of being in which we accept that there are processes that elude our rationality, even though our rationality made them visible in the first place. That is a bit of a paradox.
Structurally, we are back in the world of the Vedas. Consciousness has produced a model of reality that in its complexity exceeds what seemed conceivable within its axiomatic framework. And this is precisely where the question of freedom and spirituality lies for me. It has something to do with awareness. However, some basic assumptions are necessary, namely that what my external senses can perceive does not represent the whole of reality. We all know this intuitively, and we live and talk like this in everyday life, but we deny it in scientific discourse. So let's stop denying it for a moment. Let us continue to accept that the material world is not completely arbitrary, but can be explained, and let us hold on to the experience of consciousness and the openness of our consciousness to new things, to an open future. If we now try to maintain that this should not be an irresolvable contradiction, the central question of freedom arises. We are in a state of consciousness that is enlightened, phenomenally rich and open. This state is part of the book of life, but not that somewhat naive linear book, not even those great books of the Rigveda, Genesis, Copernicus, Hawking. It is part of Brahman, part of the whole, part of universal consciousness. We have no influence on the course of that universal consciousness that eludes our consciousness, it does not belong to us - 'I am that'. The only thing we can do is to allow our state of consciousness to unfold richly.
There are moments in life when we have an inkling of this. When we are in extremely critical situations, such as near-accidents or states of shock, we experience how space and time change, our perception expands and something opens up. For a fraction of a second, perhaps even for a few seconds, we see into a cosmic state where time seems to stand still, where many elements of consciousness appear clear, where the illusion of an option for action appears. In those moments we see beyond 'reality'. An indeterminacy becomes perceptible, like Schrödinger's cat, the situation is not yet clear. This indeterminacy is what we perceive as the moment of freedom of a decision. Whether this is a decision is somewhat academic at this point. We are shocked out of our illusion of reality and into a state of consciousness that attempts to categorize the completely unforeseen.
I would like to suggest using this image as a starting point to think differently about consciousness, freedom and the book of life. We can accept that cosmic reality follows a principle, and our consciousness can expand the experience of that principle. The book of life can be experienced as such, and we as part of that book can realize our own anchoring by "opening" a page and consciously expanding our perception. It now seems to me that when we elevate the moment to a higher level of perception, the options are enriched. The field widens, the scope becomes greater. We free ourselves from the stimulus-response pattern, degrees of freedom are activated. It is not my self that acts, my ego is an illusion, but becoming aware of a section of cosmic reality creates scope for action for life itself. The experience of being part of it is spiritual practice, is bliss and freedom
