Wednesday 11 February 2015

Constraints, Freedom, and the Laws of Physics

From the moment we are born until the moment we die we are constrained. What we choose is always limited and guided by these constraints. The first constraint is that we are born into a human body. While the human body allows us many possibilities it is also constrained in different ways throughout our life. Our constraints are not static they are constantly moving. The world and the time we are born into can be seen as an uncountable variety of constraints. Some of these constraints are genetic; the information that determines the physical composition of our body. This particular information in turn determines much of our activities and interests throughout our lives. We are born male or female with varying degrees of masculine or feminine qualities, some of these qualities we are born with while others are the result of our experiences. We can be constrained by our education, money and power and these we usually get depending on the parents we are born to. We can be constrained by having too much education money or power or too little. It is the particular mix of all our constraints and how they are believed that determines much of how our lives unfold. Most if not all of these constraints are not the result of any choice we might make. We like to think that we are the director of our lives that we can choose what we will or will not do but these constraints tell a different story. It is not possible to choose anything until these constraints are understood and transcended, they cannot be transcended until they are understood. Once understood there is freedom in the sense that our view of what we are is not determined by beliefs or constraints. We can never be free of our body while the body lives but this is not important, what is important is how we understand the mind and the body and their place in the scheme of things. When this is fully understood the mind and the body become secondary to consciousness. Before they are understood consciousness is just a word without meaning. Consciousness is not constrained by anything and so is free. The laws of physics are not different to the constraints mentioned. The mind and the body are constrained by these laws but consciousness is not. All the laws of physics exist because we have a body and mind that is able to interpret the physical sensations experienced by the body and given meaning by the mind. Everything that can be known can only be known according to the computations of these two. These laws of physics are the result of what we believe and as such may be useful or untrue and not useful. Trying to understand these laws with beliefs will always fail. It is only when we can transcend our own beliefs that true understanding can take place. For consciousness there is no place, or time, or bodily experience that is any different than any other.