Freewill

[Pyrohippie]

First: free will while we are living. If we do have any sort of free will, it is extremely limited. While learning about the brain for the last four years, I have been constantly bombarded with the biological factors that affect our actions and even our thoughts. There are an enormous amount of external and bodily influences on ourselves. Our breakfast or morning exercise routine affects our mood for the rest of the day. Even the weather and the color of the room we're in will change the decisions we make. Quite literally everything we come into contact with will force a series of events in our brain, which has to sort out all the information and decide what is important and what to do with it. But even our brain isn't who we ARE. It's just another organ. So even when our brain makes a decision, it isn't us. The only aspect of the human consciousness that the scientific community and altered-states-of-consciousness experimenters can agree on is that we are the Observer. We observe what our body and brain are doing, but that's all we can definitively say. We may have no influence at all.

Next: free will while tripping. The visuals and merging of our five senses(seeing sounds, for example) has been acceptably explained by the scientific community. For hallucinogens that imitate serotonin(LSD, psilocybin in shrooms), they act primarily on the Locus Coeruleus(LC). The LC branches out into all of our sensory regions of the brain. When the hallucinogen stimulates one sense, it travels to the other senses and can trigger a response. So, if we hear something, the LC can trigger an auditory response as well. Again, we play the role of an Observer. Notice that when we trip, we're pretty much just sitting back and observing/enjoying the experience.

Last: free will after death. Obviously, there are no definitive answers. But we can be sure that after leaving the body we are no longer constrained by all the influences I mentioned in "free will while we are living." Whether or not other influences still exist, I don't know. My guess is that we do sort of wander the planet and watch like in a movie like you suggested, but at some point we probably inhabit another body(newborns, I'm guessing). I can't say whether or not we have a choice in the matter though. All that could happen without free will. I don't think we'd stay in our bodies. It just doesn't seem very useful to remain there. However, I'm going to have my body cremated just in case. You know, force my soul or whatever out.

Either way though, life is pretty good. If I don't have free will, I'm strangely okay with that.

[ubermieux]

No point trying to control the unchangeable. Living as an observer is okay with me, well as long as I can still have movement. true observation is lack of movement and speech; then I wouldn't be okay.

[Palmer]

Interesting...
I guess I've never thought of colors of the walls and other small things interacting with how I act...

[Palmer]

Ever since I heard about this... Whenever I'm mad, happy, depressed, sad, etc. Whatever it may be, I end up thinking of this and suddenly all my emotions just kind of disappear for the time being.

Like, just knowing that tiny things like that affect my thoughts and that I am just the observer makes me just not care, and I go to a neutral emotional state- basically where I just don't care... [until something happens again].
It's really strange, knowing information like this.

IDK why, maybe it's just me but it kinda changes how I act [emotionally].

[Pyrohippie]

Well thats good, it show consciousness in its true, unadulterated state.
And wow, I dont even remember writing this

[ww3sabiture]

humans are like dice we can throw ourselfes in any direction.

edit:
spelling fixed

[Pyrohippie]

^^^Ourselfes in any dIrection^^^

And yeah, but their malluable, and moldable. its almost comical to see how easily you can manipulate them.

[ww3sabiture]

Thanks for the right spelling.

[hiperion42]

Originally Posted by Pyrohippie

...life is pretty good...

[Pyrohippie]

Are you saying its not?