Determinism

The two forms of external determinism I call environmental determinism and orchestration.

a). Environmental Determinism
This is the determinism that is created by fate or destiny. Destiny puts a person into a central role (as peasant, merchant, priest, warrior, etc), and this role is shaped by influences such as social class, poverty, affluence, power. This type of determinism creates attitudes to society and to power.

b). Orchestration
This is what I call the determinism created by the person’s higher self or by spiritual guides (these are agents residing within heaven). This is a spiritual form of determinism. It is perhaps less noticeable for the average person, whilst being very important for a seeker who is on a spiritual quest. For such a seeker, much of his experience of life is controlled by these higher agents; they manipulate the psychological and environmental factors operating on him. They stage-manage or orchestrate his path through life.

The person is deliberately brought into difficult situations in order to force him to bring into awareness the hidden aspects, both good and bad, of his character. The purpose of orchestration is either to stimulate psychological learning about one’s character, or to develop the ability to handle arduous situations, or even to be a role model demonstrating some aspect of spirituality.

Internal Determinism

The two forms of internal determinism I call childhood determinism and abreactive determinism.

c). Childhood Determinism
This determinism affects the quality of the child’s relationships to significant people, in terms of attitudes towards sexuality and authority. This type of determinism, which includes attitudes brought from previous lives (the process of reincarnation), creates personality and a sense of identity. It centres round the two major needs of the child: validation and authenticity.

The need for validation is just the need to be validated by one’s peers, whether social peers or academic peers: the person is focusing on his or her group activities. Authenticity is a need to be "self-contained", in terms of abilities and self-worth: he or she focuses only on his/her own efforts to be an individual, irrespective of the views of others.

d). Abreactive Determinism
This is the determinism created by the mind, or more specifically, the process of abreaction. Abreaction links forms of happiness to forms of unhappiness. This stimulates psychological learning about relationships and promotes the development of self-awareness. Abreaction creates barriers in the mind; as the person tries to circumvent these barriers so learning occurs. This kind of learning involves understanding the experience of life, rather than the accumulation of knowledge. The person learns to see both the good and the bad side of life. He learns to taste the glory of success and to swallow the dregs of failure. [¹]

Environmental Determinism

Consider the first type of determinism, form (a). The amount of free will that a person has depends very much on where he is in the social hierarchy. Those people at the bottom and the top have minimal free will, whilst those in the middle have most. People at the bottom and top of society have less free will than the middle classes because they usually function on absolute thinking. Absolute thinking reduces complex problems to a few main themes so that rapid judgements and decisions can be made. With absolute thinking the choices are “yes” or “no” and little else: this narrowness restricts choice to the extremes available. We see this restriction most markedly in societies that are still effectively two-tier societies. A two-tier society is one where the liberal or middle classes are insignificant in terms of numbers and influence.

Look at the India of the twentieth century. Outside of the big towns Indian society had little in the way of affluent middle classes. Village society was effectively two-tier and the most noticeable outlook on life is that of fatalism to one’s place in life. Life is simply too hard to achieve anything by great effort. Those people at the bottom of society have little chance of achieving anything until a future incarnation puts them into the top half of society. And those in the top half are there by fate and not always by ability, so they do not actually achieve much either. Therefore fatalism is a realistic response to such a situation.

The present life of a person is in part dependent on abilities and attitudes developed in past lives and in part dependent on the play of “cosmic roulette”, or the spinning wheel of chance. Chance can be influential in destiny because a peasant at the bottom of a two-tier society cannot usually develop, within his situation, the abilities needed to be a member of the top half, that is, the abilities needed to handle social and political power. If individual destiny is due solely to merit, as taught in Buddhism, then a peasant will be eternally damned to remain a peasant.

The traditional choice of an escape route from the poverty of mind in the bottom tier has been between fundamentalist religion and a military life. Both offer a sense of power, and neither one is better or worse than the other. Only the availability of an education that is free and adequate can enable these traditional choices to be bypassed. Education can facilitate the development of psychological learning, and hence the ability to handle power in mature ways.

Power, whether based on social position or one’s own individuality, is always needed in order to effectively change one’s circumstances.

Orchestration

In the determinism of form (b), the person is not usually aware of how many of the choices in his life are controlled by spiritual agents, of which the most important is his higher self. When the time comes to make an important decision, the person believes that he alone can make it, whereas in fact it has already been made for him.

For example: suppose that he needs to change his job. He applies to five organisations and gets five interviews. He realises (by subconscious promptings generated by the higher self ) that three of the jobs are not really for him and he has to make a choice between the other two. Suppose that the one that the higher self wants is the one that is least favoured by the person. So when the person has the interview with the employer that he favours (and the higher self does not), the higher self ensures that he makes mistakes. When the crucial questions are asked by the employer, the person’s mind perhaps goes blank (so that he cannot provide an answer), or perhaps he makes an ineffectual or an inappropriate response (the higher self stimulates confusion or the negative aspects of the subconscious mind). In such ways, he dissatisfies the employer. Whereupon the only choice now for the person is the remaining one, which is also the one that the higher self wants. So he accepts this one. In his opinion he has exercised choice, whilst in reality he has accepted the only option that the spiritual agents have left open for him, which is the option that they want him to accept. The whole drama has been orchestrated by the higher self. [ This example comes from my own experience.]

Usually the only time that a person has genuine choice is when the decision that he has to make is of little importance to his ethical or psychological development. Alternatively, for long-range goals, the person may be able to exert choice with intermediate aims so long as they lead eventually towards the higher self ’s objective for him.

In the normal run of life, orchestration is not a visible process, and so the person remains unaware of it. It only becomes apparent when the person’s goals are markedly different from the goals that the higher self wants him to achieve. As always, it is conflict and not harmony that can bring out the hidden variables that are operating in important situations and relationships.

Childhood Determinism

The form of childhood determinism, form (c), is the most difficult form to handle. The problem for the infant is that confusion often surrounds its relationships to parents and other significant adults. The level of confusion may be enough to precipitate trauma in the infant, especially if the ego is still being formed, a process that usually occurs within the first three years of life.[²]. Even for a year or two afterwards, if the ego is still fragile because of negative influences it brought with it from its previous reincarnation, then it can still suffer trauma. Hence confusion and conflict become melded into aspects of its personality whilst that personality is being created or is still very immature. They fuse together. Then patterns of thinking or of behaviour are developed as means of handling confusing and distressing situations. These patterns become fixed, and form a shield of determinism for the child. Determinism is generated as a shield to protect the child against the confusion and conflict of its early life.

As an alternative, the child may prefer to immerse itself in its own internal world of self-absorption, day-dreaming and imagination rather than seeking social relationships. Overall, these patterns of thinking or of behaviour create the two major needs of the child: the need for validation and the need for authenticity. These needs shape the development of the child’s psychological growth.

As time goes by, the child becomes an adult. He has now outgrown the need for a deterministic shield, and finds that it has become an obstacle to further psychological growth. If now he wants to remove determinism and the influences of these needs by engaging in psycho-analysis then he has to accept that his personality and sense of identity will have to change as well. This type of change is often a very painful process.

Boundaries and Barriers of the Mind

The last form of determinism is mental determinism, or the setting of boundaries and barriers by the mind. This form relates to the boundaries of the ego and to its sensitivity and degree of personal evolution.

Boundaries
The ego’s abilities, strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, etc create mental boundaries. Inside these boundaries is that which defines the ego. Outside them is the rest of the world. Some of these boundaries are the product of the ego’s subjectivity, and some boundaries originate from the objectivity of social and political relationships. These boundaries have some degree of flexibility because they are not sharp but indistinct. Indistinct ego boundaries are created both by transference and by infancy trauma, but it is the latter which also gives the intensity to boundaries. The intensity of trauma is reflected in the intensity of transference and in the trait of sensitivity. [³]

When a person has evolved enough to become sensitive, this sensitivity occurs because his fuzzy ego boundaries are causing him difficulties. He feels and knows that he is separate from other people yet wants to be the same as them. This condition creates a problem: he is now very sensitive to criticism. The intensity of infancy trauma was such that the sensitive person has a lot of violence repressed in him. He responds to criticism either by anger or by fear, both of which are explosive emotions. To contain his internal violence the person needs to follow rules, or keep within mental boundaries. Rules are usually formulated as moral or religious codes, or as psychological guidelines drawn from personal experience. Rules create boundaries.

In fact the rules that a person accepts indicate the degree of freedom that he can work within. The rules that are adhered to represent the level of goodness that the person can practise and the level of truth about ideas of right and wrong that he can handle.

Barriers
Rules are not always chosen voluntarily. Sometimes they are imposed. Rules become imposed on a person in two ways. The first way is social. Society imposes social rules (or social conditioning); the person can choose whether to voluntarily adhere to them or not.

But with the second way the person has no choice – rules are imposed on him in the form of barriers within the mind. These barriers reflect the controlling influence of fate. Within his boundaries lie inflexible and sharp mental barriers, which are created by abreaction. Such barriers are needed as the person evolves.

Fate imposes the conditioning caused by abreaction. The person eventually realises that happiness leads to unhappiness, that excitement and pleasure lead to a backlash of guilt, resentment and bitterness. This backlash, generated by abreaction, forces the person to come to terms with immature thoughts and desires. It is the backlash that creates the barriers within which the person can accept life. His degree of evolution produces desires that will generate the contents of the catharsis, which is the first stage of the abreaction of guilt (abreaction 2) and his idealistic daydreams; the backlash then takes the naiveté and romanticism out of these phantasies and desires. The person ends by accepting a more realistic assessment of his aspirations and goals. He learns to cope with the barriers that abreaction puts on his hopes.

Influences of the Higher Self

All forms of determinism limit the area of consciousness that can be agreeably experienced. Outside this area the use of will becomes confused and problematic. The justification for rules and boundaries is that they are essential for the development of strong will power, which then can be used harmoniously instead of destructively. Rules help curb licentiousness and establish some forms of social harmony that can allow the development of the person.

The barriers within the mind are not the same for everyone, whether a society is considered or just a small unity such as a family. The effects of abreaction relate to the level of evolution of the person. Since people are at different levels of evolution, so the intensity of abreaction varies among people. In fact, although abreaction is universal, the intensity of it is often derived from the activity of the higher self. The more evolved that a person is, the more active the higher self is likely to be in its influence on that person, and the more intense the process of abreaction becomes. The higher self drives abreaction, most often by intensifying the stage of guilt. The higher self uses guilt as a means of diverting the person away from a course of action that the higher self dislikes: the person shies away from anything that seems to arouse intense guilt in him.

The higher self is facilitated in its energising of the process of abreaction by the power of the subconscious mind. As the person evolves, as he increases his depth of sensitivity, so his level of subconscious fear and guilt increases in intensity as well. Hence the power of the subconscious mind to influence the conscious mind increases too. As the power of the subconscious mind increases, so the intensity of abreaction increases in tandem with it.

Feeling Trapped

The function of freedom is to enlarge boundaries. When social rules become ossified, people feel trapped, and so a new desire for freedom arises. Society explodes out of its chains to inhale a new freedom. Eventually new rules are established, rules which are more harmonious to evolution than the former rules. Alternatively, when a person becomes distressed by his boundaries then he can enter psycho-therapy in order to enlarge them.

If the person cannot enlarge his barriers then he may feel trapped. Abreaction produces almost inflexible barriers, which are very difficult to change. It takes a long time for a person to assimilate the effects of abreaction when he goes through deep personal and social change. Hence abreaction produces only a slow rate of learning. For several years, as part of my psycho-analysis, I analysed the problem of good and evil: I pushed the exploration of my mind to the extreme limits possible. I hammered on the walls of abreaction, trying to tear them down and escape into freedom. To no avail. In my state of mind I felt that:
I am trapped in a mental prison, with bars of mental steel in my mind.

The way out of these dilemmas is always to enlarge one’s mind, to broaden one’s understanding of life, to learn more about oneself, to maintain one’s idealism. To every problem there is always an answer, if one perseveres long enough and can withstand the pain of self-consciousness. [However, the answer may require abilities of the mind or attitudes to life (such as equanimity) that the person does not yet possess. In which case, the answer lies in the distant future]. Freedom is a long-term goal.

If the person does not want to find his way out of his restrictive and cramping boundaries then he can always immerse himself in the traditional anodyne for sorrow, which is sex and sexuality. Sex is the consolation prize for the sorrows of a human life.

The reason is that, no matter how difficult life is, consolation can always be found in sex. The attractions of religion, drugs, or adventure may wear thin, but sexuality is always there to entrance the person. When a person passes beyond the fascination with sexuality then the problems of human evolution present themselves in all their starkness. The problems of human evolution are colossal, but lie hidden behind the masque of sexuality.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it.

[¹]. My analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the six articles on Abreaction. See Home page. [1]

[²]. I explain my view on the time period for creating an ego in the article The Ego and Relativity in the philosophy section. [2]

The copyright is mine, and the articles are free to use. They can be reproduced
anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.

Ian Heath
London, UK

If you want to contact me, use the address at the bottom of the Home page.

Also, since there are numerous articles on this site, please include the title of the article if you want me to clarify or discuss particular issues.

It may be a few days before I can respond to correspondence.

.	Four Forms of Determinism When we try and live our life based on our code of ethics, we sometimes fail in this: we make mistakes, or we cannot live up to our ideals. What difficulties prevent the full achievement of an ethical life? If a person is living in poverty, then the necessity to satisfy his survival needs can come before the practice of ethics. When the person is affluent enough so that he can ignore survival needs, then the obstacles that confront him are forms of determinism. There are external factors that lie outside the control of the individual: I call this external determinism (otherwise called “predestination” or fate). And there is conflict and confusion within the mind of the individual himself: I call this internal determinism. In all there are four forms of determinism acting on the person: two forms are due to external influences and two forms are caused by internal influences. I explore each of these forms in turn.
Sub - Headings
Internal Determinism
Environment Determinism
Orchestration
Childhood Determinism
Boundaries and Barriers of Mind
Influences of Higher Self
Feeling Trapped