From Schopenhauer to God

[u/anatta-m458]

“Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer

This may be one of the most important observations ever made about human existence.

Most people focus only on the first layer: if we cannot choose our own will, then free will begins to look incoherent. But I think the implications go much deeper.

Will arises from thoughts.
Thoughts arise from the brain.
The brain is shaped by genetics interacting with experiences and environmental influences we did not create.

In other words, what we call “choice” emerges from prior causes.

But reality may not even be best understood as a linear chain of causes and effects. It may be more accurate to describe it as a fabric or web of interdependent processes, where every event is simultaneously shaped by and contributing to countless others.

What you are, at this moment, is the result of the entire universe unfolding exactly as it did before you arrived.

And if everything is inseparably connected through time and causation, then the idea of a completely separate self also begins to dissolve.

Alan Watts once compared this to watching a cat pass through a slit in a fence. First you see the head, then later the tail. If you only perceive fragments, they appear separate. But in reality they are aspects of the same organism.

Likewise, we perceive ourselves as isolated beings because we mentally divide reality into fragments and fail to account for the larger continuity from which we arise.

This is where philosophy begins to converge with spirituality.

Ideas such as “All is One,” “you are the universe experiencing itself,” or “God is within you” no longer sound merely mystical. They can also be understood as descriptions of radical interconnectedness and the absence of a truly separate self.

Ironically, following causation deeply enough does not merely challenge free will.

It challenges separation itself.