Heidegger, Cobra, and Free Will (Part 2)

"Cobra: Free will is the ultimate mystery of the universe. It is the tool that each being can use to reconnect back to the Source to come back to the Source. And the muscle with which we train free will is decisions. So, with decisions we can shape our destiny, and with right decisions we can decide to release all attachment to that inner anomaly which still exists, whatever attachment we still have to our past situations that are blocked in our energy fields." (Source)  

"How many have ears for these words matters not. Who those are that can hear them determines man's standpoint in history." (On the Essence of Truth, p. 135)

In part one, I explained briefly about Heidegger and the energetic influences that shaped his philosophical contributions to the world.

I also found it interesting when Cobra declared "Free will is the truth" at the New York Workshop this past September, and Heidegger had a lot to say about this topic. Here is part two.

On the Essence of Truth

All quotations here are taken from Heidegger's essay On the Essence of Truth (1930), from this edition of this book which you can read online here.

In his essay, Heidegger touches on many things that Cobra has commented on in the past: the goddess mysteries, free will, truth, and anomaly.

On the origins of anomaly and mystery

"[Anomaly] is the essential counter-essence to the primordial essence of truth. [Anomaly] opens itself up as the open region for every opposite to essential truth. [Anomaly] is the open site for and ground of error. Error is not merely an isolated mistake but the realm of the history of those entanglements in which all kinds of erring gets interwoven. ... Error extends from the most ordinary wasting of time, making a mistake, and miscalculating, to going astray and venturing too far in one's essential attitudes and decisions. However, what is ordinarily and even according to the teachings of philosophy recognized as error, incorrectness of judgments and falsity of knowledge, is only one mode of erring and, moreover, the most superficial one. ... By leading him astray, [anomaly] dominates man through and through. But, as leading astray, errancy at the same time contributes to the possibility that man is capable of drawing up from his existence--the possibility that, by experiencing [anomaly] itself and by not mistaking the mystery of Dasein, he not let himself be led astray." (p. 133-4)

Here Heidegger describes anomaly as the possibility for error. He points out that false statements are in fact the most superficial form of anomaly; the most serious form of anomaly is when a person has been led astray from Source. Heidegger also suggests how to fight anomaly, which is by experiencing anomaly and recognizing the mystery of Being as a mystery.

Now what does Heidegger mean by mystery?  

"Humanity is turned away from the mystery. The insistent turning toward what is readily available and the existent turning away from the mystery belong together. ... Man's flight from the mystery toward what is readily available, onward from one current thing to the next, passing the mystery by--this is erring." (p. 133)

Here Heidegger offers some clues. We are, by default, turned away from the mystery. We preoccupy ourselves with "what is readily available" and miss the mystery altogether. That is, the colors and sensations of the physical world, the ceaseless dramas of the emotional world, the endless debates of the mental world, are all the things that are readily available for us to perceive and preoccupy ourselves with. We forget that there are things we cannot perceive, which is the mystery that pervades throughout reality.

Reading further, Heidegger explains that what we do not know (what he calls "the concealment of beings"), when allowed to be what we do not know, is not anomaly but rather mystery. This mystery is embedded in existence itself, in each of us.

"The concealment of beings as a whole is older than every openedness of this or that being. It is also older than letting-be itself, which in disclosing already holds concealed and comports itself toward concealing. What conserves letting-be in this relatedness to concealing? Nothing less than the concealing of what is concealed as a whole, of beings as such, i.e. the mystery; not a particular mystery regarding this or that, but rather the one mystery--that, in general, mystery (the concealing of what is concealed) as such holds sway throughout man's Dasein." (p. 130) 

What is the relationship between mystery and free will?  

"Freedom is the essence of truth (in the sense of the correctness of presenting) only because freedom itself originates from the primordial essence of truth, the rule of the mystery in [anomaly]." (p. 134)

Heidegger states two things here. Freedom is the essence of truth, and freedom originates from mystery, which is the positive expression of anomaly. 

How does one connect with mystery then? 

"The glimpse into the mystery out of [anomaly] is a question--in the sense of that unique question of what being as such is as a whole. This questioning thinks the question of the Being of beings, a question that is essentially misleading and thus in its manifold meaning is still not mastered. The thinking of Being from which such questioning primordially originates, has since Plato been understood as "philosophy," and later received the title "metaphysics." (p. 135)

One connects with mystery by inquiring into the Being of beings. This is also known as metaphysics.

The need to let beings be

Another key point Heidegger makes is the need to let beings be. This is not the same as letting things be. To let beings be is in fact engagement with beings.

"Letting-be is intrinsically at the same time a concealing." (p. 130)

To let beings be, we allow them their mystery. We allow a person their secrets, we allow them their free will, we allow a certain aspect of them to remain unknown to us. When we converse with them, we allow for the possibility that we do not know everything about them, we allow for the possibility that they may know something we might not. To honor the sacred, to honor another person's free will, is to enable the unknown to exist in our consciousness. We let someone follow their free will because their free will guides them on an unknown path, a path that we do not know everything about and they do not know everything about, but that path is sacred regardless. A person's individual spiritual journey is sacred because not everything is known about it.

"Letting beings be, which is an attuning, a bringing into accord, prevails throughout and anticipates all the open comportment that flourishes in it. Man's comportment is brought into definite accord throughout by the openedness of being as a whole. However, from the point of view of everyday calculations and preoccupations this "as a whole" appears to be incalculable and incomprehensible." (p. 129) 

Letting beings be is an openness to the other person's being and to one's own being. To let beings be, is to rise above seeing other people and oneself in a calculating manner. To let beings be is to surrender to that which cannot be understood.

And freedom, thus, is the act of letting beings be.

"Freedom, understood as letting beings be, is the fulfillment and consummation of the essence of truth in the sense of the disclosure of beings." (p. 127). 

Freedom, which is the act of letting beings be, allows the unknown to manifest positively as mystery and not negatively as error. And because it does this, freedom then makes truth possible.

But when we do not let beings be, beings can become distorted and the Lurker is born. 

"However, because truth is in essence freedom, historical man can, in letting beings be, also not let beings be the beings which they are and as they are. Then beings are covered up and distorted." (p. 127)

And thus freedom, or the act of letting beings be, is an act of restraint.

"The restraint of letting-be, i.e., freedom, must have granted it its endowment of that inner directive for correspondence of presentation to beings." (p. 127) 

And most importantly, freedom is not "doing whatever you want." Freedom is not an absence of rules. 

"Considered in regard to the essence of truth, the essence of freedom manifests itself as exposure to the disclosedness of beings. 

Freedom is not merely what common sense is content to let pass under this name: the caprice, turning up occasionally in our choosing, of inclining in this or that direction. Freedom is not mere absence of constraint with respect to what we can or cannot do. Nor is it on the other hand mere readiness for what is required and necessary. Prior to all this, freedom is engagement in the disclosure of beings as such... in the existent engagement through which the openness of the open region is what it is." (p. 126)  

Freedom is openness which allows the truth to come forth.

"To let be is to engage oneself with beings. ... To let be--that is, to let beings be as the beings which they are--means to engage oneself with the open region and its openness into which every being comes to stand, bringing that openness, as it were, along with itself." (p. 125)