The “American Dream” is built on the presumption of free will: If we try hard enough and work smart enough, we can reach our goals. Yet karma and destiny are some of the biggest influences in our life. Now new findings in neuroscience have a lot to say about free will vs. determination.
Big topic, and in one sense, not an entirely new one – perhaps a concern rather expressed in different cultural contexts. Possibly neuroscience offers a fresh spin, but is the essential concern really all that new?
A lot depends on who is defining what is the “American Dream,” which in turn has deep roots in Anglo traditions of Protestant Calvinism, which has its own debates involving free will and destiny.
Now, on another level, if someone were to argue there is no scope for individuality and free will, why are we listening to this class! From a conditional perspective, life is filled with relative concerns. On another level, we can, in theory, change everything about whatever karmic consideration we presently struggle with, though not as utterly independent controllers. Complexity abounds.
Srila Prabhupada – "If you have no free will, then you are a stone. The stone has no free will. You want to be stone? Then you must have free will! But don't misuse your free will. But don't try to become stone either. That is not life". (August 5, 1976, New Mayapur France)
Srila Prabhupada – “Unless there is a possibility of misusing our free will, there is no question of freedom.” (Dialectical Spiritualism, Critique of Descartes)
Ultimately in the "Spiritual Planets" each individual jiva soul is a unique PERSON who has the "free will" eternally to choose for themselves how to voluntarily serve Krishna the Supreme Personality of Godhead and cause of all causes, or ignore Him if they choose – that is how "free will" works in Vaikuntha beyond any material influence.
Therefore "free will" in its full potential, ONLY exists in Vaikuntha and Goloka-Vrindavana and NOT in the material creation.
Only the human species experience a little free will because of the added influence of Karmic reactions, while all other species are directed by instincts of eating, sleeping, mating and defending.