I know it kinda sounds like that, but that's not really what I'm getting at. I think the first step is to examine what occurs when we say that something is "real" or it "exists".
Thought divides the experience of reality into discreet things for the purpose of acquiring useful information. The distinctions between things, as, for example, between "substance" (matter or energy) and "space", or even between "past" and "future," become through their use as information to accomplish some purpose. As someone (it might have been you) noted earlier in this thread, altering consciousness can have drastic effects on the way sensory information is interpreted and organized - like during dreams, after brain damage, in deep meditation or while under the influence of psychotropic drugs. Less obvious . . . but far more pervasive . . . forms can be tailored or altered through social conditioning
Three further observations follow:
(1) As the sensory input changes or the forms/memories change, or the process by which sensory input is placed into relationship changes, reality itself changes. One of the main reasons for changing forms/memories is the change of purposes. One model of reality may be quite fine for supressing strong feels of existential anxiety (e.g. "There is a God and He loves me.) but as the person matures and has less psychological need for a parent to control their well-being, the purpose of harnessing information for their own control of their environment becomes a more important purpose (e.g. "The world is a machine and understanding it through science is power.").
(2) Each instance of a process where sensory input is integrated with memory will occasion a different universe from each other such instance. Put another way, there is one Universe for each reality processor. There are as many Universes as there are conscious minds integrating the neurology of the senses with the neurology of memory. Where this integration occurs is where we find that peculiar homunculus - the "self" or the "soul." What we are referring to is the process itself at which my sensations are placed into relationship by thought. As the poet and philosopher Novalis put it, "The seat of the soul is where the inner and outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of that overlap."
As an aside, recent research shows there's a part of the human brain evolved specifically for the purpose of creating phantoms from this process - projecting a separate thingly-ness to the point were sensations are interpreted into memory to form reality. In this model, these tasks, which are mostly carried out in the part of the amygdala and pre-frontal cortex containing the "mirror neurons" we find the neurological architecture for social conditioning and the conception of the self as being. When this part of the brain projects a separate intentionality behind another thing (a so-called "Theory of Mind task"), it does so in conjunction with recognizing its own process as a thing separate from the reality it is processing - the subject/object divide is the predicate for social reality. This is why it is now believed that moderate to severe autism and its associated limitations in speech and socialization may be related to dysfunction in the mirror neurons and these Theory of Mind tasks. It could be that autistic children have a missing, limited or dysfunctional neurology of the self. Raising a moderately autistic child, it seems to me that this is what is going on with my son. He can carry out very complicated mental tasks. But he has enormous trouble distinguishing between his self and other selves. I can link you to several peer-reviewed paper abstracts and some good research summaries by leading experts in this field, if you are interested.
(3) This neurology is a predicate to the structure and use of our language and grammar itself, so using language to unwind it is at very least extremely difficult, and may be impossible. As Willamena points out, even the concept of "cause" is a thought construct that is the product of fragmenting and organizing reality in thought.
So when I say that "choices" are caused by an infinitely complex web of preceding causes, I don't mean like a causal sequence. I mean in the sense that absent an "observer" fragmenting the Universe into useful information, all of reality is inextricably intertwined in an undifferentiated whole. The "self" and its apparent choices are no different. Its immediate causes are the movements of electrochemicals in the neurological synapses, but all of these are further caused by the infinitely complex web of motion that makes up the entire universe.
As Spinoza put it in Ethics:
He goes on to write:
The projection of the will as a thing in itself is projection of a non-causal (i.e. "supernatural") source that functions apart from all other reality. The soul (the ego, the mind, the self, "I am", "that which chooses" or any use of language that presumes the identity of user as distinct from other things) is not observed by associating it with categories of sensations, but by the fact that sensations are being categorized and used - and language presumes a "mind" behind it. Either one believes in God to which the will is connected as a similarly other-worldly thing (the "soul" for instance) or one believes the will or the self is itself "God."
Magical beings that cause reality and are not caused by it are deities.
"You are something the whole Universe is doing not unlike a wave is something the whole ocean is doing." - Alan Watts
