Neuroscience says there is no free will. Vedanta also comes to the absence of free will, but through the route of choiceless understanding. It says that the right action will never be a product of your choice because there's no such thing. The right action happens when you just don't see options — not because you're an idiot, but because you're in love with the right one. So, you don't require choice. You require observation. And then, you don’t have to choose. It’s an effortless flow.
This summary is AI-generated. Please read the full article for complete understanding.
Questioner: Namaste, Sir. My name is Palash. Just to begin with, the contribution you have made to both of our journeys of self-knowledge is invaluable, and I can't speak in words, so, just thank you.
My question is: Sir, I have been a follower of neuroscience and evolutionary biology for years now and as you know, that the neuroscientists have now come to a point where we understand that, technically there is no free will. We and our choices are ultimately the outcomes of our biological history and environmental history. So, my dissonance is this: does this neuroscientific understanding coexist with the Vedantic philosophy, which, to some extent, puts me and my choices at the center? So these two understandings, do they actually coexist?
Acharya Prashant: There is no dissonance here. It's a beautiful question. Neuroscience will say there is no free will, right? You, in fact, realize what you're doing or experiencing, long after the processes that lead to that deed or experience have been initiated. So, if at t = 0, if a particular physical process originates in the body; everything originates in the body, the body is everything and the brain is a part of the body, so the brain is body. So at t =0 if a particular process originates, you come to experience that process only at t = 5 or 6 or 10. And when you come to experience it, you probably feel like owning it.
