Is 'Destiny' a Scientific Concept?
Questioner: Namaste Acharya. I am Prashant. My question is: Is there a free will or is everything predestined? As you said, there is suffering, but where I born will change my way of suffering. But my place of birth is not in my control.
And what is the actual meaning of that, as the Bhagavad Gita said that, “Do your deed, without worrying about the outcomes (karm karo fal ki chinta mat karo).”
Acharya Prashant: Bhagavad Gita wasn’t written in Hindi, was it?
Questioner: Okay.
Acharya Prashant: Why do we forget the scientific method and the scientific rigor when it comes to dealing with holy books?
When you quote a journal, do you just do it like that? you include the full reference,right? Where it was filed, which year it was from, and who wrote it. When you quote even a Journal author (Aap kisi journal ko quote karte ho to aise hi kar dete ho? Poora number likhte ho na, kahaan file hua tha, kis year mein tha, kisne bola tha. Aap journal ke author ko bhi quote karte ho. ) When you remember the scientific etiquette, then why do we think all those things are negotiable when it comes to the scriptures?
“Bhagvad Gita says, Karm karo fal ki chinta mat karo.” Where exactly? Which Shlok? That's like saying, “Newton said that apples fall down, but papayas go up. ( Newton ne kaha tha ki seb neeche girta hai, papeeta upar jata hai.) When and where exactly?
That's not what Bhagavad Gita says. I don't mean to offend you. I just want to sensitize all of us that what we take as the scriptural wisdom coming to us — The folk wisdom has become highly corrupted and diluted. Kindly do not take anything on face value. All this WhatsApp wisdom and the Instagram reels.
“Krishna says, the one you love never let tears come into their eyes. And the one you choose to be your enemy, never let the tears in their eyes dry.” (Krishna kahte hain — jisse prem karna, uski aankh mein kabhi aansu mat aane dena; aur jisse dushmani karna, uski aankh ka aansu kabhi sookhne mat dena.)
Is that the scientific way? But we take these two worlds as poles apart. Science, we dare not mess with it. And when it comes to self-knowledge, anything goes. Free for all. Anything. One should be tried for doing this, no? If I misquote you, you will sue me. You will drag me to the courts for defaming you. Krishna should be filing so many cases — defamation. So much is being done in his name. He’ll say, “When did I say? (Maine kab kaha?)"
So now, back to the question of free will versus destiny.
Questioner: Sir, I'm a student and scholar of neuroscience. And the sort of life of neuroscientists, I would say, was made a little difficult when a series of experiments — Libet et al., 1983 and 1987. They basically demonstrated that our sort of choices can be predicted by a computer algorithm which has access to your neural activity.
Even a few milliseconds ahead of your even being aware of the decision. So for example, me lifting my left hand versus right, the algorithm can predict it ahead of my...
So then these concepts like decision, choice, intention, sort of don’t seem to make sense.Then what will be your words of advice for?
Acharya Prashant: No, it’s not just a few milliseconds, sir. Before I came here, I had a cup of coffee. Do you see me consuming glass after glass of water? This action of mine got pre-decided that very hour. It’s not even a phase lag of just a few nanoseconds or milliseconds. No.
What I did at 4:00 p.m. is make me ask for more and more water at 5:30 or 6:00, whatever is the time. 6:30.
Listener: 7:00.
Acharya Prashant: 7:00! We are entering timelessness. Are you getting it? So right now I’ll say, "I want water." As if at this moment I have decided out of my free will to ask for water. But is that so? Aren’t my actions at this moment being determined by what happened a couple of hours back?
So obviously, when it comes to mechanical systems, everything is strung together in a cause-and-effect relationship. And the cause of one thing is just the effect of another preceding thing. Do you see this?
It’s not as if the water is a result. The water is an effect of coffee and coffee is the fundamental cause. No. Coffee is an effect of something else. I don’t even know. I don’t even remember. And if I take it to its logical initiation, everything is a result of my birth. And if I take that further backwards, then my parents come into the picture, And then their parents, and then their parents, and the great apes, and then the monkeys, and then the single-celled creatures, and then God knows what — the Big Bang.
Some people say, “Who is the creator?” is nobody else but the Big Bang. But the Big Bang is a singularity, we’ll not get into that. So when we talk of the normal kind of actions, obviously, it’s a cause-effect relationship, in which there is no role of any kind of realization.
Things will happen on their own — Like birth, growing a beard, puberty, falling in love, getting married — mechanical actions. You think you are falling in love, It’s hormonal. You think you are fathering kids, It had to happen not that it’s a result of your independent volition. It’s not coming from there. Then death, it had to happen. Not that you can choose to be immortal.
You have no choice there.
What can we do, then? Can we break this cause-effect link, this entire chain? Can we cause some kind of disruption in the stream? No. We can know. You can know how it is happening. And when you know how it is happening, something changes. when you know how it is happening, then what is it that changes? Your claim over doership. You do not say “I am doing this.” You realize,“It is happening, not being done.”
And if it is happening and I’m not the doer, then I’m not. I am only when I’m the doer. If it is just happening, then I am not because I’m not doing it. And if I’m not doing it — who am I? I’m nobody. Have you seen whenever you are, you are always the one in command, one in control: “I’m doing this. I’m reacting. I'm acting. I’m deciding. I’m not deciding. I’m retreating. I’m forwarding something.”
If I realize I’m not doing anything, then I’m not. And if I’m not, then whose free will are we talking of? So in either case, there is no free will. But in the latter case, there is no suffering either. In the first case, there is no free will, but an assumption that there is free will. And who is the free one? The ego.
There is free will, “I am the one asking for water. It is my free will.” And who am I? The ego. The ignorant ego, who does not know that you are not asking for water, it is the coffee doing the talking. You’re not getting it.
In the first case, we said two cases and in neither of the cases there is free will. But in the first case, there is an assumption that there is a doer. And that doer is the sufferer.
In the second case, you realize that there is no free will. And if there is really no free will, then there is no doer. And if there is no doer, there is no suffering either. So, there is no free will. Yet there is a difference between realizing that and not realizing that.
Listener: But choosing to realize itself is an action that has to be.
Acharya Prashant: Swabhav. Swabhav is not a choice. But you are very right, you can choose not to realize. As I said, we are such experts that (Ham itne dhurandhar hain ki) we can impede realization, we cannot cause it but we have nuisance value.
For example, here you are, you might find my words irritable. “This man is just blabbering there. Nothing.” You can keep elbowing your neighbor. So, there's nothing that you are understanding, but you can impede the understanding of your neighbor. That's what we are adept at. Are you getting it?
You cannot choose to realize. When realization happens, it is an expression of who you really are.
But you can always decide, "Oh, realization is frightful. The consequences will be devastating. I choose to live in ignorance.” No, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me.”
Have you not encountered situations, by the way, practically? you want to talk about something real, authentic, really truthful to somebody and they say, “Change the topic.” Truth is horrible. Most people don’t want to take it.
Questioner: Sir, I’m questioning Vedanta and talking about the limitation of Vedant.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, It's limited. See, Vedanta is inanimate. There is a semantic problem here. Inanimate things don’t have limitations. Vedant is greatly limited if the one approaching Vedant is coming to it with limited intentions. It depends on you. Vendant has no claim to being limitless. It depends on you.
If you want the depths of oceans, you'll get it there. If you just want to skim the surface, that too you can do. The limits are set by you. So, you can do that.
Questioner: About free will, let's say I have two options: one thing I can do it, another thing I can do it. So I choose one of the options. So is it my free will?
Acharya Prashant: It totally depends on whether you realize where the options are coming from. One great mark of true free will, illumined free will, free will without the chooser or the doer, is that there will never be two options, or five options, or twenty-five options.
Even if there are twenty-five roads in front of you, you will see just one.
Questioner: Realizations.
Acharya Prashant: That's the realization. The other options stop mattering to the extent that you stop seeing them.
Questioner: So when will this realization come?
Acharya Prashant:It's great that we are being brought back again and again to the same point. That comes from where you are. We don’t have to go anywhere else. This question that you asked, the fact that you wanted the mic for yourself, the fact that you chose to be here — this is daily life.
See, it's not about some other world. It’s about this life here that we are doing every day. That's the field of true spirituality — Adhyatma.
My life, my pains, my sorrows, my griefs, my hookups, my breakups — that’s what true spirituality deals with.
It does not deal with this and that humbo-jumbo, bhoot-pret, swarg-narak, agla janam, Reading somebody’s mind, you take this special fruit and this will energize your house, or you know there are these disembodied bodies floating here and if you can please them, then they will bring you good luck.
All that is nonsense. This is my life.
What do you do? You get up in the morning and don’t want to get up. You don’t want to take a bath. You don’t want to rush to the office. You care so much about grades. You care more about somebody else’s grades. You care so much about money. You care more about somebody else’s package.
That’s your life.
And going into that is what realization is all about. And it's so simple and so direct, that we miss it.
Questioner: My point is that where I am born is not in my hand. It is not in my free will. Like, Mai agar Ambani ke ghar paida hota, different hota. So suffering will change. Right? So that is not in my hand.
Acharya Prashant: It's a concept, that’s the beauty of that. It questions all your concepts.
Why do you think that being born with a silver spoon is actually better than being born in an underprivileged, economically underprivileged family? Isn’t that a concept? Isn’t that a belief? How do you know? That's a very fundamental question — How do I know?
And when you investigate deeply, when you see what it means to be born in a very rich family, and you look at the science of those families, you actually begin to wonder: “Am I not better off not being born there?” Look at what they are doing, and there surely must be a great hollow within, that they have to resort to these kinds of very, very slimy means to please themselves and to project an image of happiness.
Else, why would I need to spend a fortune on my wedding? Why is that needed? If I’m already all right, why do I need to be so ostentatious?
It’s a concept that being born rich is better. Even better is a concept. Please understand, better is a concept. Better is not absolute. How do you know something is better than the other? These are all man-made definitions.
Whatever is man-made can be questioned by man. Why should it not be questioned by man? Betterness is a concept, is it not? And what is a concept that by definition depends on another concept?
If you begin to define betterness, you'll find that betterness depends on some other word, and that word again is a concept. So then you finally realize that it is all a doing of the ego. Hence, I need not give any great respect to all these things.
In that sense, Vedant turns you into something very disrespectful. Disrespectful not in the sense of lacking etiquette or something, in the sense of not according sacredness to every little thing, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Not bowing down in front of the world, not considering something so massive that you must submit and surrender and shiver.
Vedant turns you into a real man in terms of human being, not man as a gender.
Listener: you don’t give a sh!t.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah that's a word, you don’t give a sh!t.
Questioner: If you unlearn all the concepts.
Acharya Prashant: You don't have to unlearn. You have to ask. You have to realize concepts are concepts. See what's happening with you. You're operating in a dualistic framework. So the moment I question something, you think I'm advising you to reject it.
I'm not asking you to jump from one extreme to another dualistic extreme. I'm saying realize that it is a mere concept not something God-sent. It is just a concept.
Questioner: That realization might sort of make us unable to operate...
Acharya Prashant: Upset the apple cart. dar gaye.
Questioner: So I think it's a problem.
Acharya Prashant: Just try doing it - is it really a problem, or is it actually fun. (are kar ke dekho na problem hai ki mazza ata hai.)
Questioner: I'll try. Thanks.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, it's a problem, but a delightful one! (waise problem hai, mazedar problem hai)
Listener: Does he have free will to try?
Acharya Prashant: If he realizes, it might happen.
Listener: Does he have the free will to realize?
Acharya Prashant: Abhi to bola tha na, You have the free will to impede realization. All this discussion is so that the impedance starts looking stupid. Realization can never be something that you do. Who are you to realize? God Almighty? Are you so big that you will cause realization? No.
You can only not become the obstacle in your own realization. You can withdraw. It's all about negation. Withdrawal. “Neti-Neti, Nakar.”
Don't do anything great. Probably you are already great if you refuse to keep clutching your littlenesses, your pettinesses.
