What does Advaita say?
Chandogya Upanishad says, “Tat Tvam Asi” (You are that or You are the truth).
Quite clearly I do not feel right now that “I am the Truth”.
Why is that?
Why this ignorance about my own true nature?
Any ignorance implies that there is something standing in the way of attaining, or something that is blocking, knowledge.
What can that be?
Ego, of course, or rather some false identity or some false self that we are taking to be ourselves and not the Truth.
And, Advaita will tell you that that false self is nothing but the body-mind.
And, if you read through the sciences, both the natural and social, fields like physiology, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, political philosophy, etc., you will keep encountering theories and facts that show how insubstantial, incoherent, dependent, non-individual, conditioned, fleeting, illusory, now-here-now-not-there kind of self oneself is that is predicated on body-mind.
For instance, Robert Sapolsky, an atheist and evolutionary biologist at Stanford University, who taught a course there “Human Behavioral Biology” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA), presents several case studies where it becomes obvious that one’s behaviour, one’s views, one’s beliefs, etc., are driven by genes and biology. In particular, he presents one very dramatic case where a person who is sentenced to death because of his aggression and violence that leads him to commit murders, etc., develops some medical problems in jail for which he is operated upon where a brain tumour is discovered, removal of which leads him to becoming a totally different completely opposite personality where he is very docile, peaceful, etc. In the very first video of this series of lectures, he makes some of these points. Hence, as he puts it “Biology is destiny”, and he went on to write a book on free will titled Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (published in October 2023).
Key Core Ideas of Sapolsky’s Book on Free Will
Social and Moral Implications: Rather than descending into nihilism, Sapolsky contends that accepting a world without free will should lead to a much more humane and compassionate society—particularly by reforming how we view criminal justice, blame, punishment, and personal achievement.
Free Will is an Illusion: Sapolsky—a Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist—argues that human behavior is completely dictated by the cumulative interplay of genetics, fetal environment, hormones, childhood upbringing, culture, and immediate sensory stimuli.
No “Separate Self”: He challenges the idea that there is a homunculus or a separate conscious “self” sitting inside the brain that makes independent choices free from biological and environmental history.
Deconstructing Counterarguments: The book systematically dismantles major philosophical and scientific defenses of free will, including claims derived from chaos theory and quantum mechanics.
Now, of course, once free will is shown to be an illusion, then one needs no other evidence to realise one as the “ego” is a non-doer, and as all the Religious/Spiritual greats in India pointed out that realizing the one sis not a doer is itself liberation (I leave it to you to figure out why that could be the case).
Interestingly, though Prof. Sapolsky makes these arguments in support of Nature (Genes/Biology) as the determining factor of our lives, the opposite point that it is Nurture (environment) that determines one’s destiny is made by Dr. Bruce Lipton. “Environment is everything” is one of his most famous underlying philosophies and quotes.
He breaks down this core idea across his actual published work, most notably in his groundbreaking bestseller, The Biology of Belief.
Where This Philosophy Comes From
In his books and lectures, Dr. Lipton uses his background as a stem cell biologist to challenge traditional genetic determinism. His central arguments include:
Perception is Reality: It is a cell’s (and ultimately a human’s) perception or interpretation of their environment—filtered through beliefs and the nervous system—that alters biological function and genetic expression.
Epigenetics over DNA: He argues that genes do not control our biology. Instead, genes are simply blueprints.
The “Contractor” Metaphor: He describes the environment as the “contractor” that reads and activates those genetic blueprints.
But, Dr. Lipton’s championing the cause of environment does not give us free will because whether it is genes (Nature) or environment (Nurture) that determines what we do, ultimately it shows that we are “determined’, so no free will, so again the non-doership.
Similar knowledge and insights about the “determined” self are made by the social sciences and humanities, except they make it not by analysing the body/biology as the above two scientists did but by analysing the mind and its interactions with other minds in society, etc., which again casts doubt on free will and thus shows us we cannot be the “doers”.
Thus, we who are being shaped and moulded and determined and pushed around by biology, environment, psychology, social forces, etc., cannot then not only have free will and so cannot be the “doers” but also we do not have any enduring self qua body-mind. Once that is seen through, it loosens one’s identity with body-mind and not only sets us off on the spiritual path but also lo and behold we already find that we are quite far ahead on that path than before we read these sciences and humanities.
