SS A

Today, for brief moments, stop trying to control your thoughts, words, and actions.

Let them arise and unfold on their own.

Stay aware of what is happening, but don’t identify with it or try to direct it.

Thoughts, speech, and actions are simply experiences appearing in awareness.

You are not the body speaking and acting.

You are not the mind thinking and choosing.

You are the awareness in which these experiences appear.

Notice yourself simply being.

Recognize that you are the awareness of experience, not its contents.

Rest as you are, and allow life to move naturally.

—

K way

 

How is the soul proved scientifically?

Scientifically the soul is proven by consciousness. The problem is there is no scientific explanation of consciousness. The soul is an atomic particle of God’s consciousness.

In Bhagavad Gita God offers an argument in favor of an eternal soul.

Krishna says:

As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change. (Bg. 7.13)

From this statement we can deduce that reincarnation is a fact already in this life, within the same body. Once we had a baby's body, then a youth's body, and now we are in an adult body, and finally we’ll receive an old body.

During all these bodily and mental transformations, the consciousness (the I-feeling within) remains the same. IOW, the feeling of being ‘me’ remains constant. It is the same ‘me’ that was in a young body, and who is now in an old body. Ergo the 'I' (the soul) is unchanging, and hence, eternal.

So our very selves - our feeling of being an observer, a person - is a supernatural phenomenon. Anything that does not have a natural, or scientific explanation, by definition, is supernatural. Thus, being alive is a supernatural phenomenon.

It is said in the Vedas that all knowledge begins with understanding the self (the spiritual soul) to be different from the body and mind (matter). The very goal of human life is to realize one's self as separate from the body and mind. That is the beginning of all knowledge.

From understanding one’s self, one progresses to God-realization. One can understand God by first understanding oneself. This knowledge and realization is the sole prerogative of the soul in a human life-form.

Souls in lower species - animals, birds, insects, plants, microbes etc. do not have that option. They are simply engrossed in eating, sleeping, mating, and defending.

If a soul in a human form of life misuses this unique chance for self-realization, and spends his time in bodily and mental gratification, he wastes his human life-form, and in the next life he will be put back into yet another cycle in the lower species.

One attains the human form of life after transmigrating through 8,400,000 species by the process of gradual evolution. That human life is spoiled for those conceited fools who do not take shelter of the lotus feet of Govinda. —Brahma-vaivarta Purana

So how we want to perceive the world is entirely a matter of choice. Most of us are envious of God. That's why we have come here to the material world in the first place - to imitate Krishna as enjoyers and controllers.

But anyone who surrenders to Krishna will experience real happiness and satisfaction. It has nothing to do with faith. Anyone can directly experience Krishna simply by adding Him to one's life, by reciting His name.

We are all looking for Krishna, we are just looking in the wrong place. Everyone searches for love and happiness, but these things are available only as fleeting moments, They will always, without exception, end in misery. Only when we turn to Krishna can we experience lasting happiness and satisfaction.

Krishna says:

O learned Uddhava, those who fix their consciousness on Me, giving up all material desires, share with Me a happiness that cannot possibly be experienced by those engaged in sense gratification. --Srimad Bhagavatam 11.14.12

RB

 Yes — if that is the claim you’re asking about, I would refine my previous answer considerably. There is nothing obviously unscientific about Balsekar’s causal picture. In fact, a substantial part of it is quite compatible with the way science understands human behaviour.

The important distinction is between “scientifically plausible” and “scientifically demonstrated.”

What Balsekar is saying

His position can be expressed roughly as:

At any moment, what you do depends on the state of the organism, its genetics, conditioning/history, and the circumstances acting upon it. Those factors themselves have prior causes. Therefore the individual cannot step outside the causal chain and independently determine what happens.

That’s a perfectly coherent form of causal determinism.

And science gives us plenty of evidence that behaviour is strongly constrained by exactly these sorts of factors. Neuroscience, psychology, genetics and environmental science all describe behaviour in terms of interacting causal processes rather than an immaterial “chooser” standing outside them.

Where science actually becomes uncertain

The controversial word is “deterministic.”

At the level of classical physics, deterministic causal evolution is completely legitimate. And even deterministic systems can be extraordinarily unpredictable because tiny differences in initial conditions can produce enormous differences later. This is well established in chaos theory. 

But fundamental physics complicates the picture.

Quantum mechanics has both deterministic and indeterministic interpretations. For example, the Schrödinger evolution of a quantum state is deterministic, while interpretations involving wave-function collapse introduce genuinely probabilistic events. There is no settled interpretation that establishes that the universe is fundamentally deterministic—or fundamentally indeterministic. 

So Balsekar goes beyond what science currently establishes when he says:

Everything that happens is necessarily determined by the entire preceding causal chain.

Science hasn’t proved that.

But science hasn’t proved the opposite either.

And there’s an important point about quantum randomness

Suppose quantum mechanics ultimately showed that some event in your brain is genuinely random.

That wouldn’t automatically rescue the conventional idea of free will.

Imagine your brain is about to choose A or B, and a quantum event determines whether it chooses A or B.

You could then ask:

“Did I freely choose A, or did randomness determine that A happened?”

Randomness isn’t the same thing as authorship.

This is one reason the free-will debate is much deeper than “determinism versus quantum mechanics.” 

Your point about results is particularly interesting

Balsekar’s distinction between effort and results is actually quite defensible.

You can influence an outcome without controlling it.

For example:

You study → you improve your preparation → you sit the exam → the result depends on many additional conditions.

Your effort is itself part of the causal chain. It doesn’t have to be uncaused in order to be real.

This is where I think Balsekar is often misunderstood. He’s not necessarily saying:

“Don’t make effort because nothing matters.”

He’s saying something closer to:

“Effort will occur when the conditions for effort occur. Don’t imagine that a separate autonomous entity is standing outside causality and ultimately controlling the result.”

That is a philosophical interpretation of causality, not a claim that contradicts established science.

The one genuinely unscientific leap

If Balsekar says “cosmic law” merely as another way of saying the total causal order of nature, that’s philosophically respectable.

If he means there is a specific cosmic intelligence/law that science has established determines every event, then that is not scientifically established.

Science has no demonstrated evidence for a cosmic law of the specifically spiritual/metaphysical kind.

So I’d put it this way:

Balsekar’s claim	Status scientifically
Genes influence behaviour	Strongly supported
Conditioning/history influence behaviour	Strongly supported
Circumstances influence behaviour	Strongly supported
Brain processes cause/shape decisions	Strongly supported
We don’t control external results completely	Obviously supported
Human actions have causes	Strongly supported
Every event is completely determined by previous events	Not established
The universe is fundamentally deterministic	Open question
There is no separate metaphysical “doer”	Not a scientific question settled by experiment

And there’s an important subtlety: even if the universe is deterministic, that doesn’t by itself prove Balsekar’s entire philosophy. Compatibilist philosophers argue that a person can still genuinely choose even in a deterministic universe. The SEP notes that this remains an active philosophical dispute. 

So I think your instinct is right: Balsekar’s teaching isn’t something modern science has simply “disproved.” The stronger claim is that he takes a scientifically plausible causal picture and draws a metaphysical conclusion about the absence of an independent doer.

And that is where the really fascinating question begins: what exactly would “control” have to mean for a person to genuinely be the doer? Once you examine that carefully, Balsekar’s argument becomes much harder to dismiss.

RB

 Yes. If you strip Balsekar down to the essentials, his teaching is remarkably simple. And there is an interesting relationship—not a scientific proof—between parts of it and modern neuroscience.

Balsekar in 8 propositions

1. There is no separate individual doer.
   Life happens through the body-mind, but there isn’t an independently existing “me” standing outside the process and authoring it.
2. Thoughts simply arise.
   You don’t normally decide what your next thought will be before it appears. The thought appears, and then another thought may say, “I thought that.”
3. Choices also arise.
   You experience yourself as choosing, but Balsekar would say the choice is the result of countless factors—genes, conditioning, circumstances, memories, desires, other people, etc.
4. The sense of authorship comes afterward.
   “I did it” is itself another thought arising in consciousness.
5. This doesn’t mean you become passive.
   You still deliberate, choose, plan, work and respond. The point is that these activities themselves are part of the unfolding rather than being performed by an independently existing entity.
6. Therefore, psychologically, guilt and pride can loosen.
   If there is no separate author, why take absolute personal credit or blame for what happened?
7. Acceptance is not resignation.
   You can dislike something and try to change it. The attempt to change it is itself part of what is happening.
8. The final insight is not “I, the individual, have attained enlightenment.”
   That would simply recreate the doer in spiritual form.

That’s why Balsekar can feel so direct. He keeps cutting away the assumption that there is somebody behind experience who is controlling it.

Does modern science contradict him?

Not decisively. But science also does not establish Balsekar’s metaphysical conclusions.

The most relevant scientific evidence concerns free will and conscious agency.

1. Neuroscience has found that brain activity can precede conscious awareness of deciding

This is the famous work originating with Benjamin Libet. In simple voluntary-movement experiments, measurable brain activity—the “readiness potential”—could precede participants’ reported awareness of their intention to move.

That certainly sounds Balsekar-like: perhaps the brain starts the process and then “I” experience the decision as mine.

But there’s an important qualification.

Later research has challenged the interpretation that the brain activity represents an unconscious decision that has already been made. A 2021 review argued that the readiness potential may partly be an artifact of averaging spontaneous fluctuations, and that some experimental methods actually place conscious intention earlier than the readiness potential. 

A 2021 meta-analysis also found the characteristic timing pattern in Libet-style experiments, but emphasized that the crucial evidence was based on only six studies and had substantial uncertainty. 

So:

“Brain activity precedes conscious awareness” → supported in some experimental circumstances.

“Therefore there is no free will/doer” → does not follow scientifically.

2. Scientists explicitly disagree that these experiments disprove free will

This is important because popular accounts sometimes present Libet as if neuroscience has settled the question.

A 2019 review by Brass, Furstenberg and Alfred Mele concluded that Libet-style experiments do not provide a serious challenge to free will, arguing that the preceding brain activity can be part of an ongoing decision process rather than evidence that an unconscious brain has already made the decision. 

A 2023 review likewise concluded that the current neuroscientific evidence is insufficient to undermine free will. 

So modern neuroscience hasn’t reached:

“Balsekar was scientifically correct: there is no doer.”

That’s a philosophical/metaphysical conclusion, not an established scientific finding.

But there’s a deeper point

I think the really interesting comparison is not “Does neuroscience prove Balsekar?”

It doesn’t.

It’s this:

Balsekar’s claim is stronger and more subtle than “your brain makes decisions before you know about them.”

Suppose neuroscience eventually established beyond reasonable doubt that every decision has antecedent causes in your brain, genetics, environment, learning history and circumstances.

Balsekar would say:

Exactly. Where is the separate person who is the ultimate author?

But even then, a philosopher could respond:

The person doesn’t have to be outside those causal processes. The person is the functioning organism, and its reasoning and conscious deliberation can still count as genuine agency.

That position is called compatibilism, and it remains a serious philosophical position.

So science doesn’t currently settle the Balsekar question because “Who or what is the doer?” is partly a conceptual/metaphysical question, not merely a question about what neurons do.

And there’s an especially interesting experiment you can do yourself

Don’t take Balsekar’s word for it.

Right now, try to determine your next thought before it appears.

Don’t choose a particular thought. Just wait and see what thought arrives.

Then ask:

“Where did that thought come from?”

You can try the same thing with a decision:

“In five seconds, I will freely choose either A or B.”

Watch the decision arise.

You will discover something fascinating: you can certainly deliberate, but you don’t seem to know what your next mental event will be before it occurs.

That observation is compatible with Balsekar’s teaching—but it isn’t, by itself, scientific proof that there is no free will.

And this is probably why his teaching feels so direct: he asks you to examine the supposed doer in immediate experience rather than merely believing a philosophical proposition.

If you’d like, I can go one step further and  explain the apparent paradox at the heart of Balsekar: “If nobody is the doer, who is reading this and who can become enlightened?” That’s probably the most interesting part of his teaching.