By |

With an Account of How Freedom Might Sometimes Be Possible for Some

Yogi in meditation
Do you have enough free will to read this essay?

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

The problem of free will has been described as ‘the most difficult and pressing problem in all of philosophy’—so I suggest you take your time over this essay.

In philosophy, so-called libertarians defend the kind of free will that the vast majority of people take for granted, that is, the kind of free will that makes us responsible for our choices, and thus for our lives, in a deep and meaningful sense.

However, libertarians are a minority among philosophers, who, for the most part, believe that this kind of free will is not possible or even intelligible, and that, like myth or magic (which is, in a sense, unfettered free will), it has no place in our modern, rational-scientific picture of the universe.

How could something that is so deeply ingrained in our psyche and that pervades every aspect of our lives be nothing more than a product of our minds? As the writer Isaac Singer (d. 1991) once quipped, ‘We must believe in free will—we have no other choice.’ Be this as it may, can a belief in free will, that is, in libertarian free will, be justified on rational grounds?

From the outset, it is important to distinguish the libertarian in matters of free will from the libertarian in matters of politics, who believes, broadly, that the role of government ought to be circumscribed to protecting individual liberties, at least insofar as those liberties do not conflict with the liberties of others. Although the free will libertarian need not share in the political libertarian’s ideal of society (many do not), there is a clear sense in which the political libertarian relies upon the existence of libertarian free will, which he or she, at least implicitly, takes for a given. Thus, if a belief in libertarian free will cannot be justified on rational grounds, neither can a belief in libertarian politics, or for that matter criminal justice, divine retribution, and much else besides.

Determinism

Given its importance to ordinary life, you’d expect libertarian free will to be popular among philosophers—but it isn’t, and this is why.

Given the physical state of the universe at any given point in time, and given the laws of physics which are universal and constant, it is impossible for the history of the universe to be any other than it is. In other words, all past and future events are written into the very fabric of the universe, which is merely ‘playing itself out’, albeit on a grand, cosmic scale.

Some 200 years ago, the polymath the marquis de Laplace transmogrified this concept of ‘causal determinism’ into a super-intelligent demon who could accurately predict the future, first, by knowing every physical fact about the universe, and, second, by applying Newton’s Laws to those facts.

Of course, Newtonian physics has since been superseded by quantum mechanics, which allows for indeterminism in the behaviour of elementary particles. Even so, quantum mechanics has not put paid to the initial concerns about causal determinism because (a) even if quantum mechanics is not itself to be superseded by a more comprehensive deterministic theory, indeterminism in the behaviour of elementary particles need not translate into indeterminism in human behaviour, and, (b) even if it did, the behaviour that resulted would be random and chaotic rather than free and responsible. 

Compatibilism

A widespread response to the problem posed by determinism is ‘compatibilism’, according to which freedom amounts to (1) being able to do something, and (2) not being prevented from doing that thing. Thus, I am free to run away if (1) I am able to run away, and (2) I am not prevented from doing so, for instance, by being held at gunpoint or locked up in a dungeon. According to the compatibilist philosopher Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), a person is free when ‘he finds no stop in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do’. If this is freedom, then a person is free even if what he has the will to do happens to have been determined.

Many eminent philosophers, from Aristotle to Schopenhauer, might be said to support compatibilism. 

Children and the lower animals as well as men are capable of voluntary action, but not of choice. —Aristotle

Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. —Schopenhauer

But surely, you might say, freedom involves not only the ability to do something, but also the ability to do otherwise. The compatibilist’s response to this objection is to define ‘the ability to do otherwise’ in the same way that they defined freedom. ‘The ability to do otherwise’ amounts to (1) being able to do otherwise, and (2) not being prevented from doing otherwise. Had I wanted to do otherwise than run away, nothing would have prevented me from doing so. However, I did not want to do otherwise than run away (because what I wanted to do was determined), and, in this sense, I acted freely.

Still, even if the compatibilist account is able to capture surface freedoms involving the ability to do or not do something, it does not seem to capture the deep freedom of choice that most people associate with free will. When you and I talk about free will, we do not mean merely ‘unconstrained choice’, but also control over that choice. But the compatibilist would insist that this sort of strong, libertarian free will is simply incoherent: the same past cannot lead to more than one possible future, basta, un point c’est tout, end of the story.

Imagine that Emma, in her final year at college, is deliberating between careers: teaching on the one hand and investment banking on the other. After due consideration, she ‘chooses’ to go into investment banking. Given the same past—the same upbringing, the same beliefs and desires, the same thought processes—how could she possibly have ‘chosen’ otherwise? Emma could only have chosen otherwise if her past, that is, the past, had been different—but, of course, the past could not have been different for the simple reason that there is only ever one past. Even if she could have chosen otherwise, such a choice would seem inexplicable, and therefore arbitrary, in light of her upbringing, her beliefs and desires, and so on.

In essence, says the compatibilist, people have a confused notion not just of freedom, but also of determinism, which they associate with constraint or compulsion. Clearing up this confusion does not usually bring them round to compatibilism, because what they actually believe is that determinism is in itself incompatible with free will. In other words, they are incompatibilists. 

Indeterminism

It gets even thornier for the incompatibilists, in that their idea of free will is incompatible not only with determinism but also with indeterminism!

If undetermined events like quantum leaps occur by chance, and if free actions are undetermined events, it seems that free actions also occur by chance. But this is a contradiction in terms, since free and responsible actions cannot, by definition, occur by chance. If my actions are the result of undetermined events in my brain, they are random and chaotic, and undermine rather than enable my freedom.

Imagine that I am deliberating between fast food and a healthier but more time-consuming home-cooked meal, and that, at the outcome of this deliberation, I opt for the home-cooked meal. If my choices are undetermined, I might at this point, despite the process of deliberation that I have just undergone, suddenly and inexplicably ‘change my mind’ and plump for fast food. You might argue, along with the idealist philosopher GW Leibniz (d. 1716), that prior reasons merely ‘incline without necessitating’. But it is precisely because prior reasons inclined me towards the garden risotto that I chose it over the cheeseburger. Had I instead gone for the cheeseburger, this ‘choice’ would not truly have been my own.

Or, imagine that I have an exact counterpart, Neel*, who lives in another possible world which is in all respects identical to this one. One day, I succumb to the temptation to steal a bicycle, whereas Neel* resists this temptation—even though both of us have had exactly the same past up to that point. In the words of the philosopher Alfred Mele (b. 1951), ‘If there is nothing about the agents’ powers, capacities, states of mind, moral character and the like that explains this difference in outcome … the difference is just a matter of luck.’ 

Mind, Soul, and the Causa Sui

If they are to hold that free will is compatible with indeterminism, libertarians need to provide an account of how we might be able to act and act otherwise without it seeming completely arbitrary. After Descartes, who distinguished the immaterial mind from the material body, a common libertarian move has been to posit an additional factor such as the mind or soul that is not bound by the laws of physics. Although the mind or soul exists outside the material realm, it is able to intervene in the material realm to influence events—possibly by exploiting the indeterminism in the brain.

Some libertarians believe that such a Cartesian dualism of mind and body is the only possible solution to the problem of free will. But, putting aside traditional concerns about mind-body dualism, it is not at all clear that mind-body dualism is an effective response to the threat of indeterminism. If Emma’s decision to go into banking is no longer determined by the prior activity of her brain, then it is determined by the prior activity of her disembodied mind or soul. In other words, all that mind-body dualism achieves is to shift the problem to one remove, that is, from the brain to a (hypothetical) mind or soul.

All that remains to dualist libertarians is to appeal to mystery and claim that disembodied minds or souls exist in a realm that is beyond reason or science. This was, more or less, the line adopted by Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), who argued that free will is presupposed by our practical and moral lives. Although reason and science can tell us about how things appear in the world (‘phenomena’), they cannot tell us about how they are in themselves (‘noumena’). Our noumenal selves, which govern our practical and moral lives, lie beyond the material realm of reason and science, and cannot be apprehended in those terms.

Another ‘additional factor’ strategy, the agent-causal strategy, consists in arguing that Emma’s choices are determined, not by prior events (determinism), nor by chance (indeterminism), but by Emma herself. This kind of ‘immanent’ causation brought about by the agent herself differs from the ‘transeunt’ causation brought about by events in that it involves a ‘prime mover unmoved’—in other words, an entity, at least in this respect, akin to God. But, of course, immanent causation is no less mysterious than Cartesian mind-body dualism or Kantian noumenal selves, and, like them, merely shifts the problem to one remove, in this case, to a prime mover unmoved, uncaused cause, or causa sui (Latin, ‘cause of itself’).

For Nietzsche (d. 1900):

The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself… with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated—the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society—involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Munchausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.

A Possible Way Out

The real challenge for libertarians is to furnish an account of free will that does not rely on mysterious forms of agency, but sits comfortably with our modern, rational-scientific picture of the universe.

The idea that freedom might lie in the control of attention is an ancient one. In the Indian tradition, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras locate liberation in mastery of the mind through concentration and meditation. Much later, in his Philosophy of Physiology (1779), the twenty-year-old medical student Friedrich Schiller argued that freedom lies in attention. More than a century later, William James developed a similar account in terms of an ‘effort of attention’.

So one more modern possibility is this. Neurotransmission, that is, electrical signalling in the brain, may be subject to quantum indeterminacies of a kind that could provide the leeway or ‘point of engagement’ for the exercise of free will. As demonstrated by Edward Lorenz (d. 2008), small changes in the initial conditions of a chaotic system can, through a snowball effect, result in much larger, if unpredictable, changes in that system’s behaviour. Potentially, the flap of a butterfly wing in Kyoto could result in a thunderstorm in Paris. Similarly, an effort of thought or concentration could sway or shepherd random and chaotic patterns of neurological activity so as to culminate in an undetermined action that is free in the strong, libertarian sense.

Most of the time, a person’s actions and corresponding brain activity would be determined by past events and the cumulative effects of those past events on the person’s patterns of thought. Most of the time, in fact, almost all of the time, the person’s actions would be determined by a commixture of neuroses, obsessions, learnt behaviours, socialisation, enculturation, and so on. But on certain occasions, such as when the person was genuinely torn between two competing choices, the degree of indeterminacy in their brain would rise to such a degree as to permit an undetermined action.

Such a window of freedom would be rare, but even a single free action (or non-action) could impact on all subsequent actions and completely alter the course of a life, and the lives affected by that life, and the lives affected by those lives… If Emma had freely decided to go into teaching instead of banking, she would have had a different set of colleagues and friends. She would have married someone whom she would not otherwise have met. Together, they would have had ‘other’ children, almost certainly in another house, and so on.

Are Some People Freer Than Others?

A corollary of this ‘effort of thought’ theory of free will is that some people are freer than others. First, people who are more imaginative, more independent, or more rebellious are freer than people who fall into conventional patterns of thought. Most people would not know possibility if it slapped them in the face; but a few actively seek to disturb fixed patterns of thought, thereby increasing the indeterminacy in their brain and so their latitude for freedom. Second, people who can ‘see into the future’, that is, people who have a high degree of insight into the potential ramifications of their choices, are freer than people who are unable or unwilling to project. Third, people who cultivate attention and concentration ought also to be freer. Indeed, this, and not bendiness, was the historical purpose of yoga. 

Of course, there is overlap between those who are mired in convention and those who are unable to see into the future (and who therefore lack intuition), since both conditions are mutually reinforcing, and both arise from the same ultimate source, namely, fear or cowardice. Conversely, there is a high degree of overlap between free thinkers and visionaries. Courage underpins both freedom of thought and freedom of action. In life as in chess, the best players are those who can see several steps ahead, and who can respond to ever changing circumstances with the boldest and most original moves.

Maybe you are not convinced by the ‘effort of thought’ theory, but if we are to rescue free will, which is essential if we are to take seriously the possibility of changing ourselves and our lives, it is probably the best we have to go on.

Continue Exploring

If this essay spoke to you, you might look into The Art of Failure: The Anti Self-Help Guide.

You may also enjoy

Explore all Success & Failure essays

By |

The Surprising Way to Taste Wine More Honestly—and Enjoy It More

Contemplative woman with a wine glass looking out onto a vineyard and the world beyond
Blind tasting begins with wine. It ends by changing the way we pay attention to the world.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Most people assume that blind tasting is about showing off. They picture wine experts sniffing theatrically at a glass before announcing, ‘Château Margaux 1999’ to the admiration—or irritation—of everyone around the table.

In reality, blind tasting is almost the opposite. Its purpose is not to demonstrate superior knowledge, but to remove everything that gets in the way of seeing the wine clearly. Far from being an affectation, it is the fairest, most honest, and ultimately most enjoyable way of tasting wine.

It also teaches us something unexpected: not only about wine, but about the workings of the human mind.

Allow me to explain.

Pure Objectivity

Wine is a combination of acids, alcohols, sugars, polyphenols, and other biochemicals—up to one thousand of them. Together, they create its colour, aromas, flavours, texture, and structure. Grape variety, soil, climate, viticulture, winemaking, and ageing all leave their imprint on the liquid in the glass, and the experienced taster learns to read these clues.

Unfortunately, we rarely taste wine alone.

Instead, we taste the label, the bottle, the reputation of the producer, the prestige of the region, the price on the shelf, the opinions of critics, and even our own expectations. We may think, ‘I once had a wonderful holiday in this vineyard,’ or, ‘I don’t like Sauvignon Blanc.’ We may be influenced by the grandeur of a château, the atmosphere of a restaurant, or even the temperature of the room. All these things can enrich our enjoyment of wine. But they can also distort our judgement.

Blind tasting strips these influences away. The wine is served anonymously in a standard glass, ideally in a neutral setting, without flourish or fanfare. Nothing remains except the liquid itself.

Rather than asking whether we like a famous label or a prestigious appellation, we ask a much simpler—and much more interesting—question: What is actually in the glass?

Beyond Objectivity

Blind tasting is often presented as a way of eliminating bias. It is certainly that. But reducing prejudice is only the beginning.

There is immense pleasure in focusing entirely on the wines before us; in stretching and refining our senses; in applying judgement rather than preconception; in searching our memories for forgotten aromas and flavours; in comparing our impressions with those of fellow tasters; in getting it exactly right, approximately right, or even wrong for the right reasons. Above all, there is the pleasure of discussing the wine and learning not only about that particular bottle but about wine itself.

Blind tasting encourages curiosity over certainty. Instead of asking whether we guessed correctly, we begin to ask why a wine tasted as it did. Every bottle becomes an opportunity to learn.

In refining their senses and aesthetic judgement, blind tasters become much more conscious of the richness not only of wine but also of other potentially complex beverages such as tea, coffee, and spirits, and, by extension, the aromas and flavours in food, the scents in the air, and the play of light in the world.

For life is consciousness, and consciousness is life.

Wine and Consciousness

In philosophy, phenomenology is the study of the structures of conscious experience. Blind tasting is phenomenology in one of its purest forms. It returns us from our ideas about the world to the world itself, while revealing just how readily the mind colours our experience with expectation, memory, and suggestion.

Wine, then, becomes a remarkable instrument for studying not only the world but ourselves.

The more practical among you may rest assured that blind tasting also serves more immediate purposes. Winemakers need to taste a wine as they are making it; buyers before adding it to their stocks; journalists, critics, and sommeliers before recommending it to their readers and patrons; and wine lovers before sharing it with their friends. Blind tasting also forms the basis of many wine qualifications and competitions, and may even open the door to a rewarding career in the wine trade.

‘My genius,’ wrote Nietzsche, ‘is in my nostrils.’ Many years ago, I called the police to force entry into a neighbour’s house, on the basis that I could smell through the letterbox that the neighbour had died—rather than just gone away, as everyone else thought.

Our senses are capable of far more than most of us ever ask of them. Blind tasting begins with wine. It ends by changing the way we pay attention to the world.

Continue Exploring

If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my book The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting, which explores not only how to taste wine, but why it matters. Combining practical guidance with philosophy, psychology, and the science of perception, it will help you taste with greater confidence, objectivity, and enjoyment.

You may also enjoy

In wine

In cognition

Explore all Wine & Blind Tasting resources

By |

The Psychology and Philosophy of Imagination

John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral
John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831).

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Einstein held that imagination is more important than knowledge: ‘I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’

What Is Imagination?

Imagination is the faculty of the mind that forms and manipulates images, propositions, concepts, emotions, and sensations above and beyond and sometimes independently of incoming sensory stimuli, opening up the realms of the abstract, the figurative, the possible, the hypothetical, and the universal.

Imagination comes in many forms and by many degrees, ranging from scientific reasoning to musical appreciation, and overlaps with a number of other cognitive constructs including belief, desire, emotion, memory, supposition, and fantasy. Belief, like perception, aims at according with reality, while desire aims at altering reality. Like belief, emotion also aims at according with reality, but more particularly at reflecting the significance of its object, or class of object, for the subject—an aspect that it shares with many forms of imagination. Like imagination, memory can involve remote imagery. But unlike imagination, memory is (or aims to be) rooted in reality and serves primarily to frame belief and guide moment-by-moment action. Memories are often more vivid than imaginings, which are, in turn, more vivid than mere suppositions. Suppositions tend to be cold and cognitive, lacking the emotional and existential dimensions of imagination, and much of its vividness. Finally, fantasy may be understood as imagination directed towards the improbable.

I say the improbable rather than the impossible, because there is a theory that, just as perception justifies beliefs about actuality, so imagination justifies beliefs about possibility (or at least, metaphysical as opposed to natural possibility). To quote David Hume, ‘it is an established maxim in metaphysics, that whatever the mind clearly conceives, includes the idea of possible existence, or in other words, that nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible.’

Could ghosts, the devil, time travel, and other imaginary things really be possible? I think inconceivability may be a better guide to impossibility than conceivability to possibility. But what does it mean for something to be conceivable or inconceivable, and by whom? It is easy to conceive of something other than oxygen in the place of oxygen, if one does not know anything about oxygen. In that much, knowledge and science constrain imagination—although, no doubt, they also help to focus it. The interplay between knowledge and imagination is most problematic when the ‘knowledge’ is wrong.

In any case, until very recently, most human societies did not mark a strict divide between imagination and belief, or fiction and reality, with each one informing and enriching the other. In fact, it could be argued that, in many important respects, the fiction took precedence over the reality—and even that this has been, and no doubt still is, one of the hallmarks of Homo sapiens. Today, there are pills for people who confuse imaginings and beliefs, but back in the day no one ever thought that life, despite its much harder hardships, might be meaningless—which I think tells us quite a bit about imagination and its uses, and also, incidentally, about mental illness and its causes.

Imagination and Meaning

The uses of imagination are many, more than I can enumerate. Most children begin to develop pretend play at around 15 months of age. What are children doing when they pretend play? And why are they so absorbed in works of imagination? When I was seven years old, I devoured book after book and pleaded with my parents for those not already in the bookcase. By playing out scenarios and extending themselves beyond their limited experience, children seek to make sense of the world and find their place within it. This meaning-making is full of emotion—joy, excitement, awe—and finds an echo in every subsequent act of creation.

Whenever we look at an object such as the Mona Lisa, we see much more than just the frame and the brushstrokes. In fact, we barely see the brushstrokes at all. In imagination as in our dreams, we ascribe form, pattern, and significance to things, and then reflect them back onto those things. Without this work of interpretation and assimilation, the world would be no more than an endless stream of sense impressions—as it may sometimes seem to those who lack imagination—with no hope of escape or reprieve.

Imagination in Everyday Life

More than that, by imagination we are able to complete the world, or our world, by conjuring up the missing parts, and even to inhabit entirely other worlds such as Middle-earth or the Seven Kingdoms. Imagination remains highly active throughout adulthood. What are novels, films, computer games, and even pornography if not aids to the adult imagination? 

If imagination lets us feel at home in the world, it also enables us to get things done in the world. Science advances by hypothesis, which is a function of imagination, and philosophy makes frequent use of thought experiments such as the brain in the vat, the trolley problem, and Plato’s Republic. More than that, imagination enables us to form associations and connections, and thereby to apply our knowledge to real-life situations. It opens up alternatives and possibilities, and guides our decision-making by playing them out in our mind. So many of our failures—and, dare I say, a few of our more boring successes—are in fact failures of the imagination.

Imagination and Other Minds

Imagination also enables us to talk to one another, understand one another, and work together. Without it, there could be no metaphor, no irony, no humour, no past or future tenses, and no conditional either. Indeed, there could be no language at all, for what are words if not symbols and representations? Every conversation depends upon imagination—for every listener must recreate in the theatre of the mind what the speaker can only suggest. By imagination, we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes, think what they think, feel what they feel, and project them and our relationship into the future. Difficulties with imagination are thought to contribute to some of the characteristic features of autism, including impairments in social interaction and communication together with restricted interests and patterns of behaviour.

Cultivating the Imagination

Imagination is the highest form of thought, and almost divine in its reach. With enough imagination, we could identify and solve all our problems. With enough imagination, we would never have to work again—or, at least, not for money. With enough imagination, we could win over, or defeat, anyone we wanted to. But our imagination is so poor that we haven’t even imagined what it would be like to have that kind of imagination.

I’m lucky to have received a decent education, but one thing it certainly didn’t do for me is cultivate my imagination. In fact, medical school in particular did everything to destroy it. In recent years, I’ve been trying to recover the bright and vivid imagination that I left behind in primary school. For that, I’ve been doing just three things, all of them very simple—or, at least, very simple to explain.

  • Recognising the importance of imagination.
  • Making time for sleep and idleness.
  • Taking inspiration from the natural world.

I’ll conclude with these few words from William Blake:

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

Continue Exploring

If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my books Hypersanity, on heightened insight, creativity, and wisdom, and How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero, on cultivating the higher faculties of the mind through the ancient arts of clear thinking and speaking.

You may also enjoy

Explore all Cognition essays

By |

The Upanishads and the Search for the True Self

Two birds in a tree

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Who am I? This is perhaps the oldest and deepest question in philosophy. More than two and a half thousand years ago, the sages of the Upanishads rose up to it. Their meditation, often conveyed obliquely in the form of stories, remains one of the most striking and illuminating in the history of human thought.

The Story of Indra

In the Chandogya Upanishad (c. 7th century BCE), Indra, king of the Vedic gods, and his nemesis, Virochana, king of the asuras (anti-gods), go to the ashram of the creator god, Prajapati, to learn the secret of Atman (the Self).

Prajapati takes them both in, and, after 32 years, summons them and tells them that Atman is the reflection of the self in the pupil of the eye. Satisfied with this answer, Virochana returns to the asuras, who take to venerating the bodily self.

But Indra is not so sure, and goes back to the ashram. After 32 more years as a brahmacharya (celibate student), Prajapati tells Indra that Atman is the dream self.

Still full of doubt, Indra is made to wait another 32 years, before being told that Atman is the unconscious self.

When Indra protests that no good can come of this knowledge, Prajapati keeps him for five more years and, after a total of 101 years, finally tells him the secret of Atman.

If Atman is neither the waking self, nor the dreaming self, nor the sleeping self, then what is Atman?

By having Indra wait for what is the natural lifespan of a wise person, Prajapati is making the point that the deepest truths cannot simply be taught, but must painstakingly be learnt. Wisdom is not something that can simply be handed over. It demands patience, perseverance, and, above all, the willingness to question even the answers one has already received. Virochana was content with appearances; Indra sought the truth behind them.

The Upanishads return to this mystery again and again. In one Upanishad, Indra spends a lifetime seeking the Self. In another, the same mystery is pursued by a very different seeker.

The Story of Nachiketa

The brahmin (priest) Vajashravasa purports to be sacrificing everything he owns, but his son Nachiketa notices that he is only offering up those cows that are old, lame, or otherwise unproductive.

Nachiketa repeatedly taunts his father, saying, “I too am yours! To which god will you offer me?” In a fit of rage, Vajashravasa cries out, “To Yama himself!”

Taking his father at his word, Nachiketa descends to Yama’s abode. But the god of death is out, and the boy is made to wait for three days without food or water. When Yama returns, he offers the brahmin boy three boons to atone for his lack of hospitality.

For the first boon, Nachiketa asks for peace between himself and his father when he is returned to the old man. Yama happily grants this.

For the second boon, he asks to learn the fire sacrifice, which he performs to Yama’s satisfaction.

Finally, for the third boon, he asks to be told what comes after death.

Yama replies:

Here, even the gods of yore had doubt. Indeed it is not easy to know—subtle is this matter—O Nachiketa, ask for some other boon. Press not this on me; give this up for me… Ask for centenarian sons and grandsons, many cattle, elephants, gold and horses. Ask for wide extent of earth and live yourself, as many autumns as you like.

But Nachiketa resists the riches of the world, saying that man is not to be satisfied with wealth: “If wealth were wanted, we shall get it, if we only see thee.”

Impressed by the boy, Yama agrees to tell him the Secret of the Self, which persists beyond the death of the body.

After a time, Nachiketa bids farewell to Yama and returns to his father as a jivanmukta, that is, one who has achieved moksha (liberation) in this life.

Whereas Indra’s trial was patience, Nachiketa’s was temptation. Both the god and the boy proved themselves worthy of the knowledge they sought.

The Secret of the Self

One seeker waited 101 years. Another contended with Death himself. Both sought the same truth.

What did Yama tell Nachiketa? And what, in the Chandogya Upanishad, did Prajapati finally tell Indra?

“Atman” is often translated into English as “soul” but does not include the individual or cognitive aspects of the Judeo-Christian soul and, for this reason, is better translated as “Self.”

In Hindu thought, the individual aspects of the Judeo-Christian soul, such as ego, mind, reason, emotion, and desire, are subsumed under the jivanatman (“life-breath”), or jiva for short.

Whereas the jiva, the personal self, is enmeshed in the world, the Atman is detached from this contingent life and incarnation. And whereas the jiva is ever-changing and evolving, the Atman, the universal Self, is steadfast and immoveable.

In the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, the jiva and Atman are compared to two inseparable birds sitting in a tree (the body). One bird, the jiva, gorges on the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree, while the other, tasting of neither, calmly looks on.

The Atman is neither the waking self, nor the dreaming self, nor the sleeping self, as Indra had been led to believe, but pure consciousness, or witness-consciousness, and of a kind with the supreme soul, Paramatman, which is either Brahman or an aspect of Brahman.

There is something within us that witnesses every thought without itself becoming a thought, every emotion without itself becoming an emotion. Our bodies change, our memories fade, our personalities evolve, yet the simple fact of awareness remains. The sages of the Upanishads identified this silent witness with the Atman.

In all living things, Atman is the spark of life, or light of consciousness, that ignites and illumines all else for the time that it remains embodied. It is the eternal core of a living being, which, in death, leaves it for another form, or, at long last, returns to the infinity of Brahman.

If the Self, the Atman, is made of the same stuff as the world, then self-understanding and self-control become means of understanding and controlling the world and existing on a higher plane.

In the Katha Upanishad, Yama tells Nachiketa:

Subtler than the subtle, greater than the great, in the heart of each living being, the Atman reposes. One free from desire, with his mind and the senses composed, sees the glory of the Atman and becomes absolved from grief.

Knowledge of the Self can be attained through the practice of yoga, which Yama defines for Nachiketa as ‘the firm holding back of the senses’.

This is the first recorded mention of ‘yoga’ in something close to its modern sense—and it is put into the mouth of Death himself.

Yama warns Nachiketa to be watchful, ‘for yoga comes and goes.’

More than twenty-five centuries later, the question that drew both Indra and Nachiketa remains our own. We spend much of our lives identifying ourselves with our bodies, our ambitions, our possessions, our memories, even our thoughts. The Upanishads invite us to look deeper. Beneath everything that changes, they suggest, lies something that does not: the silent witness, the Self, which is not merely ours but one with the universe.

Whether one accepts this vision or not, it remains one of humanity’s most beautiful and profound meditations on the oldest of all philosophical questions:

Who am I?

Continue Exploring

If this article spoke to you, you might look into Indian Mythology and Philosophy.

You may also enjoy

Explore all Indian Philosophy essays

By |

The Psychology and Philosophy of Intuition

a spider's web: a metaphor for how intuition operates
Intuition often reveals the connections that reason has yet to trace.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Intuition is one of humanity’s highest cognitive faculties. Yet it has never been more neglected or devalued than in our rational-scientific age.

At a wine bar in Corsica, I ordered a glass of Vermentino and got chatting about wine with the sommelier who brought it to me. After a time, I ordered another glass, and we spoke again. I like testing my intuitions, so I said, at point blank, “You write poetry, don’t you?” The chap, taken aback by my sorcery, confirmed that he did indeed write poetry, and even that some of his poems had been published.

An intuition is a disposition to believe formed without hard evidence or conscious deliberation. I say ‘disposition to believe’ rather than ‘belief’ because an intuition is usually held with less certainty or firmness than a belief; and ‘believe’ rather than ‘know’ because an intuition is not justified in the normal sense, and not necessarily true or accurate.

It is not just that intuition is arrived at without hard evidence or conscious deliberation, but that these can impede it. ‘I am not absentminded,’ wrote the polymath GK Chesterton, ‘it is presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.’

Intuition vs Instinct

Intuition is often confused with instinct. Instinct is not the same as intuition. Whereas intuition is a disposition to believe without conscious reasoning, instinct is an innate tendency towards a particular behaviour. Instinct is not a sense about something, but a tendency to do something. ‘Anna stepped back, intuiting that the dog would follow its instinct and attack.’

Although we ordinarily associate instincts with animals, human beings also have quite a few, even if they are, or can be, strongly modified by culture, temperament, and experience. Examples of human instincts include any number of phobias (fear of heights, fear of spiders, fear of snakes…), territoriality, tribal loyalty, and the urge to procreate and rear their young. These instincts are often modified, redirected, or sublimed: for example, tribal loyalty may find an outlet in sport, and the urge to procreate may take the more rarefied form of romantic love.

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle adds that human beings have an instinct for truth, and in the Poetics, that we have an instinct for rhythm and harmony. Obviously, he hadn’t seen my dancing.

The Psychology and Philosophy of Intuition

If intuition is not instinct, how does it operate?

An intuition involves a coming together of facts, concepts, experiences, thoughts, and feelings that are loosely linked but too disparate and peripheral for deliberate or rational processing. As this reflection is sub- or semi-conscious and the workings are hidden, an intuition appears to arise ex nihilo, out of nothing and nowhere, and cannot, or at least not readily, be justified.

What makes an intuition so hard to support and argue for is that it is founded less on arguments and evidence than on the interconnection of things. It hangs, delicately, intricately, and invisibly, like a spider’s web.

Many of humanity’s greatest insights seem to have arisen in this way. Archimedes is said to have leapt from his bath crying, ‘Eureka!’ after discovering how to determine the purity of a gold crown. Socrates attributed many of his most important decisions to his daimonion, an inner voice that warned rather than reasoned. After struggling for months with a mathematical problem, Henri Poincaré suddenly saw its solution while stepping onto a bus. The chemist August Kekulé dreamt of a snake swallowing its own tail before recognising the ring structure of benzene. Srinivasa Ramanujan attributed many of his astonishing mathematical discoveries to dreams sent by the goddess Namagiri. Such breakthroughs seem sudden only because the mind has been quietly at work beneath the surface.

The surfacing of an intuition, which can also occur in dream or meditation, is often mingled with a concordant feeling such as joy or fear, or simple pride and pleasure at the supreme cognitive and human achievement that an intuition represents.

How to Invite Intuition

If this is how intuition works, we can cultivate it by expanding the range of our experiences, and by tearing down the barriers—such as biases, fears, and inhibitions—that prevent them from coalescing.

We should also give ourselves more time and space for free association. My own intuitive faculty is sharpest when walking, showering, travelling, or otherwise daydreaming, and when I am well rested.

The more richly furnished the mind, the more deeply it can intuit. There is no such thing as wasted knowledge.

Finally, we should acknowledge the place and power of intuition. We have micro-intuitions all the time, about what to eat, what to wear, what road to take, whom to talk to, what to say, how to respond, and so on. I call them micro-intuitions because they rely on a great number of subtle variables and largely escape conscious processing. But what about the macro-intuitions?

Never in the history of humanity has the intuitive or mystic faculty been more neglected or devalued than in our rational-scientific age.

Perhaps our greatest error has been to pit intuition against reason. They are not rivals, but partners. Intuition points the way; reason clears the path.

Continue Exploring

If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my books Hypersanity, on heightened insight, creativity, and wisdom, and How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero, on the ancient art of clear thinking.

You may also enjoy

Explore all Cognition essays