The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

In quite the opposite sense, some Vedic philosophers in India, writing between the fifth and second century BC, welcomed the erasure of the individual self and its fusion with the universal. They rejected the Greek dualism between the body and the soul—and, indeed, between an individual body and the cosmic soul. They termed the self atman. (There are many other Sanskrit words for the self besides atman, but it is the one that holds the most meaning.) The universal, multitudinous self, in contrast, was the Brahman. For these philosophers, the self was an ideal fusion of atman and Brahman, or perhaps more accurately, the seamless flow of the universal self through the individual self. However, this fusion/flow was reserved as a goal for spiritual attainment. There was a cosmic ecology that bound the individual and the spiritual collective into one Being. The phrase “Tat Twam Asi”—“That you are”—permeates the Upanishads and is an expression of the boundless self that permeates not just a single physical body but also the cosmos. You, the self, the Upanishads proclaim, is permeated and penetrated by That, the universal. In an ideal body, the universal flows through the individual. (The word invades, with its negative connotations, is obviously avoided.)