Vedic Science International Multidisciplinary Peer-reviewed Journal 

The articles below are the official digital versions of peer-reviewed papers from the print edition of the Vedic Science Journal.

Article  Information

Journal: Vedic Science
Volume: 28 | Issue: 3 | Year: 2026
Pages: 68–82
DOI:  https://doi.org/10.66718/vsj.v28.i3.07    
Received: 21 July, 2026
Accepted:  27 August, 2026
Published: 30 Sept., 2026

From Instinct to Reflective Agency: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Consciousness Integrating Evolutionary Biology and the Bhagavad Gītā

Dr. K. V. Sarma, Independent Researcher, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Abstract

Background: Contemporary discussions of consciousness often treat biological instinct and deliberate moral action as opposed categories, without a shared vocabulary for the transitional process between them. Classical Indian philosophy, particularly the Bhagavad Gītā, offers a detailed phenomenology of this transition through the crisis and resolution of the warrior Arjuna, but this account is rarely brought into direct dialogue with contemporary evolutionary and cognitive science.

Objective: This paper proposes the Reflective Agency Model (RAM) of consciousness — a theoretical framework describing consciousness as the progressive expansion of self-governance over biologically conditioned impulses through discernment, deliberation, and intentional action — and examines its convergence with the Gītā’s account of Arjuna’s movement from instinctual paralysis to reasoned duty.

Method: This is a theoretical and comparative-philosophical study. It synthesizes literature from evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology on impulse regulation and dual-process cognition with a close textual reading of relevant passages from the Bhagavad Gītā and allied Vedāntic sources, using comparative hermeneutics as its primary method.

Findings/Contribution: RAM offers a testable, cross-culturally coherent vocabulary for the instinct-to-agency transition; the Gītā’s Arjuna narrative shows a substantial structural correspondence with mechanisms described independently in dual-process and self-regulation research; and the Gītā’s near mirror-image vocabulary of collapse (2.62–63) and recovery (18.73) supplies internal textual confirmation of the model’s two-pathway structure.

Implications: RAM offers a bridge for future empirical and contemplative research on discernment, moral development, and self-regulation.

Keywords

Consciousness; reflective agency; Bhagavad Gītā; dual-process cognition; self-regulation; comparative philosophy

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How to cite this article

Sarma, K.V. (2026). From Instinct to Reflective Agency: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Consciousness Integrating Evolutionary Biology and the Bhagavad Gītā. Vedic Science, 2026 (3), 68-82. ISSN: 0975-0312 (Print). DOI: https://doi.org/10.66718/vsj.v28.i3.07