Thoughts on the way: My very own Divine

By MeghaPosted on July 19, 2012April 14, 2013Cat Miscellaneous musings, Psychotherapy and counseling4 Comments

Thoughts on the way: My very own Divine Born in a middle-class, traditional Hindu family, the notion of an all powerful and ever present “God” was handed down to me in a natural, easy and obvious manner. I did not consciously have to build up on the idea of the Divine — it came almost on… Read More »

How to do research in Indian Psychology?

By MatthijsPosted on October 9, 2011February 8, 2013Cat Cognition & Methodology2 Comments

One of the hallmarks of Indian Psychology is the central role it gives to consciousness. But how do you study consciousness? Consciousness is quintessentially subjective, and mainstream science does its level best to be as objective as possible. Can subjective and objective research be brought together in one single framework? During the last few hundred… Read More »

Why do we need Indian Psychology?

By MatthijsPosted on July 17, 2011November 3, 2011Cat Cognition & Methodology, Society2 Comments

When modern psychology discovered in the beginning of the 20th century that introspection was not a very reliable method of enquiry, it did not discover anything new. The Indian civilization had discovered this thousands of years ago. What was different however, was how modernity reacted to this discovery. It is good to stand still at… Read More »

Some further musings on knowledge and the brain, on science and yoga

By MatthijsPosted on May 9, 2011May 9, 2011Cat Cognition & Methodology, Miscellaneous musingsLeave a comment

Even the tiniest particle of matter, however small, must have within itself all the knowledge of the universe. The reason that it must be like this, is that the particle must know the laws that govern it, and as all the laws of physics are supposed to hang together, this means it must know the… Read More »

Early morning musings on mind, brain, time and coffee

By MatthijsPosted on May 8, 2011May 9, 2011Cat Cognition & Methodology, Miscellaneous musings2 Comments

Early morning thoughts stream slowly and meander leisurely through the mind without much of discipline. Yesterday I fixed a new mirror in the bathroom. The old mirror is still laying next to it. Seeing them both, I remember the adventures with "mirror-books" that Fynn describes with so much love in Mr. God, this is Anna. With some… Read More »

TIP-2011: Observations from the sidelines

By JyotiPosted on April 29, 2011April 29, 2011Cat IPI, Teaching IP5 Comments

TIP-2011 — IPI’s collaborative workshop on Teaching Indian Psychology — began with much hope, enthusiasm and eagerness, as something, the need for which had been felt since quite some time. In spite of the resistance against the teaching of Indian Psychology in universities and other age-old institutions, where western classical positivist psychology had been the… Read More »

The objective and the subjective!

By DivyaPosted on December 4, 2010March 22, 2017Cat Cognition & Methodology, IPI, Psychology1 Comment

I came across this interesting passage from the book “The Varieties of Religious Experience” by Wiliam James. Here it is: "The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can… Read More »

The Two Birds

By DivyaPosted on November 12, 2010March 22, 2017Cat Psychology, Self & PersonalityLeave a comment

Here is a small imagery from the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad that depicts beautifully the relation we have with the world and The Self. The image, that of two birds, presented here in 3 shlokas gives first the description of ourselves in this world, then presents us with the Problem we face and lastly gives us the… Read More »