Towards a new foundation for psychology
author: Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: December 1969
section 2
Four areas in which the Indian civilization can make a major contribution to Psychology
This is the second in a series.
If you haven't read Section 1, you may like to read that section first:
There are four major contributions which the Indian civilisation can make to science, and more particularly to psychology. Together they can help science to become worthy of the central role it plays in our newly evolving global civilization.
- The first is a genuinely integral understanding of the whole of reality, an understanding which is equally suitable for the physical as well as for the psychological domain.
- The second major contribution India can make to modern science consists of an epistemology and a range of research methodologies that are appropriate for the rigorous, in depth study of consciousness and other aspects of psychology that cannot be studied effectively from our present physicalist and constructivist perspectives.
- The third contribution the Indian civilization can make to psychology consists of coherent and well-worked out theories about psychological structures, functioning and development.
- The fourth consists of a wide range of effective techniques for change and all-round development.
Its earliest formulations can be found in some of the oldest Indian texts like the Ṛg Veda, the early Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. The "Vedic paradigm" given in these texts functioned like a loving grandmother to the enormous variety of spiritual, philosophical, religious and cultural schools which India later brought forth. Outside India, it has been mainly these later traditions that have made an impact. One can think for example of the many different meditation techniques that have spread since millennia throughout Asia and in more recent times in Europe and the Americas. There is an extensive body of research about them, and there can be no reasonable doubt about their value for self-development and therapy. But the older, more integral tradition is interesting for a different reason. It is its ability to support and nurture in an impartial (and often surprisingly modern) manner, the entire range of human efforts at understanding and improving the world and ourselves, whether religious, cultural, spiritual, or scientific. As science and technology are removing the distances that used to keep people and cultures apart, it is hard to exaggerate how much humanity needs such an integral framework for understanding all aspects of reality, and all the different ways people in which people deal with them.
In modern times, Sri Aurobindo is the main exponent of the integral Indian tradition. We will discuss Sri Aurobindo's take on the Vedic understanding of reality in the following chapters of the introduction.
It is these that have produced the techniques of yoga and mindfulness of which decontextualised forms are are now used on such a large scale in counselling and therapy. If modern science would adopt the Indian understanding of the basic nature of reality and knowledge, as well as the Indian methods for the study of the subjective domain, these two things together could revolutionise psychology and its applications in education, self-development, counselling, therapy, management and so on.
We will look at the epistemology and methodology in Part Two, "How do we know?".
One of the neat outcomes of the Indian approach is that it provides a logically coherent map of human nature in all its complexity, including things that are entirely beyond the grasp of mainstream psychology at present.
Psychological theories and models will be taken up in Part One, "Who am I?" and in Part Three, "Meeting others and the world".
As mentioned earlier, "decontextualised" versions of two of these, yoga "exercises" and mindfulness, are already adopted by mainstream psychology, and more comprehensive implementations are part of a variety of subcultures, but while all this is nice for those who use them, it is not enough to take psychology further as a science.
These practical applications we'll explore in Part Four, "Working on oneself" and in Part Five, "Working with others".
So let's now look at the basic indian conception of what the world is made of, and see how this can help psychology forward.