Indian psychological thought in the age of globalization

John Pickering

The chapter discusses the place of Indian psychological thought in the age of globalization. It begins with the issue of why Buddhism has been more widely received outside India as compared to other Indian systems, and the view presented is that Buddhist thought is richly comparable with contemporary Western thought. A positive contribution of post modernism is that it offers a pluralistic view on knowledge, whereby systems of psychology falling outside the purview of mainstream positivist psychology are given a fair hearing, thus leading to greater openness to Indian psychological thought. The chapter also examines how changes in the scientific worldview, after quantum physics established itself as the dominant paradigm, may also contribute to greater acceptance of Indian psychology. It concludes by suggesting that Indian psychological thought is more appropriately considered a worldview as well as a way of life, and such a way of life appears to be a highly sustainable one.