Yoga and Psychology
The Relationship Between Yoga and Psychology in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga
AS. Dalai
Sri Aurobindo, writing on his teaching and the method of its practice, refers to yoga as "the ancient psychological discipline".1 He has also described yoga as "nothing but practical psychology.".2 Regarding the method of yoga he states: "the whole method of Yoga is psychological; it might almost be termed the consummate practice of a perfect psychological knowledge."3 All these statements point to the intimate relationship between yoga and psychology.
This relationship becomes more obvious when we look at the objects of yoga. Sri Aurobindo states:
In all yoga there are three essential objects to be attained by the seeker: union or abiding contact with the Divine, liberation of the soul or the self, the spirit, and a certain change of the consciousness, the spiritual change. It is this change, which is necessary for reaching the other two objects, necessary at least to a certain degree, that is the cause of most of the struggles and difficulties; for it is not easy to accomplish it; a change of the mind, a change of the heart, a change of the habits of the will is called for and is obstinately resisted by our ignorant nature.4
1. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, SABCL, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Vol. 26, p. 95.
2. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - Parts One and Two, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 95.
3. Ibid., p. 496.
4. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - Part Four, SABCL, Vol. 24, p. 1622.
Page 306
The relationship between yoga is implicit in all the objects of yoga stated above. The first object - union or abiding contact with the Divine - implies "the contact of the human and individual consciousness with the divine [consciousness]".5 The relationship between yoga and psychology can be seen here because psychology, from the viewpoint of yoga, is the science which deals with the nature of consciousness and the method of transforming the ordinary human consciousness into the divine consciousness. The second object of yoga - the liberation of the soul or the self - is related to what in psychology is called identification. In the ordinary consciousness, the soul or self is identified with its instruments - body, life and mind - which leads to bondage. The aim of yoga is to attain liberation of the soul by overcoming the ignorant identification with its instruments. The process of disidentification is thus at once yogic and psychological. The third object of yoga - a change of the mind, the heart and the habits of the will - aims, in the language of psychology, at a change of the cognitive, affective and volitional aspects of our nature. Thus the stuff of our nature which is to be changed is what both yoga and psychology deal with.
The three parts of the being just mentioned - mental, vital, physical - which yoga aims at changing, constitute what in Sri Aurobindo's yoga psychology is called the outer or surface being which is distinguished from the inner being, composed of the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner physical, with the psychic or the soul as the innermost part of the being supporting all the rest. "The whole art of yoga", says Sri Aurobindo, "is to get that contact [with the inner being] and from it get into the inner being itself."6
This leads up to the view of yoga as both a science and an art. The psychological science which underlies the art of
5. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - Parts One and Two, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 27.
6. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 533.
Page 307
yoga is difficult to recognise for someone who is familiar with psychology only as it is generally conceived today. For psychology today is regarded as the science of behaviour, and behaviour is related to what in yogic psychology is called the outer being referred to above. Yogic psychology, on the other hand, is the science of consciousness which studies the totality of Being it manifests at various levels of consciousness, ranging from the lowest to the highest and from the outermost to the innermost. The outer being, which is what modern psychology mostly deals with, is all that we are normally aware of in our waking existence, but as even modern depth psychology has partly discovered, "our waking and surface existence is only a small part of our being and does not yield to us the root and secret of our character, our mentality or our actions. The sources lie deeper."7 The aim of yogic psychology has been to discover and know these deeper sources, "and, so far as possible, to possess and utilise them as physical science possesses and utilises the secret of the forces of Nature".8
These deeper sources of our waking and superficial existence as discovered by yogic psychology are seen to lie below, behind and above our normal consciousness. What lies below the normal consciousness is called the subconscient in Sri Aurobindo's yoga psychology. The subconscient proper is entirely below the mental, vital and physical consciousness, but the mind, the vital and the physical are also partly submerged in the subconscient. Thus there is a subconscient mental, a subconscient vital and a subconscient physical. What Freud called the unconscious is related mainly to the subconscient vital. Remarking on the exaggeration and over-generalisation of the partial and very limited truth contained in the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious, Sri Aurobindo writes:
7. Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 259.
8. Ibid.
Page 308
It [the psychoanalysis of Freud] takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind - to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of Nature in its narrow terms -runs riot here.9
What lies behind the superficial consciousness of the outer being has been referred to earlier as the inner being, often called the subliminal or inner consciousness. Regarding the subliminal, Sri Aurobindo states:
Even in Europe the existence of something behind the surface is now very frequently admitted, but its nature is mistaken and it is called subconscient or subliminal, while really it is very conscious in its own way and not subliminal but only behind the veil. It is, according to our psychology, connected with the small outer personality by certain centres of consciousness10 of which we become aware by yoga. Only a little of the inner being escapes through these centres into the outer life, but that little is the best part of ourselves and responsible for our art, poetry, philosophy, ideals, religious aspirations, efforts at knowledge and perfection. But the inner centres are for the most part closed or asleep - to open them and make them awake and active is one aim of yoga. As they open, the powers and possibilities of the inner being also are aroused in us; we awake first to a larger consciousness and then to a cosmic consciousness; we
9. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - Part Four, SABCL, Vol. 24, p. 1606.
10. [Chakras]
Page 309
are no longer little separate personalities with limited lives but centres of a universal action and in direct contact with cosmic forces. 11
From the viewpoint of yogic psychology, it is the subliminal consciousness that is at the basis of the yet not well understood and not fully recognised psychical or parapsychologi-cal phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience and other phenomena of extrasensory perception. Extrasensory perception is explained by yogic psychology in terms of inner or subtle senses (corresponding to the physical senses of sight, hearing, taste, etc.) which are possessed by the subliminal. As Sri Aurobindo states:
... all the physical senses have their corresponding powers in the psychical being, there is a psychical hearing, touch, smell, taste: indeed the physical senses are themselves in reality only a projection of the inner sense into limited and externalised operation in and through and upon the phenomena of gross matter.12
The subliminal is also at the basis of the well-recognised phenomena of hypnosis, as also many experiences of the cosmic consciousness which have as yet received only a slight recognition in modern psychology. Several aspects of what Jung called the collective unconscious are related to the subliminal.13
The subliminal is often mistaken for the spiritual because of the failure to distinguish between the inner consciousness, which is behind the surface consciousness, and the higher consciousness which is above the normal consciousness. The
11. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - Part Four, SABCL, Vol. 24, pp. 1164-65.
12. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - Parts Three and Four, SABCL, Vol. 21, p. 844.
13. This has been elaborated in A.S. Dalai, "Sri Aurobindo and the Concept of the Unconscious" in Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, second ed. 2001, pp. 34-35.
Page 310
spiritual is the higher or superconscient consciousness which is above the normal mental consciousness. Distinguishing between the subliminal or inner consciousness and the spiritual or higher consciousness, Sri Aurobindo writes:
The inner consciousness means the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical and behind them the psychic which is their inmost being. But the inner mind is not the higher mind; it is more in touch with the universal forces and more open to the higher consciousness and capable of an immensely deeper and larger range of action than the outer or surface mind - but it is of the same essential nature. The higher consciousness is that above the ordinary mind and different from it in its workings; it ranges from higher mind through illumined mind, intuition and overmind up to the border line of the supramental.14
A more serious confusion found in modern psychology is due to the failure to distinguish between the subconscient and the superconscient, as is seen in psychoanalysis which regards everything that does not pertain to the conscious mind as belonging to the unconscious. Consequently psychoanalysis tries to explain spiritual experiences of the higher consciousness also in terms of the unconscious. As Sri Aurobindo remarks:
They [the psychologists] look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam.15 The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus... is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these
14. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - Part One, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 308.
15. [Their foundation is above. Rig Veda 1.24.7]
Page 311
psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest.16
Psychological distinctions, such as those indicated above, between the different parts of the being and the different levels of consciousness become particularly important in yoga when the veil between the outer consciousness and the inner consciousness is pierced through sadhana - or, in rare cases, spontaneously - giving rise to various experiences which have generally been described as "transpersonal" experiences in modern psychological thought. Many of these experiences belong to what Sri Aurobindo has called the Intermediate Zone by which is meant
that when the sadhak gets beyond the barriers of his own embodied personal mind he enters into a wide range of experiences which are not the limited solid physical truth of things and not yet either the spiritual truth of things. It is a zone of formations, mental, vital, subtle physical, and whatever one forms or is formed by the forces of these worlds in us becomes for the sadhak for a time the truth -unless he is guided and listens to his guide. Afterwards if he gets through he discovers what it was and passes on into the subtle truth of things. It is a borderland where all the worlds meet, mental, vital, subtle physical, pseudo-spiritual - but there is no order or firm foothold - a passage between the physical and the true spiritual realms.17 The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet
16. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - Part Four, SABCL, Vol. 24, pp. 1608-09.
17. Ibid., Parts Two and Three, Vol. 23, p. 1053.
Page 312
transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels, but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers.18
Sri Aurobindo has sounded many warnings against the dangers of the intermediate zone, such as "imitation higher experiences", "false inspirations" and "false voices" which come from this realm "into which hundreds of yogins enter and some never get out of it".19 To a disciple who reported an inner experience, Sri Aurobindo wrote:
You are taking the first steps towards the cosmic consciousness in which there are all things good and bad, true and false, the cosmic Truth and the cosmic Ignorance. I was not thinking so much of ego as of these thousand voices, possibilities, suggestions. If you avoid these, then there is no necessity of passing through the intermediate zone.20
Distinctions need to be made even with regard to experiences of the cosmic consciousness which tend to be regarded as being always the highest spiritual experiences. For, according to yogic psychology, there are different levels of cosmic consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo states:
The cosmic consciousness has many levels - the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins.
18. Ibid., pp. 1052-53.
19. Ibid., p. 1061.
20. Ibid., pp. 1053-54.
Page 313
A reflected static realisation of Sachchidananda is possible on any of the cosmic planes, but the full entering into it, the entire union with the Supreme Divine dynamic as well as static, comes with the transcendence.21
Even the higher planes of the cosmic consciousness mentioned above are part of the Ignorance (Avidya), and therefore have both sides - cosmic Truth and cosmic Ignorance. Sri Aurobindo states:
There are in the cosmic consciousness two sides - one the contact with and perception of the ordinary cosmic forces and the beings behind these forces, that is what I call the cosmic Ignorance - the other is the perception of the cosmic Truths, the realisation of the one universal, the one universal Force, all the Vedantic truths of the One in all and all in one, all the various aspects of the Divine in the cosmic and a host of other things can come which do help to realisation and knowledge...22
It is because of the presence of Avidya in the cosmic consciousness that one who breaks the bounds of the personal consciousness and enters the cosmic planes of being has to be on guard.
The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces - for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness - and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient.23
21. Ibid., Part Four, Vol. 24, pp. 1157-58.
22. Ibid., Parts Two and Three, Vol. 23, pp. 1070-71.
23. Ibid., Part One, Vol. 22, pp. 316-17.
Page 314
Mental teaching or explanation, though insufficient in itself is of immense help in the practice of yoga and in most cases is quite indispensable. For without the teaching by someone who has explored the inner and higher realms of being and has discovered a path leading to self-realisation, the pursuit of yoga solely on one's own would be like trying to hew one's path through a virgin forest beset with snares and ambushes. The path of yoga leads through inner and higher realms of consciousness which need to be illumined by the light of a psychological knowledge of the various parts of the being and planes of consciousness. To be of any value in yoga, such knowledge must not be, like modern psychology, based on "the worldly-wise reason which anchors itself on surface facts and leans upon [sensory] experience and probability."24 Nor must it be a philosophical knowledge based on the speculative intellect. It must be a scientific knowledge of supraphysical and spiritual realities which have been arrived at by
Adhering still to the essential rigorous method of science, though not to its purely physical [sensory] instrumentation, scrutinising, experimenting, holding nothing for established which cannot be scrupulously and universally verified.. .25
Such is the nature of yogic psychology. It simply
...extends the range of our observation to an immense mass of facts and experiments which exceed the common surface and limited range [of natural Science] very much as the vastly extended range of observation of [natural] Science exceeds that of the common man.26
24. Sri Aurobindo, The Harmony of Virtue - Early Cultural Writings, SABCL, Vol. 3, p. 367.
25. Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 256.
26. Sri Aurobindo, Archives and Research, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Dec. 1982), p. 158.
Page 315
Yogic knowledge, affirms Sri Aurobindo
.. .is scientific to this extent that it proceeds by subjective experiment and bases all its findings on experience; mental intuitions are admitted only as a first step and are not considered as realisation - they must be confirmed by being translated into and justified by experience.27
Yogic psychology is scientific also because its discoveries, like all scientific findings, are empirical, that is, of the nature of " experience always renewable and verifiable".28
_________________
This article had first appeared in the journal: Anweshika, Indian Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 1 no. 1, June 2004. We thank the publisher and the editors of this journal for their kind permission to reproduce this article.
27. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - Part One, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 189.
28. Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 79.
Page 316
Home
Disciples
Amal Kiran
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.